Asian Countries as Exhibited at World Expositions: Revisited in a Global Historical Perspective
02/07/2010 - 09:00
2 - 3 July 2010
Leiden, the Netherlands
IIAS will organise a workshop entitled Asian Countries as Exhibited at World Expositions: Revisited in a Global Historical Perspective.
Faculty of Arts, Leiden University
Lipsius Building, room 148
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden
The convenor of the workshop is Prof. Youngsoo Yook, IIAS Professor, holder of the European Chair of Korean Studies at Leiden University / Chung-Ang University, Republic of Korea.
Most of the World Expositions hosted by industrialised ‘Western’ countries between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century served as cultural tools for imperialism, platforms for social Darwinism and show windows for Orientalist discourse. On the other hand, the World Expositions represented golden opportunities for less developed Asian countries to get acquaintanced with the emerging international community and to (re)position themselves in a changing regional and world order. They were not merely passive and innocent victims of the colonisers but also active participants who negotiated and contested with Western powers in their process of nation-state building and modernisation. Asian nations sometimes revolted against the stereotyped commodification of exoticism, which superior western science and technology fabricated and imposed upon them.
This workshop intends to reappraise the legacy of World Expositions by revisiting them in a global historical perspective. Approaching World Expositions as a focal point of mutual contacts and (mis)communications where myriads of different races, religions and world-visions collide and intermingle, the workshop will shed light on questions that are still valid and remain unresolved in the age of globalisation. What were/are the cause and nature of the ‘clash of civilisations’ occurring at the World Expositions, and how can we truly be connected with one another? In order to answer these questions, workshop participants – anthropologists, (art) historians, museum curators and urban architects – will, peeking through the multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of World Expositions, challenge and problematise the supposedly binary frames of the ‘West/civilised’ and ‘East/uncivilised’ by reconstructing an alternative narration of world/transnational history.
Please click here for the programme.
There is no registration fee.
Registration and information
Ms Martina van den Haak at m.c.van.den.haak@iias.nl.