AAS Call for Proposals

Dear Colleagues, please consider submitting to the proposed panel for AAS 2027:

Narrating the Self in Borrowed Words: The Mirror of the Other in Asian Literatures and Intellectual Histories

The use of the "Other" as a mirror for self-reflection has a long history in literary and intellectual discourse. In the West, imagined foreign observers have often served as powerful vehicles for self-critique and identity formation. From the satirical outsider perspectives of Montesquieu's Persian Letters and Oliver Goldsmith's Citizen of the World in the eighteenth century to André Malraux's The Temptation of the West and the strategic deployment of foreign viewpoints by twentieth-century critics of American society, the figure of the outsider has repeatedly been used to critique and reimagine the self.

Comparable practices can be found across Asia, and this panel explores how Asian literatures and intellectual traditions have appropriated, translated, imagined, or internalized foreign gazes in the construction of national, cultural, and personal identities. We are particularly interested in how this reflective use of the Other may differ from better-known Western traditions of self-critique and representation. We welcome proposals from a wide range of historical periods, and possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Travel Writing: How encounters with foreign observers during travel become occasions for self-discovery or cultural revaluation.
• Translation: The translation and strategic reinterpretation of foreign writings about one's own nation or people for domestic intellectual and political purposes.
• Intra-Asian Mirrors: Narrating the self through the lens of regional neighbors (e.g., Indian historiography's use of Xuanzang's account, the use of Japan in Chinese literature, etc.).
• Gender & Sexuality: The use of foreign perspectives to challenge or reinforce domestic norms surrounding gender and sexuality.
• Imagined Foreigners: Foreign, strange, or fantastical observers in speculative literature.
• Diasporic and Exilic Perspectives: How migrants, exiles, overseas students, and diasporic communities employ external viewpoints to reinterpret their homelands and identities.
• Colonialism, Empire, and the "National Character": The use of foreign judgments in a colonial context in debates over national character & cultural renewal.

We encourage comparative, transnational, and interdisciplinary approaches that bring together literary studies, intellectual history, translation studies, cultural history, and related fields.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit an abstract of 200–250 words and a brief bio (approx. 100 words) to huangyi@lafayette.edu by Saturday, July 25.