Dear fellow AAS members,
I hope this finds you well. I am looking for two or three people to join a panel I am organizing for the 2026 AAS meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada (March 12-15). Here are the draft details for the panel, which I will revise based on other panelists' papers:
Draft Panel Title: " Bring it Back, Move it Forward: Ancestral Modernities Across Asia"
Draft Abstract: This panel presents a range of case studies highlighting the efforts of different communities in Asia to sustain and vitalize their Ancestral ties (of kinship). In the face of significant socioeconomic changes, these communities have worked to ensure their Ancestors remain "always living" and thus a meaningful and dynamic part of their and their descendants' everyday lives and vice versa. The papers especially emphasize the dynamic nature of the codependent worlds of Ancestors and descendants along with the ritual practices via which the "living living" sustain and vitalize their Ancestral ties. The concept of vitalization (rather than revitalization) is adopted to emphasize that the range of Ancestral modernities highlighted in the panel are simultaneously backward looking and forward moving in ways that complicate conventional framings of Ancestors, kinship, and religion as of the past and thus contrary to modernity. Contrary to these framings, the papers collectively make a case for the sustained importance and presence of Ancestors along with kinship and religion in contemporary social life throughout Asia.
If interested to join the panel, please email me (<mmorton1@niu.edu>) with the following details:
- Paper Title & Abstract (maximum 250 words)
- Contact details: Full name, email address, affiliation, rank (student, professor, assistant professor, etc.), gender, & current city/state/country (no mailing address is required)
Please also share any ideas you might have for potential panel discussants.
Thanks and peace, Micah
Micah F. Morton, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA; Email: mmorton1@niu.edu; Faculty website
------------------------------
Micah Morton
Assistant Professor
Northern Illinois University
mmorton1@niu.edu------------------------------