Chao Center hosts first annual Transnational Asia Conference
Conference discusses how movement across nation-states impacts Asian societies

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Thanks to the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Rice University will host its first Transnational Asia Graduate Student Conference from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Feb. 5 in Lovett Hall’s Founder’s Room. Invited graduate student panelists from schools across the country and prominent faculty speakers will discuss how Asian countries are increasingly bound to one another, which has both tested and strengthened national boundaries.

The Transnational Asia Conference seeks a cross-disciplinary approach for exploring the processes and effects of “transnationalism” — a catchall term used to describe the phenomena that accompany the movement of individuals, ideas and goods across the boundaries of nation-states — within contemporary and historical periods and aims to interrogate the very usefulness of the concept itself. The organizers hope to make this an annual conference.

A keynote address will be given by William Mazzarella, an associate professor of anthropology and of social sciences from the University of Chicago, who specializes in mass media, globalization, public culture and consumerism. Rosalind Morris, a professor of anthropology from Columbia University, will also speak about her research areas in the history of modernity in Southeast Asia and the place of the mass media in its development, particularly in the encounter between old and new forms of mediation.

“We are interested in how intra- and interregional, transnational flows impact Asian societies and their interlocutors,” said Elizabeth Marks, an anthropology graduate student at Rice. “While telecommunications technology and convenient air travel facilitate the forging of trade, educational and cultural links, they may also presage the development of new conflicts and frictions.”