The study of Asia(s) remains fragmented along the lines of nations, histories, ethnicities, languages, and disciplines—all concepts that are rooted, epistemologically and pragmatically, on terra firma, on the supposedly sound conceptual ground of a continental Enlightenment tradition. What happens, however, when we shift our point of view, and instead adopt an oceanic perspective? How do our understandings of Asia(s) change when viewed from ashore? And how can engagement with and thinking through the ocean help us reconceive our critical and conceptual vocabulary and our approaches to the study of Asia?

These are among the questions engaged with by the cohort of scholars hosted at Penn State for the Global Asias Summer Institute 2023. Under the direction of Nicolai Volland and Leo Ching, cohort members led daily seminar discussions of recent publications in archipelagic studies and provided critical feedback on each others’ works-in-progress.

This year’s participants included:

Rosa Beunel
King’s College London

Christopher Chan
University of California, Berkeley

Nina Horisaki-Christens
Columbia University

Ava Kim
University of California, Davis

Kelvin Ng
Yale University

Xu Peng
University of Connecticut

Justin Phan
University of Illinois, Chicago

Soo-Min Shim
Australian National University