Announcement of the Eighth Annual Meeting of theSociety for Cultural Interaction in East Asia
The modern period in East Asia was a time of cultural clash and circulation ofknowledge. The arrival of Jesuits in the sixteenth century and of Protestant missionaries inthe early nineteenth century brought new European knowledge to China, while theencroachment of Western powers also constituted a challenge to East Asian traditions.
Faced with the waves of European learning that were inundating Asia, the traditional
Sino-centric pattern of knowledge transmission, acceptance, and interaction that had
continued intact for hundreds and thousands of years underwent dramatic and fundamental
change. The elites of Asia responded to the disruption, dismay, confusion, and struggles
engendered by contact with European culture by using writing, translation, and images tospread new ideas and knowledge. The adoption of modern knowledge would fundamentallytransform the cultural, historiographical, linguistic, and literary landscape of Asia. In thetwenty-first century, which has already seen the growth of globalization and the rapid
economic development of East Asia, the cultural encounters, joint activities, andinteractions among East Asian nations or within the geographical sphere of Asia havebecome central concerns of East Asian scholarship, attracting the wide-ranging interest ofscholars from all over the world. Scholars have begun to ponder: What is the nature of East
Asian modernity? How have traditional intellectual frameworks been reconfigured during
the course of modernization?
A vertical axis of East Asian research provides a microcosmic view of the developmentof human society, while a horizontal axis, through its supra-cultural, supra-regional, andinterdisciplinary perspectives, encourages us to ponder the position and significance of East
Asia within the breadth of world history. In view of this, we began preparing for the firstannual meeting of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia in 2006, which was heldin May, 2007. The research outlook of the Society when it was first founded can besummarized in three keywords: interaction, which we use to stress mutual interaction;
circulation, which signifies the complicated nature of the movement of knowledge; andperiphery, which encapsulates the methodology in which we observe the center from theperiphery, utilizing the texts of the periphery to interpret the center. Our perspective has
gained the enthusiastic support of many scholars, and the 2016 annual meeting of theSCIEA will be a milestone marking the successful completion of our first decade. Ten years
will have passed in an instant. In order to create a truly new and innovative academic
discipline, we must look back on our first decade with a critical eye and sum up ourachievements. We hope that carefully re-examining old texts, discovering new evidence, andapplying new theories in order to interpret the history and culture of East Asia will inspire
fresh approaches and present new challenges for future studies of East Asian culturalinteraction.
Kansai University is set to host the 2016 annual meeting. We plan to focus on culturalinteraction and use interdisciplinary approaches to methodology, material evidence, andtexts, as well as digitalization as tools in order to further the discussion. By so doing, weexpect to promote research into this new area.
It is our hope that you honor us with your participation so that together we may makenew contributions to the field of East Asian studies.
Theme this Year
A New Path for East Asian Cultural Interaction Studies
Panel Themes
1. A New Cultural History in East Asia: Texts and Personalities
2. Modern Society and Folk Beliefs in East Asia

3. Various Issues in Research on East Asian Intellectual History from the Perspective ofCultural Interaction Studies
4. Construct of Modern Academic Systems in East Asia
5. Formation and Development of a Modern Historical View in East Asia
6. Research on Modern Intellectual History and New Cultural History in East Asia
7. Construction and Management of Specialized Databases
8. Digitalization of Ancient Texts in the Fields of Literary and Historical Research
9. Big Data and Research on Early Modern East Asia
10. Other Themes related to Cultural Interaction Studies in East Asia
Meeting Schedule
Arrival: May 6, 2016 (Friday)
Annual Meeting: May 7-8, 2016 (Saturday and Sunday)
Departure: May 9, 2016 (Monday)
Application Schedule and Announcement of Selections
The meeting will take the form of keynote addresses, individual panel sessions,individual presentations, and papers by PhD candidates. We encourage Society members torefer to the separate list of panel sessions to decide which one to join. Each panel will beallotted one hour and forty minutes, and will have one moderator and one to twocommentators. Presenters may also serve as moderators or commentators. Please submit
the application form and an abstract (not more than 400 characters) if you wish toparticipate.
Deadline for application submission is January 8, 2016. We will send out formal
invitations at a later date.
Expenses
All participants who are not invited guests are responsible for their own roundtrip
transportation and lodging expenses. Conference participation is ¥6,000 for full membersand ¥3,000 for student members. Please pay in cash (Japanese yen) on site.
To Apply for Participation, Contact:
The Organizing Committee for the 8th Annual Meeting of the Society for Cultural
Interaction in East Asia (sciea2016@outlook.com)
Head Organizer:
Uchida Keiichi, Vice-President (Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, KansaiUniversity)
Auxiliary Organizers:
Wang Min, Vice-President (Professor, Hōsei University Research Center for International
Japanese Studies)
Fujita Takao, Councilor (Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Kansai University)
Matsuura Akira, Councilor (Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Kansai University)
Tao De-min, Councilor (Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Kansai University)
Nakatani Nobuo (Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Kansai University)
Azuma Jūji (Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Kansai University)
Secretary:
Shen Guowei, Secretary General (Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies,Kansai University)