8th Annual Philippine Studies Symposium - Translocating textiles: Cross-border perspectives on traditional weaving practices from the Philippines and South East Asia

The multi and trans-disciplinary symposium investigates the present status of research on traditional Philippine textiles, in relation to and within the context of the wider Austronesian geographies of Mainland and Island South East Asia.

The primary focus is on mapping Philippine textile traditions within the broader context of South East Asia, analyzing them at specific points of intersection, contrast, or similarity. This comparative perspective is expected to provide insight into the interconnected dimensions of history, the technologies of making, and the artistic conventions of textile production and tradition. Overall, the symposium aims to reveal the continuities and discontinuities across the archipelagos that now constitute the Austronesian region, thereby deepening understanding and insight.

Call for Abstracts

The symposium is conceptualized as a wide-net inquiry based on a comparative analysis of Philippine textile traditions vis-à-vis one other Austronesian South East Asian tradition on any of the following touch points:

• Updated insights into technique and material
• Prehistorical reconstruction or specific textile histories
• Changing and/or persistent structures of meaning and symbolism
• Embodied knowledges, cosmologies, comparative religion
• Localized responses to textile traditions of India, China or the Islamic world
• Feminist readings, cultural studies of systems of power-relations
• Cross-linguistic analyses
• Local socio-economic histories through material culture studies
• Transitioning tradition to contemporariness
• The politics of “costume,” performative associations
• Issues on commodification, on one hand, and on the other, pervasive antiquarian desire

Please send in proposals for presentations with a title, an abstract (300 words), and a bio sketch (100 words) using the link above.

Call for Exhibitions

The Symposium also invites artists whose practices fall within or intersect with the above disciplines and who, furthermore, probe transitions and metamorphoses of textile traditions of the Philippines. Send a sample or preview of your work with a 300 word description and a bio sketch (max. 100 words) if you are interested in sharing your work at the conference using the link above.

Deadline for Submissions: 1 September 2024

Photo credit: T'nalak waver (T'boli people) courtesy of wayph.