UTCP GSC 11: Reconsidering the Dynamics of “Boundaries”

UTCP International Graduate Student Conference 2011

Reconsidering the Dynamics of “Boundaries”: Subjectivity, Community and Co-Existence

Keynote Speaker: Professor Trinh T. Minh-ha (University of California, Berkeley)

　
It may be said that a boundary is a real or imagined line that is drawn to mark the limits of something and to separate it from other things or places. Boundaries are drawn to create individuals, communities, and countries. They are drawn to separate humans from animals, facts from imagination, and present from past and future. We are surrounded by boundaries, and we draw them repeatedly.
　
A boundary establishes two sides, and connects them together. It not only brings stability to both sides, but also generates gaps, tensions, and sometimes keen conflicts between them. These conflicts often provoke a reaction, re-emphasizing the role that boundaries play in creating stability. However, in such gaps, tensions and conflicts, we also encounter the moment that a boundary itself often shifts, becomes plural, or fails to perform its function. We no longer take the boundary for granted. Then, how do we make sense of boundaries? How do we redraw or cross existing boundaries? How do we understand the power dynamics involved in boundaries?
　
　
UTCP is an international center for the humanities, committed to questions such as how we think of the possibility of co-existence [共生]. The UTCP International Graduate Student Conference aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students and postgraduates all over the world to exchange ideas.
　
At this two-day conference, we would like to explore the dynamics of boundaries in a broad, interdisciplinary manner, hopefully to come up with new questions, especially under the following topics in which the concept of “boundary” must be reconsidered critically: Subjectivity, Community and Co-Existence.

Keynote Speaker:

We are pleased and honored to announce that our keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Trinh T. Minh-ha, professor of the Gender & Women's Studies Department and the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a world-renowned filmmaker, critic, academic, writer, poet and composer. Her work ranges from feminism and post-colonialism to cultural politics, contemporary critical theory, film theory and the arts. She has been making films for over thirty years, and written many articles and books. Her most recently published book is Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event (Routledge, 2010).

Conference Organizers:

BAE Kwan-Mun
ISHIGAKI Masaru
IWASAKI Shota
KANAHARA Noriko
OIKE Sotaro
OZAWA Kyoko
YASUNAGA Marie

　

　