The Global University, Addressing New Subjects of Knowledge is Panel 1 of a 4 panel series which is part of Working in the Traces of Area Studies hosted by faculty emeriti Brett DeBary (Asian Studies, Cornell) and Naoki Sakai (Asian Studies, Cornell).

We propose that the disciplines called “Area Studies,” while greatly
contributing to the postwar reform of the university, have reached a point
of historical stasis that demands we search for novel objects,
unaccustomed viewpoints, and different methods of inquiry. After World
War II, the “West’s” center of gravity shifted from Western Europe to North
America, with the United States beginning to occupy the epistemological
center in knowledge production. But Area Studies now confronts the
emergence of global universities transformed by the requirements of
neoliberal economic reforms, the shifting geopolitical balance of power,
unprecedented mobility of information and subjects of knowledge, and the
formation of transnational communities based on media-generated affect.
What are the implications for Area Studies, and its relation to the
humanities in general?

Panelists:

Rey Chow (Literature, Duke University)

John Kim (German/Japanese Comparative Literature, UC, Riverside)

Lisa Yoneyama (East Asian Studies, University of Toronto)

Discussant: Setsu Shigematsu (Media and Cultural Studies, UC, Riverside)

Faculty hosts: Brett DeBary and Naoki Sakai

What is Working in the Traces of Area Studies?

“Working in the Traces of Area Studies” will convene a series of international virtual symposia over the 2023 academic year. “The situation of area studies” will be the overarching theme, with the objective of developing thinking on how the tasks assigned to postwar “area studies” might be re-envisioned, and asking if there is still a plausibility of a trans-national, trans-ethnic, and trans-civilizational positionality from which the discipline of area studies may be revised. Discussions will focus on the implications of the ongoing reconfiguration of power relations which have rendered uncertain the places of the “West” and “non-West” in the disciplinary structure of area studies. Particularly critical will be analysis of the inter-related related concepts of “area,” “language,” “culture” and embodied “ethnicity” or “race.” On this basis, the series will suggest that new comparative perspectives are urgently needed, especially to African and East European Studies, which have traditionally shared with Asian Studies the designation of “area studies.”