www.laostudies.org

The Faculty of Southeast Asian Studies at Arizona State University, www.asu.edu/asian and the Center for Lao Studies, www.laostudies.org San Francisco, CA are pleased to announce the Second International Conference on Lao Studies (ICLS) to be held on Thursday-Sunday, May 3-6, 2007 in the ASU Memorial Union Tempe, Arizona, USA.  The main objective of this conference is to promote Lao studies by providing an international forum for scholars to present and discuss various aspects of Lao studies.

Rationale
The Lao PDR today has a population of roughly five million people, comprising an amazing complex of ethnolinguistic groups.  Moreover, the number of people in the Lao diaspora numbers as many as twenty-five million. In recent years there has been increased interest in Laos and its peoples as subjects of serious research and discussion by scholars and the interested public alike.  Scholarly publications on topics pertaining to Laos have flourished in the last several decades and the international media have helped to cultivate interest in the region.

Program
The program will include invited speakers, paper presentations, panel presentations, exhibits, performances, and cultural activities. 

The 2007 conference will feature presentations on any topic concerning Lao Studies.  Topics include all ethnolinguistic groups of Laos (e.g. Mon-Khmer, Hmong-Mien, Tibeto-Burman, Lao-Tai), the Isan Lao and other Lao (Tai) groups in Thailand, cross-border ethnic groups in neighboring countries, and overseas diaspora heritage groups. We welcome both proposals for panels and abstracts for individual papers on a wide range of interests including but not limited to history, politics, development and planning, environment, classical literatures, linguistics, music, sports, science, health, religion and ritual, ethnic groups, media and art history, and women and society.

The languages to be used in the conference will be English, French and Lao.

Abstracts for Panels and Individual Papers
To present a paper at the conference, abstracts must be submitted by the following deadlines.

January 22, 2007 is the deadline for panel proposals. For panel proposals, please provide the title of the panel and a brief paragraph describing its goal/rationale, participants’ names, affiliations and e-mail address, the titles of their presentations and a paragraph-long abstract for each presentation.

January 22, 2007 is the deadline for individual paper abstracts. For individual papers please provide no longer than a one page abstract with the title of abstract, author name(s), author affiliation and e-mail address, and content. 

Time Limitation: Presentations will be 20 minutes with 5 minutes for discussion.
Panel Proposals and Abstracts must be typed and formatted.  You may submit by postal mail or by an e-mail MS-Word attached file or at the conference website.

Send abstracts to: icls2@asu.edu (or)
Arizona State University
ICLS2/Center for Asian Research
Box 871702
Tempe, AZ 85287-1702, USA

Registration
Early registration deadline is April 5, 2007

Additional information on registration will be available on line at www.laostudies.org. Information on travel and accommodation and plans for publication of papers will also be available on the website.

For more information please contact:

Arizona State University
Center for Asian Research
Faculty of Southeast Asian Studies
Box 871702
Tempe, AZ 85287-1702
Email: icls2@asu.edu
Phone: +1 480 965 0118
FAX: +1 480 965 8317

Center for Lao Studies
1201 San Bruno Avenue, Suite 1
San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: +1 415 401 6255
Email: laolanxang@yahoo.com

Notice to All Who Plan to Attend
Please go to the conference website soon and indicate there that you “plan to attend the conference.”This does not necessarily mean that you intend to give a presentation.  Your cooperation in doing this will greatly assist the conference planners in estimating how many will attend and what kinds of facilities will be needed.  Thank you.