Cities and Cultures in Southeast Asia | call for applications

The Southeast Asia Seminar has been held annually by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University since 1976. Organized thematically around a variety of topics, the seminar offers three full days of intensive lectures by experts in the field and group discussions and presentations by the participants. This year, the Southeast Asia Seminar will be an international seminar co-sponsored by the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos. It is currently looking for applications from young and up-and-coming scholars in Southeast and East Asia.

Participation is free. Roundtrip airfare, accommodation, and per diem allowance for the seminar will be covered by the sponsors.

Online application form

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This seminar looks at the social and cultural processes and practices out of which cities emerge, grow, decay, and change. Cities are concentrations of people, goods, capital, and infrastructure in space and across time, but they are also sites of power; objects of fantasies, aspirations, and “planning”; cultural, national and world “heritage”; subjects of literature, cinema, and other forms of representation; arenas of contestation, struggle, and negotiation involving individuals, groups, communities, and institutions; and base points for cultural interaction, social innovation, and economic and political transformation.

The blurring of boundaries between cities and countrysides, and increasing connections and hierarchies within and between cities and between megacities and second-tier and smaller urban areas are making themselves felt in the culture, politics, and economy of Southeast Asian countries.

The speakers in this seminar will address vital issues and concerns relating to the history of cities and heritage conservation, the role of communities in the making and remaking of cities, and ways in which politics and economy inform urbanization and are played out in the city. The seminar includes a one-day field trip within Cebu City.

Sponsors:
Cebuano Studies Center, University of San Carlos
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
(“Southeast Asian Studies for Sustainable Humanosphere” Research Program and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Asian Core Program)

Date: 20-23 November 2012

Venue: Cebu City, Philippines

Please address all inquiries to: Caroline Hau, CSEAS Kyoto University
46 Shimoadachi, Yoshida, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
(〒606-8501京都市左京区吉田下阿達町46　京都大学東南アジア研究所 )
Tel 81-75-753-7336
Fax 81-75-753-7350
e-mail: hau@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp