Workshop: East Asia and West Asias - Dialogues in Past, Present, and Future Worldmaking
East Asia and West Asias: Dialogues in Past, Present, and Future Worldmaking
December 5-6, 2025 Göttingen University
This workshop brings together two separate networks of scholars: those who work on connections between the Middle East and East Asia through the religious, ideational and cultural angles (and particularly the contributors of the coming special issue “East Asia and Islamic Asia: Space, Time, and Mobility” that is to be published with Modern Asian Studies) and those studying the contemporary geopolitics of China and the Middle East. While there are faint intersections between these two clusters – mostly concerning the domestic/global ramifications of state policies vis-a-vis the religious sphere (in East Asia) at various junctures in time (the 1980s or late 2010s) – there is in fact very little overlap and mutual engagement between them. This could be accounted for perhaps by their distinct disciplinary foci, canons, and thematic interests, but it is indeed remarkable how wide the chasm is between these two clusters, even though there exists immense potential for mutual enrichment and the identification of new research directions.
The workshop is thus envisioned to help break this impasse, bringing together these clusters in dialogue to enable not only creative cross-fertilization, but to think through some of the big questions that tie the different parts of “West” (Middle East) and “East” Asia together. Most notably, the topics and questions of our interest include:
- The making of the “worlds” (‘awalim, shijie) and the networked solidarities across East and West Asian spaces
- Forging, re-forging, and destruction of such entanglements across temporal and spatial contexts
- Use of different vernaculars (i.e. religion, civilization, historical narratives) by state and non-state actors to describe and legitimate transnational/trans-regional connections
- Infrastructure (broadly construed) as a mediatory and contested site of inquiry
- Inter-state/national relations in a multipolar world order
- State control of transcendental religio-political ideologies
Hence our conceptualization of this workshop as dialogues of past, present and future worldmaking. The workshop is an invitation to explore, re-visit, and to build new bridges.
Location: Historische Sternwarte, Geismar Landstraße 11, 37083 Göttingen
Day 1: Dec 5, 2025 (Friday)
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10:00 – 10:15 |
Opening and Modern Asian Studies Forum Launch D. Sachsenmaier, M. Alsudairi, J. Jeong |
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10:15 – 12:15
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Session 1 – Mobility and Circulations across China and West Asia
Chair: Janice Hyeju Jeong (Simon Frazer University)
Cao Yin (Peking University) Indigenous Knowledge in Motion: The Shaanxi Mules, the Militarization of the Sufis, and the Panthay Exploration of Northern Burma
Mohammed Alsudairi (Australian National University) Yellow Peril with a Dash of Green: The Global Imagining of an Islamized China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Wang Yuting (American University of Sharjah) Migrants, Middlemen, and Mediators: Understanding Sino-Muslim Transnationalism in the Arab Gulf Region |
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12:15 – 13:30 |
Lunch Break |
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13:30– 15:30 |
Session 2 –East Asia as Islamic Asia – Trans-regional Horizons
Chair: Eva Orthmann (Göttingen)
Li Gang (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg) Politics of Orthodoxy, and Process of Othering: Esoteric Practices in the Case of Islamic Mysticism in China
Selçuk Esenbel (Bogaziçi University) The Tokyo Mosque and Mosques in Japan as Centers for Transnational Muslim Encounters in East Asia
Janice Jeong (Simon Fraser University) The Making of Transnational Islamic Networks in Cold War South Korea |
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15:30– 16:15 |
Coffee Break |
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16:15 – 17:15 |
Book Talk: Framing Islamic China as an Inter-Asian Phenomenon, Harvard UP; Rian Thum (Manchester University) |
Day 2: Dec 6, 2025 (Saturday)
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10:00 – 11:00 |
Book Talk: Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China: Debates on Hui Identity and Islamic Reform, Columbia UP, 2025 Hale Eroglu (Bogaziçi University) |
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11:00 – 11:15 |
Coffee Break |
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11:15 – 12:40
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Session 3 – The Question of the State
Chair: Eric van den Bussche (Tokyo University)
Hannah Theaker (University of Plymouth) Making Islam Chinese: the Sinicisation of Islam in Hui Communities
Hacer Gönül (Palacký University Olomouc) |
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12:40 – 14:00 |
Lunch Break |
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14:00 – 15:15 |
Roundtable – Gateways of Globalization in Chinese History
Chair: Mohammed Alsudairi (ANU Canberra)
Zhang Xin (Indiana University) Jiang Zhengyang (Tsinghua University) Francois Gipouloux (CNRS Paris) |
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15:15 – 15:45 |
Coffee Break |
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15:45 – 17:00 |
Roundtable – East Asia and the World
Chair: Dominic Sachsenmaier (Göttingen)
Xu Guoqi (Hong Kong University) Zhang Ning (Oxford University) Eric van den Bussche (Tokyo University) |
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17:00 – 17:30 |
Closing Remarks/ Dominic Sachsenmaier, Janice Hyeju Jeong, and Mohammed Alsudairi |
General Discussants:
Arzu Aygusuz (Göttingen)
Srirupa Roy (Göttingen)