Hi !
I am a PhD candidate in Geography, currently finishing my doctoral thesis at Laval University. I would like to organize a panel on landscape, art, and nationalisms in Asia. The panel is open to papers on Inner/Central, North and Northeast, East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as to various disciplines such as Anthropology, Geography, Art, Tourism, Asian or Cultural Studies, etc.
This panel will offer a cross-cultural debate on how landscape is used today in Asia to promote tourism and/or unify a nation. It aims to reflect on the specific context of the post-COVID pandemic, in which several Asian states intend to restore their economies by boosting their foreign and domestic tourism industry. Meanwhile, this promotion helps revitalize their natural and cultural landscapes, national heritage, and nationalist sentiments. Due to this particular context, the papers must address contemporary and recent studies.
I hope it will create a space for discussions on this topic across Asia. The papers could address the following themes/problems:
- The power of landscape in promoting local and foreign tourism in Asian countries and the manifold consequences of this promotion: processes of colonization, selection of places, regionalization, essentialization of culture and people, etc.
- The diffusion of national landscapes on social networks: the use of photography on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or any other local social media; strategies employed by governments or private industries to promote tourism on social media, etc.
- Landscape as a national resource: political discourses on landscape through art; how this narrative has changed from its historical backgrounds (for instance, socialist propaganda) to nowadays.
- The use of art to promote landscape today: artistic mediums as tools for identity-making and tourism development.
- The transformation of landscape: how it is sacralized or aestheticized by tourism development and digital diffusion.
- Open to any art form and artistic medium that is influential today in Asian politics and society related to landscape.
- Open to reflections on the circulation of sacred places and landscapes on Asian social networks.
I plan to present a paper on the promotion and circulation of Mongolian sacred landscapes on social networks through professional photography.
I will take on the role of organizer and chair of the panel, and I am looking for 1 discussant and 2 other formal panelists to join me.
If your paper aligns in any way with this proposal, I would be pleased to talk with you.
Feel free to contact me at sarah.combredet.1@ulaval.ca.
------------------------------
Sarah Combredet
Laval University
sarah.combredet.1@ulaval.ca
------------------------------