Contesting Memorial Spaces in the Asia-PacificAsia Week Spin Off Event, Kyushu University Border Studies

History and memory are particularly sensitive topics in and among the states of East Asia, withantagonistic assertions of sovereign memory recently leading to domestic political scandals,
heritage disagreements, territorial disputes, and history wars. What unites these issues is that they
constitute overt assertions of national identity made at and through particular sites. Such sites ofheritage and memory—ranging from disputed islands to the national museums celebrating them,
controversial sculptures outside embassies in Seoul, and information centers for UNESCO-listed
sites in Tokyo—all serve as symbolic repositories for social assertions of history and identity. They
are therefore open to deployment both within and between political communities.
On 6-7 November 2020, Kyushu University will host an international conference devoted to theoperation and conceptualization of such contested memorial spaces. Building upon two earlier
events, “Borders of Memory” in December 2016, and “Heritage, conflicted sites and borderedmemories in Asia” in July 2020, this inter-disciplinary event aims to bring insights from recent workon the politics of heritage and the social construction of territorial disputes into explicit dialogue.
The aims of this event are threefold:

To consider the ways in which the significance of sites of memory operates across politicalscales, from the intensely local to the national, international, and global;
To understand how these spaces provide a point of contact at which understandings andexpressions of collective memory, as well as competing political claims, meet; andTo reflect on whether it is possible for such sites to be transformed from places ofantagonistic memorial contestation into spaces able to accommodate political difference.

In so doing, attention will be drawn to the tensions inherent to these sites as spaces through which
national identity is able to be affirmed and contested.

The Conference invites scholars conducting theoretical and empirical work both within and beyond
the confines of the Asia-Pacific to contribute to the discussion.
The event will consist of a series of joint online/onsite events, whose exact configuration will bedetermined nearer the time. We invite interested scholars to first submit abstracts (of up to 250words) to the organizers by August 31, 2020, at boyle@law.kyushu-u.ac.jp.
Full drafts of papers should be submitted by October 15; these will be shared within sessions tofacilitate discussion. A selection of papers will be subsequently developed for publication.

Thanks to the generosity of the British Association of Japanese Studies, there will be three awards(of 25,000 JPY each) available to support the in-person attendance of early career scholars fromJapan or, potentially, East Asia (hopefully!). Please indicate if you wish to be considered for one ofthese awards when submitting your abstract.
With the support of:Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
British Association for Japanese Studies, Japan Chapter
National Institute for the Humanities Area Studies Project for Northeast Asia