[URBANTH-L]CFP: Conference on Digital Cultures

[Angela Jancius]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference on Digital Cultures
Place: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Date: June 21-22, 2005

This multidisciplinary conference will explore the cultural implications
of the spread of digital technologies throughout Asia. Following
recent media theory based on US and Japanese digital cultures, we will
analyze how Asian uses of digital technology are transforming local
experiences,  aesthetics, and social formations.  Papers may focus on
particular digital

practices, such as personal web pages, PC and on-line gaming, digital
animation, and cellphone text-messaging, or analyze representations of
digital technology in discourses such as science fiction and chatroom
discussions. We will place emerging digital cultures in the context of both
local cultural traditions and globalization.

Themes include:
1) adaptations of local art forms to the digital media, and how these
adaptations effect the meaning of those arts in their traditional milieu
as well as how people conceptualize the digital media
2) local conceptualizatioins of the global community and the "network
society"
3) concepts of the self, the body, and language emerging in Asian digital
genres and practices, and how these emerging concepts draw on or challenge
concepts of the self, the body, and language in local religious,
philosophical,
or popular discourses.

Scholars in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, video arts, history
of
science and related disciplines are invited to attend.  Please submit
abstracts (approximately 250 words) to Teri Silvio by electronic mail at
tsilvio at gate.sinica.edu.tw; or by fax: 886-2-2785-5836

Deadline for abstracts: April 1, 2005
Deadline for papers: June 15, 2005

Funding for airfare and lodging may be available for presenters.

NB: The language for discussion will be English; if you wish to submit a
paper in Chinese or another language, you must notify us in advance.