The Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University, the Burma Studies Foundation and the Burma Studies Group invite scholars and students to examine intertwined memories, legacies, and histories of interaction between and throughout the different regions of Burma/Myanmar.

The concept of legacy lies at the crossroads of the back-and-forth between knowledge of the past and awareness of the present. Legacies are stories we must deal with in our public and private lives every day and can range from something as personal as a family story passed from generation to generation, to something as widespread as a national origin narrative.

Legacies can manifest in habits of thought, expectations, or behaviors. Legacies can be political, emerging in voting tendencies and recurring public policy issues, or can be inheritances of political systems and forms of authority. Legacies can be economic, evolving in patterns of growth. A legacy can exist in law, in court decisions, in government policies that change when challenged or revert to older practices in times of reaction. Legacies can be institutional, growing as part of organizations, or ideological, such as capitalism, imperialism, scientific racism, socialism, or militarism. Legacies can be laid down in stone, in bronze, in lacquer, in wood, in textiles, in musical traditions, in museum exhibits, in landscapes, in architecture, and in all manner of artistic forms. As the recent coup in Burma shows, aftermath of legacies can be tumultuous, and legacies cast a shadow on the future trajectory of the country as well as its people, particularly young generations.

We welcome scholarship that understands Burma as a distinctive cultural crossroads in a larger Asian geographical, political and historical context. We thus encourage contributions that attempt to bridge different spaces, times, and disciplines, which includes (but is not limited to) history, philosophy, religion, literature, art history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, political science, gender studies, environmental studies, and law.

We accept submissions in a variety of formats including organized panels, roundtables, workshops, book talks, film launches, poetry, and performances.

Apart from individual papers, we accept other presentation formats to be given in any language in relation to Burma/Myanmar (but titles and abstracts should be submitted in English or Burmese).

We ‌also want to invite members of the diaspora and Burmese Americans to share the knowledge and practices of their communities and civic society organizations. Participants who need a visa to attend the conference will receive early notification of acceptance to help in the visa processing.  Please fill in the “visa section” in the submission form.

Submit your proposal here.