CFP: American Studies Association of Turkey Conference

American Studies Association of Turkey
34th International American Studies Conference

The Art of Language: Cultural Expressions in American Studies

November 3-5, 2010
Alanya, Turkey

Confirmed Speakers:
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Cherrie Moraga
Celia Herrera Rodriguez

According to American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thought is the blossom; language the bud; and action the fruit behind it." Without language in all of its forms-oral, written, visual, and symbolic-there would be no way to translate thoughts into political action or personal expression. In many branches of American Studies, language itself has become a form of art-the vehicle through which those in the mainstream and in the margins have communicated their histories, cultures and visions of the future. Socially-constructed and thus almost always political in nature, language not only allows individuals to develop an understanding of their environment(s), but also permits them to engage in the shaping of their own landscapes.

Language is thus intrinsic to the expression of culture. Not only does it convey values, beliefs and customs, but it also has an important social function in that it fosters sentiments of collective identity and solidarity. It is the means through which culture and its traditions are preserved and transferred from generation to generation. Consequently, as languages disappear, cultures, and their numerous layers of representation, also wither away and die, for gone are the mechanisms that translate thought into experience. Conversely, language also has the power to produce and unite, serving as the currency for cross-cultural exchange, the adaptation of new rites and rituals, and the transformation of individuals into global citizens.

The American Studies Association of Turkey invites proposals that consider the art of language as a cultural expression, broadly conceived. We particularly encourage abstracts which incorporate transdisciplinary explorations of the subject, and welcome submissions from any branch of American Studies. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• Music as a language of cultural expression
• Indigenous languages and cultures/language revitalization
• Multilingualism/multiculturalism
• The politics of language and culture
• Trans or intercultural languages
• English as the global language/"American" as the global culture?
• Cultural expression in speech behavior
• Cultural outcomes/products of language (hybridity, creolization, metissage, mestizaje)
• The manipulation of language for cultural/political purposes
• Race, language and culture
• Semiotics/semantics/sign language
• Visual language/visual culture/aesthetics
• The visual word (comic books/graphic novels/political cartoons)
• Art, language and culture
• Literature and cultural expression
• Food and clothing as cultural expressions
• Ecolinguistics
• Performance as a language of cultural expression
• Oral traditions (griots, storytelling, folktales, street poetry) as cultural expressions
• Domestic arts (quilting, weaving, pottery, and needlework) as cultural expressions
• Language and American identity
• The body as a language of cultural expression
• Self-writing (travel writing, journals, diaries, and memoirs) as cultural expressions
• Translation/interpretation/adaptation of language
• Language as cultural resistance/subversion
• Design/architecture as languages of cultural expression
• Artificial languages/constructed languages/technolanguages
• Pedagogical applications of language and culture
• The limits of language, especially for cultural expression

The time allowance for all presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion.

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, exhibits, and other modes of creative expression should be sent to Tanfer Emin Tunc (asat2007 [at] gmail.com) and should consist of a 250-300 word abstract in English, as well as a 1-2 paragraph biographical description for each participant.

Deadline for submission of proposals: April 30, 2010
Notification for acceptance of proposals: August 1, 2010

More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available: http://simplifyurl.com/4b0

In Cooperation with the Embassy of the United States and the City of Alanya

CFP: Linguistics for intercultural education in language learning and teaching

(source)

Call for chapters
(deadline for abstracts: 1st March 2010)
Linguistics for intercultural education in language learning and teaching

Editors:
Fred Dervin
Adjunct Professor in sociology (University of Joensuu Finland)
Adjunct Professor in Language and Intercultural Education
(University of Turku Finland)

Anthony J. Liddicoat
Professor of Applied Linguistics (University of South Australia)

According to Daniel Coste (1989), the field of language education consists of a vast array of direct and indirect discourses on language teaching and learning as held by various actors (teachers, researchers, publishers, scientific and professional associations… ). As such, the field is complex and multifaceted. This volume is interested in one aspect of language learning and teaching, intercultural education, and the role that linguistics can play in its design and implementation. The relationship between linguistics and language education has varied over time and most recently, linguistics has played a more reduced role in developing theory and practice in language education, especially where views of the nature of language teaching and learning have moved beyond simple code based views. This means that while fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and philosophy have had a clear influence on theory, practices and research directions for intercultural education, there have been relatively few attempts at linking linguistics and intercultural education.

In language education, the learner has now become a real "subject" – a subject who is at the centre of learning and teaching; a subject who is taught to be responsible for his/her learning; a subject who interacts; a subject who is required to be both performer and analyser of language in use. The emergence of an intercultural perspective in language education has had a significant role to play in allowing these changes. Many researchers such as Abdallah-Pretceille, Byram, Kramsch, Zarate… have called for systematic integration of work on intercultural communication and the development of intercultural capabilities in language classrooms. Though their approaches and theoretical backgrounds often differ, their main message seems to be the same: language educationalists need to move away from an educational approach which consists in building up facts about a "target culture", comparing "cultures" and analysing the cultural routines and meanings of a particular group of people and overemphasizes national/ethnic identities and cultural differences in an objectivist perspective.

These scholars seem to agree that "culturalism" (or the use of culture in an uncritical and systematic way to explain intercultural encounters) tends to give a very objectivist-differentialist vision of "cultures"; it also corresponds to "analytical stereotyping" (Sarangi) and ignores the postmodern understanding that identities are multiple and co-constructed – even within the self. This is why methodologies which consist of "soft" content analysis, which merely paraphrase what the Other or the Self have to say to serve as evidence of "culture", need to be questioned. In attempting to move intercultural language education beyond superficial ways of understanding the intercultural, methods such as participant-observation, self-reflexive essays, roleplays, simulations, and even "stays abroad" have been used for allowing learners to develop what most authors call "intercultural competence" (Byram, 2008). Such activities are developed as opportunities for students to develop reflexive and critical skills yet, how the students build up these skills through such activities is often less well explored.

One of the main problems facing intercultural education is our heavy reliance on interpreting and understanding discourses and actions. Discourses are unstable and do not always correspond to actions. These problems call for different ways of understanding and analysing learners' relations to interculturality and their discourses on the self, the "same" and the other. The analysis of language can allow people to examine how they construct/co-construct themselves and others through the discourses they use and encounter. Faced with unstable and contradictory discourses and actions, learners need the resources to analyse both their construction and their (in)consistency. We believe that linguistics has a role in developing more sophisticated understandings of the nature of the intercultural in language education.

One of the reasons that linguistics has been seen as having little relevance to interculturally oriented language education is that it has often been perceived as being concerned with formal descriptions of autonomous linguistics systems, however, linguistics, just like language education, has evolved massively since the 1970s. In a very similar vein to other human sciences, new approaches in linguistics have emerged which give greater emphasis to language in use, to the culturally embedded nature of language, to the role of context, to interaction, and to analysing the ways discourses are (co)created and negotiated between interlocutors.

Some of the linguistic approaches that may serve as tools for understanding and researching intercultural language learning and teaching include, but are not limited to:

• Conversation analysis
• Critical discourse analysis
• Dialogism
• Discourse analysis
• Ethnography of communication
• Interactional sociolinguistics
• Membership categorization analysis
• Positioning theory
• Pragmatics
• Reconstruction method
• Rhetoric
• Semantics
• Semiotics
• Theories of enunciation
• Theory of prediscourse.

The editors of this volume believe strongly that linguistics has a lot to offer to both language and intercultural educationalists and researchers. This volume aims to present a range of investigations of intercultural language teaching and learning which demonstrate how linguistics can contribute to understanding the field. Focusing on any field of language education (primary, secondary, higher education, lifelong learning, adult education… ), the contributors will examine how teachers and researchers use linguistics to promote and research interculturality in language education. Possible topics to be covered include the role and use of linguistics in:

• language and intercultural education in the classroom;
• in computer-mediated language learning and teaching;
• in informal language learning contexts;
• in teacher education (pre-service or in-service);
• in preparation for study abroad;
• in assessing intercultural capabilities;
• in combination with other disciplinary approaches to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on intercultural language education.

CFP: November 2009
Deadline for submitting proposals: 1st March 2010
Decisions: 15th April 2010
Chapters to be handed in by 15th September 2010

Potential authors are invited to submit a 300-word proposal (including a few lines about the author(s)) in English to both editors by 1st March 2010 (freder@utu.fi & Tony.Liddicoat@unisa.edu.au). The proposals should clearly explain the theoretical framework and concerns of the proposed chapter, and include a short description of a corpus (where applicable). A basic bibliography may also be added. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 15th April 2010. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by September 15th 2010. The book is scheduled to be published in autumn 2011 by an international publisher. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a blind review basis.

Tremor...

That was a long one--seemed to go for at least 30 seconds (but I'm not sure). [The TV news said it lasted a minute, but they're also saying it was 7.0 at its epicenter, so I don't know...] I was just starting to read the preface to Vicki Tolar Burton's Spiritual Literacy in John Wesley's Methodism (see, I keep up with what's going on at SU) and I'd gotten to the part where she's describing an engraving of John Wesley's deathbed scene, and... boom! Now I'm afraid to open the book again!

[Update:] According to the Central Weather Bureau, it was two tremors--one at 5:32 and one at 5:38 p.m. I must have felt the first one because I started writing this post at 5:35 p.m.--that was a 6.0, centered in Nantou. (The USGS says it was a 5.7.)

[7:36 p.m.update:] Yet another one just hit. A very short one, though. I saw on the news that someone from the Central Weather Bureau was saying these were adjustments (aftershocks?) related to the 921 earthquake that happened 10 years ago. (!)

Dead pigeons

No, this isn't the name of a new punk band--I'm just noting the fact that I have seen two dead pigeons today. This morning we saw one lying outside the KFC on the corner of Taichung Harbor Rd. & Huichung Rd. At the time, I thought maybe it had flown into the plate glass window and died.

Later, when I was walking to my classroom an hour ago, I saw another dead pigeon lying next to a tree. They were both about average size, probably adults (though I don't know for sure). Just surprised to see two dead pigeons in one day. Hopefully it's a coincidence...

Reminder to work this sentence into a paper

"The poetics of history as such invests itself in the legitimation of the nation-state."

(Source)

Speaking of confusion...

I just sent the same (wrong) file to one of the committees I'm on ... three times. Finally got the right version of the file to them on the fourth try. (And why do I seem to be bragging about this?)

In other news, I went to a conference in Kumamoto, Japan (IAICS) a few weeks ago. Here are two pictures I used in my PowerPoint for the presentation (no, I didn't talk to my PowerPoint, and I tried to look at my audience).

The pictures were taken from Tunghai University--The First Ten Years. Tunghai University, Nov. 2, 1964. (Courtesy Tunghai University Special Collections)

These are some Shansi reps working with Tunghai students, probably in the mid 1950s. I bet they didn't send the wrong file to their colleagues over & over again...


Here's a shot of Tunghai, with the central mountains in the background.

This is cool, but confusing...

via



I didn't realize that Taiwan's military had the Decepticons on its side. Does that mean the Autobots are Communists? But the Decepticons are the ones with the red eyes... I'm so confused...

(Yeah, I know it's too wide, but I don't care...)

This doesn't look particularly friendly...

Balto. Co. Council speed camera vote set -- baltimoresun.com

Balto. Co. Council speed camera vote set -- baltimoresun.com

Posted using ShareThis

(My favorite lines from people opposed to the speed cameras: "Tickets will go to faceless recipients in an unwarranted exploitation of rights." And "This is Orwellian, and it limits personal freedom." Folks, these are about speed cameras for in front of schools. No one's talking about limiting your personal "right" to drive 100 mph on 83...)

Taiwanfeed.com site compromised?

I just tried going to the Taiwanfeed.com website. I got a warning from Google and the "Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page" for Taiwanfeed says,

What is the current listing status for taiwanfeed.com?

Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 1 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-08-09, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-08-09.

Malicious software includes 1 scripting exploit(s).

Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including coumter.cn/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS26347 (DREAMHOST).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, taiwanfeed.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

My antivirus program also told me that the site was trying to download a Trojan Horse program called "HTML:IFrame-GG [Trj]".

Has anyone else experienced this?

More about Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations

I mentioned last night that I thought The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World by Vijay Prashad would be a good book for students of transnational rhetoric (or rhetoric and transnationalism). The reason for this is that the Third World "project" that Prashad depicts in his book was arguably a rhetorical project, one in which the leaders of newly (and some not-yet) independent states worked together to try to craft an alternative to domination by US or Soviet power and ideology. As Indonesian President Sukarno argued at the 1955 Bandung Conference, the newly independent states' lack of economic and military strength left them with few alternatives for resisting imperialism. However, he argued, "[w]e can inject the voice of reason into world affairs. We can mobilize all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Asia and Africa on the side of peace" (qtd in Prashad 34).

Prashad makes extensive use of the documents that came from meetings and conferences run and attended by leaders of the non-aligned movement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The deliberations done at these conferences were important to the rhetorical project of the Third World.

The Afro-Asian meetings in Bandung and Cairo (1955 and 1961, respectively), the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade (1961), and the Tricontinental Conference in Havana rehearsed the major arguments within the Third World project so that they could take them in a concerted way to the main stage, the United Nations. In addition, the new states pushed the United Nations to create institutional platforms for their Third World agenda: the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was the most important of these institutions, but it was not the only one. Through these institutions, aspects other than political equality came to the fore: the Third World project included a demand for the redistribution of the world's resources, a more dignified rate of return for the labor power of their people, and a shared acknowledgment of the heritage of science, technology, and culture. (xvi-xvii)

Prashad is quick to note, though, that taking speeches like Sukarno's at face value "can be gravely misleading. Most of the documents and speeches are triumphal, and few of them reveal the fissures and contradictions within the Third World" (13). Sukarno's articulation of what came to be called the "Bandung Spirit" was an attempt to assert moral strength in the absence of any other form of power, and despite the moral argument made for disarmament, participants in the Bandung Conference "continued to horde weapons--a fact that led many to charge them of hypocrisy" (43). The rest of Prashad's book is a close look at how "the fissures and contradictions within the Third World"--with the help of organizations like the IMF and the World Bank--undermined the ideals that were represented by the Bandung Spirit. It's a complicated story, but it's well-told in this book. For students of of rhetoric, the book suggests both the possibilities created through discourse and the limits on what rhetoric can do by itself.

Some reviews of The Darker Nations by Vijay Prashad

I've been reading Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World lately. It's a fascinating book, one that I think people doing work in transnational rhetoric should read. I haven't finished it yet, but I wanted to link to some reviews of the book that I've found on the web.

• "A Review of "The Darker Nations" by Saswat Pattanayak on the Crosscurrents.com site
  This is a long, generally positive review, though it questions part of Prashad's thesis about the decline of the Third World "project" and points out some areas that need further research.


• Review by Jacqui Freeman in Socialist Review
  This is a shorter review. Freeman is also generally positive, though she has one criticism that I share: "My criticism would be that, although his sympathies obviously lie with the masses, the vast majority of the book is devoted to discussion of nationalist elites."


• Review by Jeffrey McFadden in Political Affairs Magazine


• An interview with Prashad by Rohit Chopra, on the SAJAforum website

CFP: 3rd Global Conference: Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity

website

3rd Global Conference
Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity

Tuesday 10th November - Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Call for Papers
The relaunch of this multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and prominent place that the idea of culture has for the construction of meaning and identity, as well as the implications for social political membership in contemporary societies. In particular the project will assess the larger context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact and contribution of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and the sense of rootedness and belonging. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people, the world over, to forge identities in rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Contemporary Rediscoveries and Redefinitions of Culture
~ Multiple, polyvalent and contradictory conceptions of culture
~ Infinite source of meaning and identity, of membership and exclusion, of privileging and stigmatising, of worth and misery, of place and history, of violence and destruction
~ Cultural remaking of self and other; recasting of links, bonds and relations
~ The contradictory forces of culture: diversity versus homogeneity, multiplicity versus sameness, alterity versus normality, recognition versus misrecognition
~ Textures of cultures: fixed, fluid, porous, hermetic, rigid and flexible

2. Cultural Boundaries, Peoples and Nations
~ Dislocation and decoupling of culture and nation, of culture and place, of culture and history
~ Resurgence of the local, the diminishing importance of the national and the forces of the global
~ What does it mean, today, to be part of a culture, to be part of multiple cultures?
~ Massive and new forms of global migration and the new hybridity of cultures
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of ‘forcing’ cultures on migrants

3. Cultural Formations
~ What are the dynamics and processes that define the central tenets of a culture?
~ How are cultures defined and redefined? Who participates in the social and political task of defining and redefining culture?
~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has access to the sharing of cultures?
~ Symbols and significations that connect people to cultures other than ‘their own’
~ Culture and the construction of identities: destiny, happenstance, choice and politics

4. Politicising Culture
~ Political battles over the principles and core values of a culture, of many cultures
~ The dynamics of cultural recognition and misrecognition
~ What is the place of cultural claims in today's forms of social and political membership?
~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political control
~ Cultural claims and human rights

5. Art and Cultural Representations
~ Media and the construction of cultures and identities
~ Production and reproduction of cultural recognition and misrecognition
~ The contested space of representing meaning and identity, culture and belonging
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable constructions of culture
~ Living, being and belonging through art; life imitating art and fiction

6. Crossing Cultural Boundaries
~ Interpenetration, overlapping, crossovers, interlacing, hybridisation and interdependence
~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of bridging the ‘invisible’ divide of cultures
~ Conceptualisations that foster the breaking down of rigid cultural boundaries
~ Equalising cultures; recognition and respect across cultures
~ How to revamp historically old concepts like tolerance, acceptance and hospitality?
~ An ethics for cultural relations

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 19th June 2009. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted by Friday 9th October 2009.

300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Joint Organising Chairs:

Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
Research Director,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
E-Mail: acc [at] inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
E-Mail: ic3 [at] inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the 'Diversity and Recognition' research projects, which in turn belong to the 'At the Interface' programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume.

For further information about the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/interculturalism/

For further information about the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/interculturalism/call-for-papers/

CFP: 15th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Communication

Deadline extended to June 15, 2009

website

Intercultural Communication and Collaboration within and across Sociolinguistic Environments

Final Call for Papers

The 15th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Communication

September 18-20, 2009
Kumamoto Gakuen University, Japan

The continuing globalization of the world brings ever-increasing opportunities to share knowledge and ideas across sociolinguistic boundaries. This is not simply a matter of the world becoming smaller or more alike--on the contrary, recognition and respect of diversity have become prerequisites in face of the need to understand and get along with each other. Moreover, intercultural sensitivity and accommodation are necessary for successful collaboration towards exchange and resolution of global issues.

The importance of effective communication across different environments has long been recognized; however, it is becoming more apparent that the need for enhanced communication skills to share ideas effectively even within the same sociolinguistic environment is posing an ever increasing challenge. This is at least partly due to the relative decrease in face-to-face communication that has become a dangerous side-effect of the bewildering increase in methods of global communication and the speed of change in the environment itself. The challenge of successful cooperation not only across but also within sociolinguistic and cultural boundaries, then, remains in the limelight today.

This year's conference aims to bring together experts in cross-cultural communication studies with a focus on recognition of the changing communicative environment in which we live and work, with the hope that new ideas and opportunities for collaboration will result. As an interdisciplinary conference on human communication across cultures, the suggested paper topics, therefore, cover a wide range of communication related themes. The following are potential paper topics.

• Approaches to intercultural communication study
• Business communication across cultures
• Communication accommodation
• Communication and globalization
• Communication education
• Computer mediated communication
• Conflict and negotiation
• Crisis management
• Cross-cultural adaptation
• Cultural and linguistic diversity
• Cultural identity and globalization
• Digital communication
• Ethnicity and communication
• Group or organizational communication across cultures
• Harmony and diversity
• Health communication across cultures
• Information technology and culture
• Interpersonal/intercultural communication
• Intercultural / global communication competence
• Language and cultural education
• Language and media
• Language and society
• Language attitude
• Language change and language stability
• Language policy
• Media and culture
• Media literacy
• Rhetoric studies
• Risk communication across cultures
• Theory of intercultural communication from different perspectives
• Research methodology in intercultural communication studies
• Translation theory
• Verbal and nonverbal communication across cultures
• Interpersonal communication across cultures

Guidelines for Submission

Categories: Abstracts and panel proposals may be submitted.

• Abstract, 150-200 words in English, including affiliations, email addresses and mailing addresses for all authors. See the sample format of the abstract below.
• Panel proposal reflecting the conference theme may be submitted. All panel proposals should provide a 100-word rationale and 150 word abstract of each panelist's paper, mailing addresses and email addresses of all panelists.
  

Deadline: Please submit the abstracts and the complete panel proposals online as an MS Word attachment by June 15, 2009. Completed paper should be done by the time of the conference. Authors will be informed at the conference where to send the completed paper and when the deadline is for the consideration of being published in one of the two issues of the IAICS journal, Intercultural Communication Studies, which will be devoted to conference papers. All submissions will be carefully reviewed.

Conference language: International English

Organizational website: http://www2.kumagaku.ac.jp/teacher/~judy/cgi/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=IAICS.IAICS

Submission to: Judy Yoneoka and/or Yuko Takeshita at iaics2009 [at] kumagaku.ac.jp

Tunghai's water supply threatened

From the Taiwan News:

The management of Tunghai University in Taichung confirmed yesterday that they had received blackmail threats both yesterday and on Thursday threatening to poison the water on campus. The management revealed that police had retrieved fingerprints from the blackmail letters and are looking for the suspect.

Tunghai University phoned the police upon discovering a blackmail letter at the door of the president's office on Thursday. A phone call was made by an unidentified male yesterday morning to the school, threatening to put poison in campus water. The school immediately shut down the water source.

The blackmailer demanded NT$5 million in cash and 50 taels of gold (about 1850g) from the university in the letter which also included a threat of throwing a chlorine bomb, which is lethal when dissolved in water or in air. A sketch of the design of the chlorine bomb was attached with the letter to prove the blackmailer's bomb-making ability, said the police.

They've turned the water back on here, but as of last night they told us not to drink it.

[Update, 10:50 p.m.: According to an e-mail sent this evening from Tunghai's president, the water towers do not show signs of contamination. The drinking water machines are still not to be used until they are all thoroughly cleaned and their filters replaced. He also hints that some news reports on the incident are not entirely accurate, but says the school administration isn't yet at liberty to go into any detail. Stay tuned for more...]

[Update, 5/3/09: The Taiwan News reports that police have caught a suspect in the extortion plot. As is often the case, closed-circuit video played a role in the arrest:

According to police, Wang had made a series of phone calls the previous two days in which he gave instructions on where the money and gold should be placed.

In one of the phone calls, he asked Tunghai University administrators to relay a demand to seven other universities and colleges in Taichung County that they must each remit NT$80,000 to a designated bank account, or their water supplies would also be poisoned.

Police traced several of the calls to a public phone. They used footage from nearby roadside close-circuit television cameras to find the registration number of the motorcycle used by the person making the phone calls.

After establishing that the suspect was a man living in Daya Township in Taichung County, police zeroed in on him Saturday night.

According to TV news, the suspected extortionist was out of work and had gambling debts.]

CFP: Writing Research Across Borders II

website

Call for Proposals: Writing Research Across Borders II

George Mason University

February 17-20, 2011

Proposal Deadline May 3, 2010

As societies become more knowledge-intensive and communication technologies draw us more closely together, the importance of writing in economic, scientific, civic, personal, and social development becomes more apparent. Correspondingly, the imperative to conduct research on writing in schools and the workplace, in relationship to learning and development, and in all aspects of our lives has invigorated work among scholars in all regions of the world. The conference Writing Research Across Borders II will provide an opportunity for researchers to share their findings and set research agendas for the coming years.

Continuing the success of the three previous international research conferences held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the 2011 Writing Research Across Borders II will be held at George Mason University in the Washington D.C./Northern Virginia area. We invite proposals that will continue to deepen the cross-disciplinary, international dialogues across the many different domains of writing research.

As in past years, this conference will focus on writing development across the lifespan, including the impact of new technologies on learning to write, early acquisition of writing, writing across grade levels (K-20), writing in the disciplines and professions, and writing in the workplace or other community and institutional settings. We invite proposals presenting research in these areas. We also invite proposals on any other areas of writing use and practice, such as writing in progressive or large scale educational programs, or proposals that link writing research and policies. We welcome papers raising methodological issues about researching writing. We invite work from any research tradition that is grounded in the tradition's previous research and pursues the methodical gathering of qualitative or quantitative data appropriate to its claims.

Proposals should identify the format preferred (panels, roundtables, individual presentations, and poster presentations). Individual or poster proposals should be a maximum of 500 words. Proposals with multiple presentations (panel and roundtable) should contain a short overview statement and then no more than 400 words per speaker. Proposals should specify the relevant research literatures, research questions, methods, data, and findings, as well as the scope and duration of the research projects.

The deadline for proposals is May 3, 2010. Please submit proposals in .doc or .rtf format by email attachment to writing [at] education.ucsb.edu. Also, be sure to include a title for your proposal and each speaker's individual talk, as well as contact information for each individual presenter.

Update on A Pail of Oysters

This has been quiet for a while, and will probably continue to be quiet for the foreseeable future. But I wanted to mention that after finishing an article a while back on A Pail of Oysters (Vern Sneider's 1953 novel about martial-law Taiwan), I came across a new/old reference to the book. In a 1954 report of a US Senate subcommittee on "Strategy and Tactics of World Communism", former Director of the USIS in China John Caldwell had the following to say about the effects of Communism on the US publishing industry:

The Communists have made use of American naivete to so poison the minds of editors, writers, and publishers and Foreign Service personnel that it is difficult to make an honest decision today on either Nationalist China or Korea. The Department of State, like our courts, operates on a body of precedent. When it is necessary to draft a cable of instructions, an officer goes into the files to see what has been done, what has been reported and advised previously. The files are stacked today with anti-Chiang, anti-Nationalist material. The same situation prevails with respect to Syngman Rhee. Until several years have passed during which we have objective, anti-Communist reporting it will be difficult to expect decisions and actions favorable to our friends in Asia.

Newspapers, magazines, and book publishers suffer in a similar manner. For years Edgar Snow was a prominent editor of the Saturday Evening Post. His pro-Chinese Communist bias is well known. But what has not been recognized is the influence he left behind. The "body of precedent" he bequeathed has undoubtedly had a profound effect upon the Post's selection of articles. As far as I know there has never been a best selling or even moderately well selling book on the Far East basically favorable to our logical allies. There have been numerous books on the other side. These titles have been vigorously promoted and have sold well. This has been the pattern since Thunder Out of China by White and Jacoby became a best seller and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1945 until the most recent effort to smear Chiang bookwise appeared in the form of a book titled "A Pail of Oysters" by Vern Sneider. Published last fall this thoroughly dishonest book received rave reviews. In the Saturday Review of Literature it was reviewed by one Pat Frank who stated that the book cast a bright light thrust into the infected peritoneum of Formosa * * * it is a true light." Mr. Frank says that the Nationalists are rightly described as "swine" and concludes his review with the statement that anyone who reads A Pail of Oysters will understand "why all of our money and all our men can't put Chiang Kai-shek together again." Also published last fall, Formosa Beachhead by Geraldine Fitch is a factual, honest account of the tremendous progress made on Formosa, of the promise this progress holds for the mainland of China. Mrs. Fitch's book has been ignored by the reviewers, has sold less than 3,000 copies. (p. 99)

I haven't seen "rave reviews" for Oysters--they seem to have been pretty mixed, in fact. (I'm not surprised the more left-leaning Saturday Review of Literature would have had a positive review of the novel, though.)

Source: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism: Hearing before the Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, 83rd Cong., 2nd Sess., 95 (1954) (testimony of John C. Caldwell). (Available online.)

Update, 3/6/09: More on Caldwell--a brief biographical sketch from another part of the source cited above:

Mr. Caldwell, author of the Korea Story and China Coast Family, is a former State Department official. He was born on the China coast, son of missionary, speaks the Chinese dialects spoken on Formosa. He also speaks Korean. His present reports from the Far East have special value because he can communicate with locals in their language. His China Coast Family is a major book club selection for December. (105)

Article about Doris Brougham in Taipei Times

Profile of the English teacher/missionary who has been in Taiwan for over half a century

Michael Turton's review of recent Brookings conference on cross-strait relations...

... confirms to me that my earlier pessimism about the incoming US administration's position on Taiwan isn't too far off.

Michael has a good review of a presentation by Richard Bush, former head of the US's de facto embassy in Taiwan and currently director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. Bush, Michael says, "will no doubt oversee Taiwan policy for the Obama Administration". In his talk, Bush stressed the importance of the "process" in Taiwan-China relations and the importance of "pragmatism". Michael has some choice words for what "process" might actually mean to those emphasizing it:

The emphasis on process resulted, inevitably, in questions from the audience asking what the outcomes would be, or what the benefits of continuing the process might be. Bush dodged these and refused to specify what outcome would be desired or likely. The process was put forth as the goal, suggesting that (1) the Establishment wants to deliver Taiwan to China with a big bow-tie on it since we all know where the KMT is heading; (2) the Establishment thinks that the Taiwan-China diplomatic process is going to be like the Middle East peace process: interminable, and providing plenty of employment for diplomats, hence outcomes are irrelevant; (3) the Establishment thinks the US has little power to influence outcomes; or (4) the Establishment knows that as long as they emphasize process and appear to do China's bidding, China will be happy, while the independence movement in Taiwan will never permit the actual annexation of Taiwan to China. Hence, stalemate, no real loss. The reader may choose; I cannot.

Michael also analyzes what the dual emphasis on "process" and "pragmatism" actually means for the so-called status quo between Taiwan and China:

Many people, including many in the DPP, have expressed fear at the likely negative impact of Obama's China policy on Taiwan. I have to say that I saw nothing to reassure me on that score. Whatever the actual reasons for the Establishment's position, the emphasis on a process that can only result in Taiwan's annexation to China in some form, legitimated by an emphasis on a pragmatism that for practical purposes is ostensibly value-free, cannot be good for Taiwan. Another bit of interesting fall-out is the "ratchet effect" on the status quo -- as the process becomes the status quo, by default, moves away from it and in defense of Taiwan's sovereignty and democracy will be termed status quo violations, while moves toward China, though violations of any rational definition of the status quo, will be applauded.

All in all, rather depressing prospects. I doubt I would have voted for McCain if I were only thinking about Taiwan, but I'm sad at the prospect that the incoming Democrat administration might care as little about Taiwan as the previous administrations have.

CFP: Conference on Human Rights, International Law & Collective Violence

Very timely...

*International and Interdisciplinary Conference*

Dates: April 17-18 2009

Topic: Human Rights, International Law & Collective Violence

Sponsored by the Center for Spirituality, Ethics and Global Awareness and International Program,

Davis and Elkins College, WV

*Call for Papers
*Deadline for Abstract: *February 20th, 2009*

*Suggested Subtopics:*

Psychology of Violent Group Behavior; Genocide, Rebellion, Cults; Mass Murder; Intentional Criminality and Criminal Violence; Workplace Violence; Collective Violence and Social Pluralism; Collective Violence in Groups and Social Pluralism; Groups and Governments; Violence and Collective Responsibility; Violence and Politics; Bio-Terrorism and Counter Measures; Gender Violence; Collective Identity and Escalation of Ethnic Conflict; Collective Violence and Individual Punishment; Criminality of Mass Atrocity; Computer Ethics and Collective Violence; Violence in Prison; Globalization and International Law; International Environmental Law and Policy; International Human Rights; Terrorism, Pacifism and the Culture of War; Gandhi and the Philosophy of Non-Cooperation; Television, Terrorism and War/Peace Discourse(s); Muslim-Christian Relations in an Age of Terror; Origins of Terrorism (past and present); Arts, War and Peace; Strategies for Peace in a Time of Terror; Peace Narratives in Contemporary Film and Literature; Terror, Politics & Economics; The Internationalization of Terrorism; Violence and Religion Post 9/11; Gandhi and MLK, Jr.: Theories of Resistance and Nonviolence; The Paradox of Violence; Film, War and a Discourse of Dissent; Contemporary Anti-War Poetry; Terrorism: What is it?; Terrorism and the Role of Radical Religions; Suicide Terrorism; The Objectives of Terrorism; Tactics of Terrorism; Terrorism, Targeting, Ethnicity and Race; Homeland Security (Anti-terror Policy); Fundamentalisms, Pluralism and the Conditions for War and Peace; Terrorism & Nationalism; Europe & Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism

- *Selected papers from Conference will be subjected to editorial review*
- There is a small travel fund available for early submissions**

*Contact:*
Chandana Chakrabarti,Ph.D.

Dean of International Program
Director of the Center for Spirituality, Ethics and Global Awareness
Phone: 304-637-1293

E-mail: Chakrabartic@DavisAndElkins.edu
Chandanachak@gmail.com