HISTORY, STORY, NARRATIVE
THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC FORUM PRESENTS THE ASIAN CONFERENCE ON ARTS & HUMANITIES THE ASIAN CONFERENCE ON LITERATURE
ART CENTER KOBE, KOBE, JAPAN MARCH 30 – APRIL 2, 2017
ACAH LIBRASIA 2017
The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities The Asian Conference on Literature Conference Theme
History, Story, Narrative
Historians are far from the only interested party in writing history. In a sense it is an interest we all share – whether we are talking politics, region, family birthright, or even personal experience. We are spectators to the process of history while being intimately situated within its impact and formations.
How, then, best to write it? Is it always the victor’s version? Have we not begun increasingly to write “history from below”, that lived by those who are not at the top of the power hierarchy? Are accounts of history always gender- in ected, hitherto, at least, towards men rather than women ho gets to tell history if the issue is colonialism or class? How does geography, the power of place, intersect with history? What is the status of the personal story or narrative within the larger frame of events?
This conference addresses issues of writing history from literary and other discursive perspectives. That is to say: novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, travel logs and a variety of styles of essay. One thinks of Shakespeare’s history plays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Shi Nai’an’s The Water Margin, Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine. It also addresses oral history, the spoken account or witness, the Hiroshima survivor to the modern Syrian migrant.