News

Call for Papers for Forthcoming Anthology

Popular Art And Culture in the Philippines in the Time Of Corona
Deadline for Submissions: 31 January 2021

About the Anthology

The forthcoming anthology, Popular Art and Culture in the Philippines in the Time of Corona, seeks to sense, scan, and speculate on what people in the Philippines have been making, doing, using, listening to, watching, playing, liking, sharing, and remixing in connection with the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to: inquire into popular artistic and cultural values, forms, and practices; document shifts in their modes of production, dissemination, reception, and remediation; and articulate the place of popular art and culture amid the said crisis, which, in the country, encompasses the experience of one of the longest lockdowns in the world.

The editors look forward to papers that evince a range of disciplines and dispositions in the course of their engagements with instances of popular art and culture during the pandemic, including those that are produced outside of the Philippines but circulate within it. Of particular interest are essays in which popular phenomena are conceived as aesthetic maneuvers that are resistive to social conventions, cultural institutions, markets, or the state.

The anthology is envisioned to serve as a vital resource for various courses in the humanities and the social sciences.

Suggested Themes for Contributions

Contributions may revolve around, but are not limited to, the following:

• The transformation of spaces, such as the development of work-from-home settings;
• Home-based hobbies and routines, such as online shopping, cooking, baking, and plant care;
• Active transportation, such as walking, cycling, and scootering;
• Health-seeking and health-preserving norms, artifacts, and behaviors;
• The face mask, the face shield, and other quarantine-related fashion and dress;
• Memes, webcomics, vlogs, podcasts, and other digital media forms;
• Video games, including genres, platforms, and player-generated content, such as game streams;
• Social media and messaging apps, platforms, and norms, including hashtag activism and cancel culture;
• Socially distanced and online gatherings, including political rallies and protests;
• Influencers, content creators, micro-celebrities, and the notion of the public figure;
• Watersheds in digital content, such as the rise of boys’ love and girls’ love series;
• Cultural institutions, such as museums, galleries, concert halls, and theaters;
• Media industries, such as film, television, and music; and
• Manifestations of cross-cultural “waves”, such as those from Korea (hallyu), Thailand, and Japan.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions must be made by e-mail to Dr. Eloisa May P. Hernandez, Editor (ephernandez@up.edu.ph) and Mr. Jaime Oscar M. Salazar, Managing Editor (jaime_oscar.salazar@up.edu.ph) on or before 31 January 2021.

Authors warrant that their manuscripts are original, unpublished, and not under consideration for another publication.

Manuscripts are expected to abide by the following specifications:

• File format: Microsoft Word;
• Font face and size: Arial or Times New Roman, 12 points;
• Formatting: Double-spaced and paginated;
• Language: English or Filipino;
• Word count: From between a minimum of 3,000 to a maximum of 6,000 words, including notes and references;
• Citation style: Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition; and
• Required accompaniment: 300-word abstract in English.

In addition, manuscripts in Filipino should follow the style recommendations of the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino.

All manuscripts will go through a single-blind review by two leading art/media scholars in the country.

The anthology will be submitted to the University of the Philippines Press for consideration.

To DAS undergraduate students:

To facilitate your online registration for the second semester, the Department of Art Studies would like to gather your requests for slots for academic and PE courses offered this coming 2nd Semester AY 2020-2021. Please indicate the course/subject (and even the time slot, if you prefer). For slot requests in PE courses, as a special privilege given to us by the College of Human Kinetics (CHK), kindly specify the particular PE class.

Kindly let us know your requests by filling out this form:

https://forms.gle/2h8acpN1D3V7mjEG6

on or before Thursday, 03 December 2020, 2:00 PM, so we could coordinate with the unit/s concerned.

It is with great sadness that we, the Department of Art Studies (DAS) at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, have learned of the passing of Prof. Aurora Roxas-Lim today, 16 November 2020, at the age of 84.

Prof. Roxas-Lim, who was teacher, colleague, mentor, and friend to a number of us, was one of the pioneering faculty members of the academic unit that is known today as the DAS. When she joined the unit, then called the Discipline of Humanities, it was a newly created offshoot of the three-way split of the English Department that was mandated in June 1959. The incipient unit, at the time, owed much to the pedagogical and theoretical approaches to the humanities that were practiced at the University of Chicago, and Prof. Roxas-Lim, having recently completed her master’s degree at the said institution, was a pivotal figure in the mediation of such approaches.

She pursued further studies in Southeast Asian art and archaeology at Cornell University from 1967 to 1971, and in 1984, which informed her work as a faculty member of the Asian Center, UP Diliman, from 1972 to 1999; she served as Dean from 1994 to 1997. Following her retirement from UP Diliman, she lectured at the DAS and for the Chinese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University.

Prof. Roxas-Lim was the curator of the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center from 1988 to 1994, and played an active role in several other cultural institutions, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization; the National Commission for Culture and the Arts; and the Philippine Association of Chinese Studies. On the basis of her extensive research, both at home and abroad, she published several texts dealing with art and archaeology, notably the monograph The Evidence of Ceramics as an Aid in Understanding the Pattern of Trade in the Philippines and Southeast Asia (1987) and the book Southeast Asian Art and Culture: Ideas, Forms, and Societies (2005).

Over the course of her career, Prof. Roxas-Lim emphasized the primacy of direct perception and experience in the study of art, while also recognizing the need to flesh out socio-historical context, employ interdisciplinary perspectives, and insist on the role that art plays in the betterment of Philippine society. She believed in giving back to the country, even if success is not assured. In a reflection regarding Guillermo Tolentino’s Oblation, on the occasion of UP’s centennial in 2008, she wrote, “[Despite] all the uncertainties, it is the determination in search of truth, courage, and moral integrity in all our undertakings that counts as our reward.”

We extend our deepest sympathies to Prof. Roxas-Lim’s bereaved family and friends.