Dear Prof. Vanderbok, we invite PhD students to apply for a five days of interactive “Summer School” training on the theoretical issue of the knowledge and practice of culture against the backdrop of historically contingent case studies featuring transnational circulations of craft. We are looking forward to receiving your application before Friday 14 February 2014.
Reading Craft: Itineraries of Culture, Knowledge and Power in the Global Ecumene
The Summer School is co-hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies, the Netherlands and the Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
Date
18 – 22 August 2014
Deadline for applications
Friday 14 February 2014, 9.00 am (CET)
Location
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Academic Directors
Prof. Pamela Smith (Columbia University, New York, USA) Prof. Francoise Vergès (Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom / Collège d’études mondiales, Paris, France) Dr Aarti Kawlra (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India)
Guest co-convenor: Prof. Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University, USA) Host co-convenor: Prof. Chayan Vaddhanaphuti (Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
The Summer School is co-funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York, USA.
Theme Description
The IIAS Summer School at Chiang Mai will focus on the theoretical issue of the knowledge and practice of culture against the backdrop of historically contingent case studies featuring transnational circulations of craft. Cartographies, itineraries and biographies of craft are windows into craft-scapes which, much like Barbara Bender’s work on landscapes, are discursively constructed, disputed, worked upon from disparate frames of value and meaning, and used to accomplish goals pertaining to identity, heritage politics, knowledge and power.
The Summer School is an occasion to problematize conceptions of culture articulated through readings of craft across territorial boundaries, temporal episodes and knowledge categories. Alternate readings of craft seek to challenge place-based rootedness of culture in colonial and postcolonial constructions in order to emphasize its circulation in global interactions and trajectories. Focusing on ‘social lives’ (Appadurai) or ‘cultural biographies’ (Kopytoff) through records of journeys undertaken and routes charted by the movement of individuals, materials, techniques, recipes, designs and objects within and across diverse epistemic regimes and contexts would allow us to ‘read’ craft from a global perspective.
For more information, please visit the program’s website
http://www.iias.nl/masterclass/reading-craft-itineraries-culture-knowledge-and-power-global-ecumene?utm_source=emailcampaign215&utm_medium=phpList&utm_content=HTMLemail&utm_campaign=[IIAS+Call+for+Applications]+Summer+School+-+Reading+Craft%3A+Itineraries+of+Culture%2C+Knowledge+and+Power+in+the+Global+Ecumene.+Deadline%2C+14+February+2014