Journal of the History of Biology - Call for Papers for Regional Biologies: The Life Sciences in Asia
Collection Editor: Christine Luk
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he Journal of the History of Biology is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for a topical collection dedicated to “Regional Biologies: The Life Sciences in Asia.” This collection aims to advance scholarly conversation and research on the knowledge and practices of biology, biologists, and biological activities across a broad geographical region known as “Asia”–––the largest contingent on earth that encompasses one third of the world’s land mass. Beneath the broad expanse of territorial surface lies a diverse array of ecological, biomedical, national-natural, socio-cultural, political, economic and religious systems. The pieces we are seeking for this collection will bring historical exploration of life science, biological concepts and theory, and research of living organisms together with social acumen of Asia-specific thematic issues.
We welcome submissions that both concentrate and interrogate Asia as an analytical category. Although Asia as a regional focus brings with it the promise to expand the geographical scope of scholarship beyond Euro-American contexts, the allure of Asia as an idea could also be co-opted to essentialize and homogenize a broad region with historical complexity and biological diversity. We therefore encourage the submission of scholarship that defies the conventional analytical components of Asia along the geographical axes of East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Inner Asia, Central Asia, etc. While being vigilant of the trap of “Asia fundamentalism,” we are interested in scholarship that could bring history of biology into a sustained conversation with critical Asian scholarship. Prospective manuscripts may explore questions that include but are not limited to: How does the concept of Asia configure in the eighteenth-century European biological concept of the “economy of nature”? How do the geopolitical and biogeographical dimensions of natural history become entangled in the site-specific inquiry of Asia? How does the historical study of biology, ecology, genetics, and biotech relate to the social and cultural construction of Asia? Were Asia and Asianess intertwined in central biological doctrines such as natural selection and the modern evolutionary synthesis? Were the respective articulations of biological and medical theories of eugenics and contagion implicated with racial connotations that register with the hierarchy of races in Asia?
Our preference is assigned to submissions that highlight aspects of the biological sciences historically most closely associated with the making of modern Asia (i.e., since the eighteenth century or so). Historiography of life sciences intersecting with the scholarly conceptions of space and place of Asia are welcome. Likewise, philosophical exposition of biological principles and metaphysics of life are also welcomed as long as the philosophical comparison can shed light on the Asia-European exchanges of biological knowledge, materials, instrumentals, and resources. The overall aim is to present a plural understanding of the connections between episodes from the history of bioloy in the West and episodes from the history of modern Asia, and to critically assess the meanings of such cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural connections to different historical and contemporary actors.