AAS Call for Proposals

CFP: Women on the move – Gendered mobility and the making of modern asia

(Provisional title – looking for 2–3 additional papers)

We are seeking 2–3 additional papers to join a proposed panel for the AAS-in-Asia Conference 2026.

The provisional title, "Women on the move: gendered mobility and the making of modern Asia," reflects our shared interest in how women's movements (across borders, social hierarchies, and moral world) shaped the making of modern Asia from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

At present, the panel includes two papers: one on Republican China, examining how urban women negotiated new codes of mixed-gender sociability and moral respectability, and another on Central Asia, analyzing how female teachers, traders, and reformers crossed the Xinjiang–Uzbekistan frontier during the late Qing and early Soviet periods. Both papers engage with the intersecting themes of gendered modernity, mobility, and access to the public sphere.

We invite additional contributions that explore similar questions in other Asian contexts, such as:

• Gendered modernity – how women negotiated and redefined what it meant to be "modern."

• Mobility – physical, social, or symbolic movement as a sign and tool of modern transformation.

• Access to the public sphere – women entering mixed or public spaces, reshaping gender boundaries.

We welcome papers addressing women's mobility through education, migration, commerce, reform, religion, or cultural exchange across Asia (preferably across Central Asia).

If interested, please contact me at pietro.fasola@edu.unifi.it with a 200-300 words abstract.

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Pietro Fasola
University of Florence, Italy
University of Siena, Italy
pietro.fasola@edu.unifi.it
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Hi Pietro,

I hope this message finds you well.

My name is Lu Zhang, and I'm an art historian focusing on the global circulation of Chinese art and Sino-European intellectual exchange in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

I was wondering whether you are still looking for panelists for the upcoming AAS-in-Asia conference. I have a paper that examines Finnish female missionaries working in southern inland China and their contributions to local society, particularly in education. Interestingly, they also became involved-though in ways they themselves could not have expected-in China's modern revolutionary movements. Would this topic align with your panel's theme? (I noticed that your focus seems to have a distinct geographical emphasis.)

Best regards,
Lu Zhang

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Lu Zhang
University of Nottingham
Lu.Zhang.0925@outlook.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-09-2025 11:32 AM
From: Pietro Fasola
Subject: CFP: Women on the move – Gendered mobility and the making of modern Asia

CFP: Women on the move – Gendered mobility and the making of modern asia

(Provisional title – looking for 2–3 additional papers)

We are seeking 2–3 additional papers to join a proposed panel for the AAS-in-Asia Conference 2026.

The provisional title, "Women on the move: gendered mobility and the making of modern Asia," reflects our shared interest in how women's movements (across borders, social hierarchies, and moral world) shaped the making of modern Asia from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

At present, the panel includes two papers: one on Republican China, examining how urban women negotiated new codes of mixed-gender sociability and moral respectability, and another on Central Asia, analyzing how female teachers, traders, and reformers crossed the Xinjiang–Uzbekistan frontier during the late Qing and early Soviet periods. Both papers engage with the intersecting themes of gendered modernity, mobility, and access to the public sphere.

We invite additional contributions that explore similar questions in other Asian contexts, such as:

• Gendered modernity – how women negotiated and redefined what it meant to be "modern."

• Mobility – physical, social, or symbolic movement as a sign and tool of modern transformation.

• Access to the public sphere – women entering mixed or public spaces, reshaping gender boundaries.

We welcome papers addressing women's mobility through education, migration, commerce, reform, religion, or cultural exchange across Asia (preferably across Central Asia).

If interested, please contact me at pietro.fasola@edu.unifi.it with a 200-300 words abstract.

------------------------------
Pietro Fasola
University of Florence, Italy
University of Siena, Italy
pietro.fasola@edu.unifi.it
------------------------------