Bridging Worlds, Illumining the Archive: An International Conference in Honor of Professor Resil B. Mojares

Organized jointly by

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives
School of Social Sciences, Loyola Schools
Ateneo de Manila University

and

Southeast Asian Studies
Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Kyoto University

To be held in Quezon City, Philippines
30–31 July 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS

In a prolific career spanning five decades, Resil B. Mojares has produced a remarkable body of work that combines meticulous research, incisive analysis, and elegant, lyrical writing.

An exemplary home-grown and -educated activist, intellectual, institution-builder, and man of letters, Mojares has made important, often pioneering, contributions to diverse fields and subjects, ranging from Philippine literature (Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel: A Generic Study of the Novel until 1940; [co-ed.] the two-volume Sugilanong Sugboanon), architecture (Casa Gorordo in Cebu: Urban Residence in a Philippine Province, 1860–1920), theater and social history (Theater in Society, Society in Theater: Social History of a Cebuano Village, 1840–1940), to intellectual history (Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes, and the Production of Modern Knowledge), biography (Vicente Sotto: Maverick Senator; The Man Who Would be President: Serging Osmeña and Philippine Politics; Aboitiz: Family and Firm in the Philippines), history and politics (The War Against the Americans: Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu, 1899–1906; [co-ed.] From Marcos to Aquino: Local Perspectives on the Political Transition in the Philippines).

Apart from book-length works, Mojares has also produced occasional essays (collected in House of Memory; Waiting for Mariang Makiling: Essays in Philippine Cultural History; Isabelo’s Archive; The Resil Mojares Reader; and Interrogations in Philippine Cultural History) that have done much to illuminate “what is obscure, hidden, and marginal” in a plurilingual, pluricultural Philippines. His works blur “the boundaries between academic and literary writing,” while simultaneously building on, and questioning, the “idea and performance of the archive—capacious, diverse, makeshift, open-ended, and polymorphic, and one ‘national’ in its motive and ambition” (Mojares, “Writing the Archive,” Manila Review Issue 5, Sept. 2014).

The perspectives Mojares brings to his study of Philippine history, politics, society, culture, and the arts are methodologically eclectic and capable of moving effortlessly between and across local, national, regional (subnational and supranational), and transnational scales.

This international conference celebrates the life, career, and writings of Resil B. Mojares. It aims not only to assess Professor Mojares’s influence, but also to engage with the ideas, issues, and contexts brought up by his writings on and across various fields of inquiry.

Scholars and academics with papers and panels related, but not limited, to the following topics are invited to participate in this conference:

1. Historiography and the Archive: Issues and Debates
2. Precolonial, Colonial, Imperial, and Postcolonial Histories
3. Biography
4. Intellectuals, Intellectual Histories, and Philippine Studies
5. Philippine Languages and Literatures
6. Philippine Architecture, Theater, and the Arts
7. Nation-Making, Nationness, and Nationalism
8. Politics, Politicians, and State Building
9. Social Histories
10. “What is Obscure, Hidden, and Marginal” in Philippine History and Current Affairs
11. Local and Regional Histories
12. Cultural Studies
13. The Philippines in Asia and the World

Selected papers that pass the refereeing process will be included in a special issue of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, the quarterly published by the Ateneo de Manila University since 1953. Articles in this journal are indexed and abstracted in several global databases such as Historical Abstracts, Project MUSE, JSTOR, Scopus, and Thomson Reuters Emerging Sources. Other publications may also be planned.

Submission Guidelines

Interested paper presenters are requested to submit a 250-word abstract. Panel proposals are also welcome and should include a brief description of the proposed panel as well as the abstracts of the individual papers in the panel. Proposals should include a brief note about the paper proponents.

Please submit abstracts and panel proposals by 1 October 2017. Submissions must be in Word format and include the name, institutional affiliation, email address, and bionote of the paper proponent(s).

Decisions on abstracts will be released on 31 October 2017. Presenters whose paper and/or panel proposals are accepted are requested to register by 1 February 2018, which is also the deadline for the early bird rate.

Inquiries as well as panel and paper proposals can be addressed to:

Michael D. Pante, PhD
Associate Editor, Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints
School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University

Travel and Conference Subsidy

Participants are encouraged to seek funds for travel and conference participation from their home institutions. Paper presenters will arrange their own flight and hotel accommodations in Manila.

Registration Fee (inclusive of meals, refreshments, and conference materials)