The International Academic Forum in conjunction with its global partners, including the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, is proud to announce the Third Asian Conference on Cultural Studies, to be held from May 24-26 2013, at the Ramada Osaka, Osaka, Japan.

Conference Theme: Intersecting Belongings: Cultural Conviviality and Cosmopolitan Futures

Contemporary challenges and contexts of the local, regional, national and global raise urgent questions about cultural conviviality and cosmopolitan futures across the world. These are times when trans-cultural, trans-national and multicultural belonging are particularly being tested through environmental catastrophe, economic volatility, parochialism, fundamentalism, notions of cosmopolitan and multicultural exhaustion, and war. A key challenge lies in the paradox of culture, in which belonging has become a fundamental question of preservation, atavism, tradition and survival as well as hybridity, transgression, possibility and transformation. The aim of this conference theme is to respond to this paradoxical challenge by opening up discussion, critical reflection and analysis about emerging social and cultural identities that are formed at the intersection of multiple and multi-sited belongings.

ACCS 2013 encourages participants from a range of inter/disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to:

Cultural Studies
Sociology
Critical Race Theory
Social Criticism
Queer Theory
Gender studies / Feminist Theory
Black Feminism
Media Studies
Visual Culture
Cultural Geography
Cultural History
Political Theory
Orientalism
Critical Legal Studies
Education
Political Philosophy
Linguistics, Language and Cultural Studies

The conference theme is Intersecting Belongings: Cultural Conviviality and Cosmopolitan Futures and the organizers encourage submissions that approach this theme from a variety of perspectives. This theme can be explored in any way, but the following sub-themes have been suggested by the conference chair, and may provide some inspiration, as well as offer some direction to researchers.

Sub-themes: ACCS 2013 welcomes papers that focus on, but not limited to:

* Seeking refuge
* Unruly belonging(s)
* Intersections of gender, race, religion, sexuality
* Transforming cultures
* Trans-cultural displacement/belonging
* New imaginings/formations of home
* Citizenship beyond borders
* Communication, new technologies and belonging
* Cultural narratives of belonging/not belonging
* Cultural politics of survival/transgression
* Cosmopolitan exhaustion/renewal
* Belonging in the Anthropocene
* Construction of identities
* Multiple and complex belongings
* Intersecting narratives and identity
* Re-locating culture across borders

Deadline for submission of abstracts: February 1 2013
Results of abstract reviews returned to authors: Usually within two weeks
Deadline for submission of full papers: July 1 2013
Deadline for full conference registration payment for all presenters: May 1 2013