Panel on “Modernizing the Tibetan literary tradition”

Russian Chinese (Simplified)

“Issues of Far Eastern Literatures”

Panel “Modernizing the Tibetan Literary Tradition”

(St. Petersburg, June 25–29, 2014)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Dear Colleagues,
in connection with several Tibetological research projects the Faculty of Asian and African Studies of St. Petersburg State University cordially welcome paper proposals for the Panel on “Modernizing the Tibetan literary tradition” of the 6th International Conference “Issues of Far Eastern Literatures”. The conference will be held on June 25–29, 2014 in Saint Petersburg.

The documented Tibetan history is sometimes presented as alternating periods of quick and drastic innovations often influenced by incoming ideas and customs of neighboring nations and longer periods of more stable, self-concentrated development. This dynamics is thought to be reflected in the written tradition of Tibetan literature as a whole, providing us with keys to the still underexplored facets of the tradition.

This panel aims at bringing into light the processes of constant development of the literary tradition at different times, in different Tibetan-populated regions and in different subject areas, to culminate at the most recent stages of innovation taking place in Tibetan literary culture, that is immediately before the XX century and gradually through the XX century until now, especially highlighting the phenomenon of modern Tibetan literature in the Tibetan, Chinese and English languages in the wider context of the analysis of the press, the media and the network literature.

Any issues concerning the development of modern Tibetan literature, press, media and blogosphere might be addressed by the session participants, as well as the previous stages of Tibetan literary development, if approached along the lines of innovation and development tendencies.

The possible topics might include, but should by no means be limited by the issues of the literary canon, the mutual influence of Tibetan and non-Tibetan literary traditions, the connection between the literature and religious and ideological teachings, the reflection of social change in literature, the place of the literary history in the multidisciplinary research on Tibet, the process of the genre system formation, and aesthetic principles evolution, the literature and the ethnical self-identification, the literature and new media: press, television, Internet, literature and Tibetan and Tibetological education, literature and language development, literature and other arts: popular music, cinema, theater and visual arts, development of Tibetan literary criticism and scholarship, the infrastructure of the literary process: professional societies, contests,publishing houses, literary periodicals etc.

The working language of the panel will be English. The papers will be published prior the conference commences. The application (indicating author’s name, academic degree,

position, field of Asian studies, e-mail, title of the paper) as well as the full text of the paper in English (in the whole, not more than 20 000 Latin symbols, MS Word RTF-format) should be sent before March 1, 2014 by e-mail to p.grokhovskiy@spbu.ru.

The acceptance notice together with the program information will be sent to participants by March 10, 2014.

The conference fee is set at 100 € (due upon arrival). The organizers will provide visa support, airport transfers, materials of the conference, lunches, coffee breaks, shuttle service and White-nights cultural program. The participants will be accommodated at a 4 stars hotels in the center of the city (60-120 € per person per day) at their own expense.

The conference web-page: http://www.ifel.spbu.ru (presently under construction).

Conveners:
Alexey Rodionov, 
Pavel Grokhovskiy
(St.Petersburg University)