Greetings and welcome to the Mid-Atlantic Association for Asian Studies! I am honored to serve as president of our association that brings together scholars, teachers, and practitioners of Asia through an annual conference and outreach activities in the Mid-Atlantic region.
We are very excited to announce that the 51st meeting of the MARAAS conference will be held at Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania on September 30-October, 2023! We welcome applications for panels of 3–4 people as well as individual paper submissions. Panel proposals may include a discussant; members of panels may be from the same institution. We also welcome poster presentations.
Our theme this year is Fragility and Resilience: Asian Studies and the Pandemic. The last three years has been challenging for the study of Asia and its cultures. This year's theme promotes a discussion of Asia within the larger context of the pandemi and its academic environments.
I am grateful to our Conference Manager, Mahua Bhattacharya, and our Program Manager, Jeffery Long, for their efforts in pulling together what promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking conference.
The MARAAS conference provides an excellent opportunity for graduate students to gain experience with academic conferences. Graduate students who present are eligible for the Marlene Mayo Graduate Student Award, which includes a cash prize of $500 and the opportunity to present their work at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference the following year. MARAAS also provides some travel grants for graduate students attending our regional conference.
More information about the conference and the call for papers is posted on the MARAAS website (maraas.org).
I look forward to seeing many of you at Elizabethtown in the fall!
Peggy A. Kong, MARAAS President, 2022-2023