Plachta, Nadine

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HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 39 Number 2 Article 18 March 2020 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference Nadine Plachta Heidelberg University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Plachta, Nadine. 2020. Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. HIMALAYA 39(2). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol39/iss2/18 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Conference Report is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact scholarpub@macalester.edu. HIMALAYA Volume 39, Number 2 | 153                                                     Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference Denver, CO21-24 March 2019The Association for Asian Studies(AAS) is a non-profit, professionalassociation dedicated to the studyof Asia. Each spring, it hosts anAnnual Conference in North America.In addition, it organizes a yearlygathering in a different country withinAsia and coordinates other regionalconferences and workshops to buildsupportive communities of Asianstudies scholars and to provide itsmembers with an active professionalnetwork around the world.In 2019, the AAS Annual Conferencewas held at the Sheraton DenverDowntown Hotel in the city ofDenver, Colorado from March 21–24.It brought together more than 3,200scholars. According to registrationnumbers, the top disciplines amongthem were history, literature,anthropology, political science, arthistory, religion, and sociology.Around 760 participants were firsttime attendees. The conferencefeatured 394 sessions, a bookexhibit with over eighty major bookpublishing companies and universitypresses, receptions, businessmeetings, and much more. It was thelargest Asian Studies conference ofthe year in North America and a must-attend event for anyone interested inthe latest research on Asia.The conference opened with a keynote address by Thant Myint-U, the former Advisor to the President of Myanmar. Thant critically reflected upon recent political reforms in Myanmar and drew attention to the country’s uncertain future in regard to issues of racial violence and democratic changes. Over the course of four days, several distinct sessions and numerous talks featured research on Nepal, Tibet, and the Himalayan region. The contributions can be grouped into the general themes of Asian political history and nation building, Asian literary traditions, Buddhist pilgrimage and rituals, and development and social change. Lei Lin (Harvard University) organized the panel “Trans-Regional Thought and Practice: Political Interactions Between Qing China and Colonial South Asia,” which bridged the fields of Chinese and South Asian studies by examining trans-Himalayan political connections between colonial South Asia and Qing China in the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the four presentations, Tansen Sen’s (New York University Shanghai, China) talk focused on how Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the first Governor General of Bengal, contributed to the establishment of new overland and maritime linkages between British India and the Qing empire. Lei Lin considered Qing China’s diplomatic attempts and strategies to build new connections across the Himalayan region during the war against Nepal in the 1790s, while Yi Li (Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom) interrogated British Indian expeditions and Chinese espionage activities along the Sino-Burmese border in the 1880s. Scrutinizing how radical political activists used explosives in attempted assassinations in India and China, Yin Cao (Tsinghua University, China) discussed the origins of political terrorism in both countries in the early twentieth century. Besides this panel on historical geopolitical objectives, nation building, and rapprochements across the trans-Himalaya, Swati Chawla (University of Virginia) contributed to an understanding of the rise of Sikkimese nationalism in154 | HIMALAYA Fall 2019            postcolonial India after the signingof the Indo-Sikkim Treaty in 1950 byexploring the lives of the last twomonarchs of the Himalayan kingdomof Sikkim, Tashi Namgyal (r. 1914-1963) and Palden Thondup Namgyal(r. 1963-1975).Several panels at the conference also focused on Asian literary traditions. Among them was “Contemporary Bhutanese Literature” organized by Holly Gayley (University of Colorado Boulder) and sponsored by the Tibet-Himalaya Initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder. The panel explored the development and transformations of different genres and works in Dzongkha and English languages, highlighting the relationship between oral and literary forms, colonial and post-colonial influences, and religious and secular themes. The panel comprised four presentations that were chaired by Kalzang Bhutia (Occidental College). In the first talk, Sonam Kinga (Royal Institute of Governance and Strategic Studies, Bhutan) presented three poems on Ugyen Wangchuck (1861-1926), the prominent Bhutanese governor and later King of Bhutan, to discuss recent efforts and challenges of making available traditional literature in contemporary Bhutan. Sonam Nyenda (Royal University of Bhutan, Bhutan) compared traditional and modern writings of the literary genres of stories (sgrung) and biographies (rnam thar) to foreground the changes in Bhutanese literature. Tshering Tamang’s (Royal University of Bhutan, Bhutan) presentation addressed the importance of Bhutanese literature written in English within the national school curriculum as a means to move away from the prevalent Indian influence in schooling and shape a new national literature and identity. Looking at the novels Circle of Karma (2005) by Kunzang Choden and Kyetse (2017) by Chador Wangmo, Holly Gayley (University of Colorado Boulder) then explored the emergence of new Bhutanese English literature that features women as both writers and protagonists. Gayley discussed how these female authors interweave themes that reflect societal and religious challenges specific to women in a modernizing nation. The panel was rounded off by concluding remarks from discussant Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa (Occidental College). Drawing from a new book by Tulasi Srinivas (Emerson College) titled The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder (2018), a roundtable considered the concept of wonder in contemporary religious traditions of South Asia. The innovative and interdisciplinary roundtable session was organized by Amanda Lucia (University of California Riverside) and benefitted greatly from the presence of the author, Tulasi Srinivas. It also featured various constructive inputs from discussants Andrea Pinkney (McGill University, Canada), Anne Mocko (Concordia College), Amanda Lucia, and Mary Hancock (University of California Santa Barbara). While not being part of the roundtable and panel on Asian literary traditions mentioned above, Christopher Diamond (University of Washington) investigated short lyric poems written by the prominent fifteenth century Maithili poet Vidyāpati and their spread from North Bihar and the Kathmandu Valley to Bengal, Assam, and Orissa. Two paper presentations at the conference addressed Buddhist pilgrimage and rituals in Nepal and along the Sino-Tibetan-Burmese Borderlands. Taking former United Nations Secretary General U Thant’s visit to Lumbini in 1967 as a starting point, Blayne Harcey (Arizona State University) traced the development of the Buddha’s birthplace from a little-known area in the Terai to an internationally recognized cultural heritage site and a renowned center of Buddhist pilgrimage. Keping Wu’s (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China) talk investigated death rituals in multi-ethnic and multi-religious villages of Northwest Yunnan, showing that Animistic, Tibetan Buddhist, Catholic, and Protestant beliefs and practices co-exist and complement one another despite strict regulations of the modern Chinese state. Development and social change were other important topics. Zhaxi Duojie (University of Colorado Boulder) and Andrew Grant (Boston College), for example, organized the panel “Development and Social Change in Eastern Tibet: Beyond the Rural/Urban Binary,” which brought together paper presentations by Nancy Levine (University of California Los Angeles), Eveline Washul (Columbia University), Andrew Grant, and Zhaxi Duojie. Following the presentations, chair Andrew Fisher (Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands) and discussant Jarmila Ptáčková (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic) led a lively discussion on the impact of government policies and development interventions on contemporary economic and social transformations across Eastern Tibet. Other paper presentations at the conference included a talk by Roger Norum (University of Leeds, United Kingdom) who considered couple relationships between Nepalis and expatriates living in Kathmandu in the context of development and changing mediascapes. HIMALAYA Volume 39, Number 2 | 155                                                 Experimenting with photographs and computer-generated images, Nadine Plachta (Heidelberg University) interrogated how a new road in Tsum, a high-altitude valley located in Nepal’s Gorkha District, alters socio-economic strategies and resource management for a borderland population. Galen Murton (James Madison University) demonstrated how infrastructure projects in Nepal routinely generate new infrastructures around them, such as border controls and tax regimes, thus ultimately serving as a vector for state power. The 2019 Annual Conference for the first time hosted a Digital Technology Expo (DTE), where scholars demonstrated new digital technologies and their applications in research. Participants had the opportunity to learn new skills for text analysis, database building, GIS and spatial analysis, cyberinfrastructure and platforms, and social network analysis. A Film Expo presenting 24 films onAsia successfully rounded off theprogram. Among them was Drokpa:Nomads of Tibet (2016), directed byYan Chun Su who attended thescreening for a Q&A session with theaudience. Set on the high grasslandsof eastern Tibet, the documentaryportrayed the everyday lives ofTibetan nomads who struggle withunprecedented environmentalchange. Other films were Plastic China(2016), which captured the powerfulimages of landscapes covered inwaste from imported plastic. Taapar(2018) demonstrated the sorrowfulliving conditions of an Indian farmerwho attempts to commit suicide, andMother, Daughter, Sister (2018) told thestories of four courageous Kachinand Rohingya women calling for anend to sexual violence in times ofreligious crisis and conflict. Purdha(2018), then, skillfully narrated thelife of a young Indian woman onthe brink of an arranged marriagewho is allowed to remove her burkain order to play on the MumbaiSenior Women’s Cricket Team. Allfilms inspired discussion about anumber of salient topics, includingglobalization, human rights,migration, rural-urban divides,consumer cultures, climate change,and environmental protection. For everyone who cannot wait until the next AAS Annual Conference takes place in Boston in March 2020, there is much opportunity to stay current on latest research and meth-odology in the field of Asian studies with AAS publications, such as the Journal of Asian Studies and the online blog AsiaNow. Nadine PlachtaHeidelberg University 

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