by Simon Whitaker


Participants at the close of proceedings on Saturday 5th October

HKU hosted the 2nd Conference of the Coalition of English Departments in Asia on October 4th-5th of this year, after the successful first conference in Seoul at Seoul National University in October of 2018. The aims of this coalition are various, involving all possible implications of the term ‘coalition’ as it relates to academic departments and institutions. As to the conference, however, the event is well targeted to increase co-operation, and open new communicative channels, primarily between the postgraduate cohorts of five institutions: the Schools/Departments of English at HKU, Seoul National University, National University of Singapore, National Taiwan University, and the University of Tokyo.

The majority of the proceedings comprised panels that followed the standard conference format: presentations of research papers followed by discussion on topics of mutual concern emerging from the papers. These panels work towards a constant improvement in the sharing of research findings, as well as allowing students a wide forum in which to circulate their work and receive feedback. Broader concerns, outside of specific research topics, are addressed through the roundtable sessions on the second day. One of the most significant and perhaps even unique aspect of the conference is this regular closing roundtable, which, on both occasions, proved a fruitful and provocative forum for addressing an array of pressing questions. As the opening remarks for the conference noted, “Shifting worlds bring us together at a formative point in history” in a context “defined by a future that feels less predictable than we ever anticipated.”

Panels

The topics of the panels addressed aspects of English Studies as a global phenomenon today, but were also constructed to face a unique challenge of the conference head-on: the fact that it brings together linguistics and literary research in a single forum. This has been addressed quite differently in the two conferences so far. At Seoul National University 2018, all panel sessions were paired, parallel sessions split along the linguistics/literature line, while this year most panels were interdisciplinary across this border. In all cases this year faculty from both fields were present and involved in the panel discussions. Many proposed that this was a strength of this year’s conference, and that the possibility for collaboration across this border should be seen as a distinctive feature of ‘English in Asia’. Due to various unique histories, East Asian universities can find these subjects combined into one department, whereas in Western institutions this is unusual.

A sense of how these panels were informed by a complex of regional, temporal and cross-disciplinary issues arising from a ‘COEDA conference’ can be gleaned from their titles: You are Here and Not Here: The Self Reconfigured, Gender and Sexuality (split into two parts), Speech in Society: The multivalent lives of utterances and Borderscapes: Land, crossings and ecology. These are all of course matters which can take on linguistic, literary, historical and cultural significance and are therefore approachable from the perspectives of ‘linguistics’, ‘sociolinguistics’, and ‘literary’ or ‘cultural’ studies to use some of the available disciplinary labels. We can at the very least say that the vibrant life of research in English Studies in Asia was well demonstrated throughout these panels.

Roundtable

The roundtable, like last year’s, posed a question which hides a complex set of concerns, arguments, and possibly anxieties: “Why study English in Asia?” In Seoul in 2018, this question was formally posed to the postgraduate roundtable, and a wide variety of issues were raised. These ranged from problems of remaining restricted to a certain Western conception of canonical research, whether of literary texts or methodologies, to matters of institutional hierarchy: namely, the general dominance of the most prestigious Western institutions.

As mentioned, this year’s session consisted of two stages, running to a total of four hours of reflective discussion, whose very duration made for a unique experience. To begin with, HKU repeated the format of Seoul’s post-graduate forum, with representatives from four schools with the exception of the University of Tokyo. Asked for comment on the roundtable sessions, HKU co-rep Wilson Chik highlighted the significance of the roundtable for investigating the place of our institutions and practices in ‘shifting worlds’, stating that roundtables require “an active dialogue” and proposing that “to question is also an action that is spawned out of boldness that requires courage.” He suggested that “questioning with the ‘right’ framing can always provide a possibility for expansion in thinking and understanding, yet at the same time, there is no guarantee that there would be answer(s) for the question asked.” Therefore, over time, the roundtable can work to develop the “praxis” that can allow us to, for example, “refine the questions at hand” or “actively pursue how historically decisions have been made in the past.”

HKU co-rep Sean P. Smith articulated three main concerns which emerged from the roundtable discussion this year: “First, there was a broad interest in interdisciplinarity” and in particular “how our respective institutions might nurture or adjust to this interest.” Second, he noted that “Some of the delegates expressed frustration at the apparent lack of flexibility within their departments, which adhere to a Eurocentric English-language canon”. The final issue raised, which Smith suggested was “perhaps most pressing,” was that of “our institutional isolation in East Asian universities.” This last spoke to a deep concern that “our degrees are obtained at the global periphery of English literary study”, and that “the consistent perception of Oxbridge and the Ivies as the real locus of knowledge production seems, for many of us, to perpetuate the marginality of East Asian Universities.”

These issues, seeming in pressing need of active solutions, have resulted in a programme for widening the reach of COEDA beyond the conference. The first step in this programme was the election of coalition representatives, while Smith notes that the next goal was “to have an intradepartmental roundtable with the graduates at our home institutions.” He states that by “hosting a roundtable locally, we hope to relay these findings to the rest of the students, learn of other concerns, and determine upon ways we can address common aims in our home departments.” These internal roundtables are therefore the next loci of this ongoing discussion.

The roundtable also involved posing these questions and issues directly to faculty, who supported postgraduates in determining these next steps, but also offered various reflections on the issues of interdisciplinary exchange, flexibility in research programmes/canonicity, and whether East Asian universities are at the global periphery. One answer asked us to recall that part of the problem, especially on the third point of global positioning, comes from how far US institutions in particular have created very effective programmes. Prof. Eun Kyung Min of the Seoul National University delegation offered an argument towards the close of proceedings, that breaking this perception of peripheral positioning requires scholars present at COEDA and beyond in the region to “read each other” and “take each other seriously.” This chimed with a sentiment summarised by HKU-rep Smith, in his comment that the coming COEDA programme has the aim of “valuing what unique and wholly equal strengths come with studying English in our part of the world.”

Hong Kong

Another unique challenge of this year’s conference was its very occurrence in Hong Kong on two significant dates in the history of the city: October 4th and 5th. These were the days either side of that stroke of midnight, at which the ‘anti-mask’ legislation came into force. Organising the conference was an especial challenge in the period leading up to this legislation’s enactment, since the choice to travel to Hong Kong has for a while seemed more fraught. Due to this, the organising committee of Wilson Chik, Giulia Usai, Nicky Runge and Sean Smith, with the support of School Head Prof. Julia Kuehn, deserve still more praise than the usual high quantity owed to a conference organizing committee. But following the protests which took place into the night of October 4th, the 5th became the first day on which the city awoke to find its transport network severely restricted. This altered the meaning of the city’s layout throughout the 5th, though the HKU campus and conference accommodation are so situated that proceedings were only minimally disrupted in practical terms. There is no doubt, however, that COEDA 2019 took place at a historical moment, whose significance will surely, going forward, continue to affect how the question “Why study English in Asia?” is understood.

Published on: November 18, 2019 < Back >