AAS Call for Proposals

Dear colleagues,

I am currently seeking one to two additional paper presenters and one discussant for my session titled "Landscape, Art, and Nation-Building in Post-COVID Asian Societies." The theme has been slightly revised to incorporate a recent proposal I received.

This panel aims to foster a cross-cultural dialogue on how landscapes are currently utilized across Asia to promote tourism and/or foster national unity. It specifically considers the post-COVID context, in which several Asian countries are striving to revive their economies by boosting both international and domestic tourism. In doing so, these efforts often contribute to the revitalization of natural and cultural landscapes, the preservation of national heritage, and the reinforcement of nationalist sentiments. Given this contemporary focus, all papers should address recent or ongoing developments.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• The role of landscape in promoting tourism in Asian countries and the multifaceted consequences of this promotion: processes of (re)colonization, place selection, regionalization, cultural essentialization, etc.
• The dissemination of national landscapes via social media: the use of photography on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or local alternatives; strategies employed by governments or private sectors to promote tourism online.
• Landscape as a national resource: political narratives conveyed through art; how these narratives have evolved from historical contexts (e.g., socialist propaganda) to the present day.
• The instrumentalization of art in landscape promotion: artistic media as tools for identity construction and tourism development.
• The transformation of landscapes through sacralization or aestheticization driven by tourism and digital dissemination.
• Analyses of any contemporary art form or medium that plays a significant role in shaping political or societal views on landscapes in Asia.
• Reflections on the circulation of sacred sites and landscapes on Asian social media platforms.

This panel welcomes contributions focusing on Inner/Central, North and Northeast, East, South, and Southeast Asia, and is open to a range of disciplines including Anthropology, Geography, Art History, Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, and more.

I, Sarah Combredet, will present the first paper. I am a PhD candidate in Geography at Laval University, currently completing my doctoral dissertation. My paper will explore the promotion and circulation of Mongolian sacred landscapes on social media through the lens of professional photography. Specifically, I will examine the State-sponsored Mongolian Landscape Photography of the Year contest, initiated in 2022, as part of a broader tourism strategy aimed at attracting foreign visitors. This initiative also supports the emergence of Mongolian professional photographers as influencers on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. While this contest contributes to the online visibility of Mongolian landscapes-and likely boosts tourism-it also serves as a tool for nation-building, as Mongolian users share nationalistic narratives through photography. My paper will analyze this political co-construction of touristic and nationalistic landscapes in the post-COVID era.

The other paper will be presented by Yuwen Renjie: My name is YUWEN(Last name) RENJIE(First name), in Chinese is 宇文任杰. I am a researcher and artist from China, currently pursuing an MA in Art History and serving as a teaching assistant at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. My research focuses on material culture, political aesthetics, and East Asian visual traditions. My paper examines a monumental lacquer mural of the Great Wall at the Chinese Communist Party History Exhibition Hall, analyzing how historical landscape and traditional craft are mobilized for national symbolism and ideological messaging in post-COVID China. I also briefly reference recent state-sponsored regional art projects that use landscape motifs as tools for tourism and identity-building. I hold prior degrees in art, economics, and studio art, and am a member of the Beijing Artists Association and the China Arts and Crafts Society.

If your research aligns with this theme in any way, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Please feel free to contact me at sarah.combredet.1@ulaval.ca.

Warm regards, and best of luck to all!

------------------------------
Sarah Combredet
Université Laval
sarah.combredet.1@ulaval.ca
------------------------------

Dear colleagues,

Our panel is now complete. We sincerely thank everyone who expressed interest in participating in our session. At this stage, we are still looking for a chair and/or discussant to further enrich the panel.

Below is the final introduction to the session:

Session tentative title: The Interplay of Landscape, Art, and Nationalism in Times of Crisis Across Asia.

Brief abstract:

This panel seeks to foster a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue on the complex relationship between landscape and nationalism during periods of societal upheaval and crisis, as expressed through various artistic media. It examines how landscapes are mobilized as political tools for nation-building by different Asian states, how these efforts are appropriated or subverted by artists and communities, and how landscapes are reclaimed as powerful resources by colonized and local populations to resist dominant nationalist and colonial narratives.

The session will feature four papers, each addressing these themes within distinct regional and historical contexts-namely Mongolia, China, Japan, and India-from World War II to the present post-COVID era. The papers engage with a range of artistic forms, including painting, photography, craft, and poetry, offering a rich and multifaceted exploration of the topic.

PAPER 1:

Paper presenter: Sarah Combredet

Title: The Unexpected Power of Photography: Co-constructing Touristic and Nationalist Sacred Landscapes in Post-COVID Mongolia.

Brief introduction:

I, Sarah Combredet, am a PhD candidate in Geography at Laval University, currently completing my doctoral dissertation. My paper explores the promotion and circulation of Mongolian sacred landscapes on social media through the lens of professional landscape photography. Specifically, it examines the Mongolian Landscape Photography of the Year contest, a state-sponsored initiative launched in 2022 as part of a broader tourism strategy aimed at attracting foreign visitors. While this initiative enhances the online visibility of Mongolian landscapes, it also functions as a nation-building tool and fosters the emergence of a new generation of Mongolian professional photographers. This paper analyzes the political co-construction of touristic and nationalistic landscapes in the post-COVID era, the instrumentalization of art in landscape promotion, and the ways in which photographers and social media users respond to and challenge these dominant narratives.

PAPER 2:

Paper presenter: Yuwen Renjie

Title: The Lacquered Great Wall: Monumental Landscape, Political Aesthetics, and National Imagination in Post-COVID China.

Brief introduction:

My name is YUWEN(Last name) RENJIE(First name), in Chinese is 宇文任杰. I am a researcher and artist from China, currently pursuing an MA in Art History and serving as a teaching assistant at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. My research focuses on material culture, political aesthetics, and East Asian visual traditions. My paper examines a monumental lacquer mural of the Great Wall at the Chinese Communist Party History Exhibition Hall, analyzing how historical landscape and traditional craft are mobilized for national symbolism and ideological messaging in post-COVID China. I also briefly reference recent state-sponsored regional art projects that use landscape motifs as tools for tourism and identity-building. I hold prior degrees in art, economics, and studio art, and am a member of the Beijing Artists Association and the China Arts and Crafts Society.

PAPER 3:

Paper presenter: Jeongwon Yoon

Title: The Nation in Abstraction: Abstract Landscape Painting and Wartime Nationalism in Japan and Beyond.

Brief introduction:

My name is Jeongwon Yoon. I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Kansas, conducting research on a dissertation project about a Tokyo-based abstract art group, the Free Artists Association (1937–1944). My paper examines how members of the group employed the theme of landscape in response to the growing Japanese nationalism during the Asia Pacific War (1941–1945). Drawing on both archival research and formal analysis, I highlight the diverse ways in which abstract or semi-abstract landscape paintings either endorsed or complicated, intentionally or not, the notion of Japanese nationalism. In this way, this study offers a more nuanced understanding of the Japanese abstract art movement, as one deeply entangled with multiple strands of national and colonial ideologies amid the escalating warfare.

PAPER 4:

Paper presenter: Prerana Das

Title: Creative production as resistance against ethnonationalist exclusion among Miya women in Assam.

Brief introduction:

My name is Prerana Das. I am a PhD student at Queen's University in Canada. My research explores creative methods of resistance, identity assertion, and landscape reclamation among Bengali-speaking Muslim women in Assam, India (also known as Miyas). My paper is on poetry as a form of creative resistance among Miya women in relation to the precarity of their landscape.

Should you be interested, I'd be happy to provide additional information.

Warmest regards,

Sarah

------------------------------
Sarah Combredet
Université Laval
sarah.combredet.1@ulaval.ca
------------------------------