Circle for Asian American Literary Studies

CFP: Asian Americanist Critique Outside Asian American Literature Courses

American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, May 27-30, 2010

Circle for Asian American Literary Studies–Pedagogy Roundtable

Proposal deadline: January 15, 2010

As specialists in Asian American literature working in contemporary configurations of English studies, we often teach courses that are not organized around nor focused solely on Asian American literature as a body of work. At the same time, scholars and teachers of other categories of literature often turn to Asian American texts in their courses. In both of these instances, we place Asian American texts in conversation … Continue Reading

“New Perspectives on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha”

Chair: Timothy Yu, University of Wisconsin

American Literature Association Conference, May 27-30, 2010, San Francisco
Standing panel organized by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies
Proposals due: January 1, 2010

Since her death in 1982, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s work has moved from avant-garde obscurity to canonical status within Asian American literature.  Her bookDictée is now a classroom staple and has inspired a growing body of critical literature.  But critics’ focus on Dictée, and on that book’s more narrative elements, has left unexplored the full complexity … Continue Reading

“Dialogues of Displacement: Intersections Between the Literary Texts of African and Asian Diaspora(s)”

Chair: Trevor Lee, City University of New York (CUNY)

“It is from those who have suffered the sentence of history – subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement – that we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking.” – Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture

Salman Rushdie identifies the diasporic subject as “fantasist” who “build[s] imaginary countries and tr[ies] to impose them on the ones that exist.”  Focusing on the role of literature as a … Continue Reading

“Asian American Literature: Ambivalent Precursors”

Chair: Merton Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

American Literature Association Conference, May 27-30, 2010, San Francisco
Standing panel organized by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies
Proposals due: January 1, 2010

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies invites papers for a panel on critical reevaluations of Asian American literature before 1970.  According to Kandice Chuh, Asian American studies initially relied on claiming America as a nation to contest racist essentialism.  But more recently, … Continue Reading

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies is presenting four panels for the American Literature Association conference, to be held May 21-24, 2009, in Boston. Here is the schedule: 

Thursday, May 21, 2009
1:30 – 2:50pm
“Margins within the Margins: Underrepresentation in Asian American Literary Criticism”
Chair: Catherine Fung, UC Davis
1. “Linh Dinh’s ‘The Most Beautiful Word’ as Vietnam War Poetry,” Merton Lee, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2. “The Homeland in Hmong American Literature,” Trevor Lee, Queens College
3. “Patricia Chao’s Monkey King: Subverting Incest and Race,” Amy Manning, University of New Hampshire
4. “Remapping Allegiances: Christianity, Confession, and the Existential Turn in Richard Kim’s The Martyred,” … Continue Reading

“Margins Within the Margins: Underrepresentation in Asian American Literary Criticism”
American Literature Association 2009 – Boston, MA – May 21-24, 2009

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS) is sponsoring a panel at the American Literature Association (ALA) conference in Boston on texts that remain understudied in Asian American literary criticism. This panel aims to draw attention to texts that were perhaps overlooked or ignored during their time of publication. (The “failure” and subsequent revival of John Okada’s No-No Boy serves as an example.) This panel also seeks work on experiences that remain underrepresented in Asian American literary production. … Continue Reading

CFP: Critical Perspectives on Jhumpa Lahiri (ALA 2009)
American Literature Association Conference, May 21-24, 2009, Boston
Standing panel organized by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies
Proposals due: January 15, 2009

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies invites papers for a panel on the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies (1999), The Namesake (2004) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008). Lahiri has enjoyed widespread critical and popular acclaim for bringing the Indian American immigrant and transnational experiences to the mainstream American literary consciousness. We seek papers on the ways in which Lahiri’s fiction expands the American literary canon and broadens … Continue Reading

Hemispheric Approaches to Asian American Literature
American Literature Association Conference
May 21-24, 2009, Boston

In her recent essay “Of Hemispheres and Other Spheres,” Kandice Chuh suggests that Asian Americanists explore “that complementary space between Asian American studies, conceived as a ‘national perspective’ that seeks to understand the link between the national and the global, and hemispheric studies, understood as paradigmatically concerned with the relationship of the Americas to the local or national.” How does Asian American literature change when viewed in a hemispheric perspective? What would it mean to interpret the “America” in Asian American literature far more broadly? What … Continue Reading

American Literature Association 2009 – Boston, MA – May 21-24, 2009

“Asian American Transgressive Texts”

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS) is sponsoring a panel at the American Literature Association (ALA) conference in Boston on “transgressive texts”—writings in which the author’s identity does not match the identity of the text in question. For literary critic Shelly Fisher Fishkin, transgressive texts are those “in which black writers create serious white protagonists, and white writers black ones” (“Desegregating” 121), but the CAALS wants to open up Fishkin’s definition to interrogate the differences that emerge when thinking about the category of “Asian … Continue Reading

CFP: Latina/o Literature and Culture Society of the American Literature Association, 2009
Westin Copley Place—Boston, MA

The Latina/o Literature and Culture Society of the American Literature Association seeks proposals for several panels at the American Literature Association’s 20th annual conference at the Westin Copley Place in Boston on May 21-24, 2009. We are particularly interested in seeking out papers that address the following topics:

• Latina/o Writers and Canon(s). Chair: Roberto Oscar Lopez. rolopez@csun.edu
• Spoken-Word Poetry. Chair: Elizabeth Jacobs. elj@aber.ac.uk
• Any aspect of the work of Junot Díaz. Chair: Alisa Braithwaite. akb1@mit.edu
• Latina/o Children’s Literature Chair: Tiffany Lopez. … Continue Reading