Australian Society for Asian Humanities Australian Society for Asian Humanities Australian Society for Asian Humanities

About ASAH

Promoting Asian Studies in Australia since 1956

The Australian Society for Asian Humanities promotes the knowledge of Asia in Australia and provide a venue for scholars working in Asian humanities to present their work to their peers and others interested in Asia. We regularly run lectures, discussions and exhibitions to encourage the study of Asian history and culture.

Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities (JOSAH)

The Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities (JOSAH) is the society’s flagship publication and has been issued continuously since 1960. It is the oldest journal on Asia currently published in Australia. Please visit the journal’s website at josah.org!

JOSAH  has been published continuously since 1960 and is the longest-running journal on Asia in Australia. E-texts are available through INFORMIT while hard copies can be purchased by email to josaheditor@sydney.edu.au. Its former name is JOSA: Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia.

Current Issue
Mitsukoshi, cover design, 21.3 (Showa 6: 1931). Courtesy Harvard-Yenching Library collection.

JOSAH Vol. 52: “What’s in A Name? After Orientalism“.

Guest-edited by Olivier Krischer and Meaghan Morris

Marking the sixtieth anniversary of Australia’s oldest journal in Asian Studies, this special issue was inspired by a 2018 symposium on the legacy of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), as well as by the centenary of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney.

This historical orientation encouraged us not only to consider the influence of Said’s work over a forty year period but more widely to reflect on the worldly processes that have created and changed “Asian Studies” over the decades, renaming areas, redistributing resources and reshaping disciplinary clusters.

Much debate about Orientalism in English has been academically West-centric, invoking a smooth space of “post-colonialism” or confined to specialist silos. For this issue, we invited essays that engage with naming in relation to specific histories and locations of scholarship, ranging from the University of Sydney in the Australian context (Adrian Vickers) to Islamic Central Asia and the Russian-Soviet Orient (Adeeb Khalid), to the “contemporary Asia” constructed in art exhibitions (C.J. Wee Wan-ling), and to Maritime Southeast Asia (Imran bin Tajudeen).

This broadening of geographic frames of reference is extended by a “Roundtable” of eleven short, personal reflections by scholars working from a range of diverse disciplines, worldly situations, and individual practices as they look back to and beyond Said’s Orientalism.