8th Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference will be held from July 7 – 10, 2014, at the Thai Film Archive, Salaya, Thailand. The conference theme is “Codes, Kitsch, Camp: Genre in/and Southeast Asian Cinemas” and the organisers are calling for submissions before 30th September 2013.

About the theme -

Issues of genre have had long-term and continuing importance for the film studies field, but the concept has received little serious critical attention in the specific context of Southeast Asian film. The 8th Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas conference will therefore be interested in interrogating in the broadest terms the relevance and usefulness of the concept for the analysis of Southeast Asian cinema. It seeks proposals both for papers that address concepts of genre, in a Southeast Asian context, from a theoretical perspective and for studies of specific Southeast Asian genre trends with industrial and/or textual emphases. Some possible topics for papers along these lines include the following (though the list is by no means intended as exhaustive):

-Relevance of “genre” for the Southeast Asian context (e.g., are theorizations of genre based upon Hollywood examples still viable, or do they need to be reworked or jettisoned altogether?)

-Redefining the concept of genre for a Southeast Asian context

-Transnational generic exchange or flow

-Reworking of global (Hollywood, Bollywood, the kungfu comedy, etc.) genres in Southeast Asia

-Genre evolution

-Genre mixing

-Economics of genre in Southeast Asia (e.g., how genre bears upon production, distribution, exhibition)

-Case studies of specific genres, genre trends, genre films in Southeast Asia

-Genres specific to Southeast Asia

-Genre and nation

-Genre and issues of identity (gender, class, ethnicity)

-National or regional genre aesthetics

-Genre and censorship

Check out website archives and conference programs for past paper topics as we are less likely to accept topics that have been covered before at http://seaconference.wordpress.com/

Abstract Submission Deadline: September 30, 2013

Send an abstract (max. 300 words) and short bio (max. 100 words) to:Sophia Siddique Harvey (soharvey@vassar.edu), Khoo Gaik Cheng (gaik.khoo@gmail.com) and Katinka Van Heeren (cvanheeren@hotmail.com). 

The conference is currently looking for travel subsidies but unable to confirm any travel grants at the moment.