‘Digital Spatiality’ – A special issue of Asiascape: Digital Asia

Call for Papers

Abstract deadline:

• 15 April 2018

Contacts:

• Dr. Rahul K. Gairola, Murdoch University, Australia (Rahul.Gairola@murdoch.edu.au)
• Dr. Martin Roth, University of Leipzig, Germany (m.roth@asobiba.de)

Themes:

Digital technologies, namely the ‘internet’, have catalyzed a dramatic shift in the production of space and how we conceive it. They are ambiguous at their borders, at once expanding yet shrinking notions of home and homeland, of the local and the global, and of the intangible and the material. Such fuzziness and shifting boundaries generate new spatial relations on multiple layers which we call ‘digital spatialities’.

In choosing the term ‘spatiality’ versus ‘area’, we wish to mark a deviation from and complication of traditional area studies that are bound to particular geographies, nations, languages, and/ or cultures.  In our reading, ‘digital spatialities’ are anchored in but equally transcend these categories. In this special issue, we aim to consider different examples of how these digital spatialities are structured, how they function, are put into practice, and how they are framed by and connected to, rather than bound by areas in the abovementioned sense. We invite contributions that explore specific digital spatialities related to Asia with these questions in mind from various disciplinary perspectives, and to consider the following questions:

• what defines specific digital spatialities when we think of Asia?
• how are these related to already existing areas and their constituents, such as language, law, communities, and cultural practices
• which kinds of subjects inhabit them, and what do they do?
• what kind of methodologies may we deploy in critically studying them?
• how can we come to terms with the vast differences between them?

By asking these questions, we aim to ignite a critical dialogue about how digitality and digital humanities can be thought of productively, and complexly, even in the wake of vast and variable differences that are not simply confined to region. Firstly, we hope to fuel a more nuanced discourse about “the internet” or “digital humanities,” in particular regarding their generalized definition and their applicability in the largely differing local and global contexts of Asia on the world stage. Secondly, we would like to begin mapping the digital areas which we identify, carefully meditating upon their relationships among and between each other, as well as the electronic shape of the “world” they produce.

Timeline:

1. Submission of abstracts (500 words) by April 15, 2018
2. Editor response to the submissions by May 15, 2018
3. Submission of full manuscripts by July 15, 2018
4. Peer review feedback by September 1, 2018
5. Authors submit final text by October 8, 2018 (forward to copy-editor)
6. Authors receive copy-edited version by November 7, 2018
7. Authors approve copy-edits by November 11, 2018
8. Special Issue editors forward approved articles to production by November 15, 2018
9. Publication in January/February 2019