Category: CFP

Please consider submitting a paper proposal for one of our two CAALS-organized panels for AAAS 2019 (April 25–27, 2019, in Madison, WI)!

Panel Title: Racial Ambiguity and Racial Passing: Reading the Ungovernable Body in Mixed-Race Asian American Literature

Chair: Roberta Wolfson, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

In her book Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South (2010), Leslie Bow claims that Asian Americans are positioned between the two poles of black-and-white US race relations in a racially ambiguous liminal space called “the national in-between” (18). Asian Americans of mixed-race heritage are doubly positioned within this in-between space, as they are rendered racially ambiguous both in larger national conversations about racial categorization and in debates about racial identity within Asian American communities. Mixed-race Asian American subjects, then, particularly those who are able to pass as White or non-Asian, can be understood as existing within a space of ungovernability characterized by their ability to expose race as a social construction and to destabilize race as a legitimate factor in the state’s allocation of public resources and social privileges.

This panel invites papers about literature, art, and film by Asian American writers and artists that explore racial ambiguity and/or racial passing within the mixed-race Asian American experience. Can racial passing be understood as a fugitive act or as a form of seeking sanctuary? How does the mixed-race Asian American body challenge the state’s biopolitical and necropolitical attempts to categorize and control racial bodies? In what ways might the ungovernability of the mixed-race Asian American body fuel antiracist work or activism? What is the responsibility, if any, of mixed-race Asian American subjects to engage with or problematize the state’s demands for the registration, vetting, and surveillance of specific racial bodies?

Please email your abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 500 words) to Roberta Wolfson at wolfson@calpoly.edu by Wednesday, September 19, 2018.

Panel Title: Fugitivity in the Asian American Literary Imaginary

Chair: Kai Hang Cheang, University of California, Riverside

As Sau-ling Wong points out in “The Politics of Mobility,” physical movements in the US signify very differently to people of color and their white counterparts. While the mobility of the white settlers in the American frontier provided them with homesteading and entrepreneurial opportunities, for the brown and black populations who were enslaved and/or displaced from their homes by settler colonialism, mobility was mostly invested in fugitivity. This panel seeks to think about Asian American mobility—a topic that is often discussed within the socio-economic framework of upward mobility—through the lens of fugitivity, a concept that Fred Moten theorizes in the context of black studies as a “desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument.” The longing for fugitivity is prevalent in Asian American literature too. For instance, Susan Choi’s 2003 novel American Woman presents an account of an Asian American female outlaw on the run with the character of Jenny Shimada navigating her roadmaps for survival while hiding out in the Rockies and the plains. Thinking with such fugitive figures as Jenny, and the topoi of fugitivity writ large, this panel welcome papers that further articulate the contours of (diasporic) Asian American fugitivity: what is its course, directionality, history, and geography? How is it expressed in fiction, poetry, drama, and other literary mediums? And what do these various definitions of fugitivity imply in their respective contexts?

Please email your abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 500 words) to Kai Hang Cheang at kai.cheang@email.ucr.edu by Wednesday, September 19, 2018.

Please consider submitting a proposal for the first CAALS-organized AAAS panel!

CFP for AAAS 2018

Panel Title: Re-imagining (the) Work in/of Literature
Chair: Mark Chiang, University of Illinois at Chicago

The resurgence of populism both in the US and abroad has been fueled by widespread skepticism regarding the capacity of free trade and economic globalization to generate meaningful employment for large numbers of workers. Such questions are not new, of course, but the current wave of political crises sweeping the globe have only intensified them. This panel seeks to return to fundamental questions about the nature of work, especially as it is represented in literature and other forms of cultural production. What kinds of activities are or are not recognized as work, or as socially productive or valuable? How is work conceptualized or rendered meaningful in cultural texts as opposed to other discourses of the economy? What roles do money and markets play in the (dis)organization of work, and how have people and communities sought to contest or advance those dynamics? We are especially interested in papers that explore the connections between literary and cultural production, and other forms of work. In particular, how do Asian American literary texts conceive or re/imagine work and its meanings in relation to, or in terms of, the work of art? What new possibilities do such imaginings open up for the organization of social life? This panel seeks to rethink how alternative or expanded conceptions of work might enable new kinds of political or cultural mobilizations in our contemporary moment of the destabilization and casualization of labor.

Please email your abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 500 words) to Mark Chiang at mchiang@uic.edu by Wednesday, September 27, 2017.

This panel is being organized by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS). For more information, please visit our website at http://caals.org/.

This year’s American Literature Association conference is back in Boston. Below are the four 2017 CFPs for the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS). Please keep in mind that if your proposal is accepted, you will need to become a member of CAALS in order to present, in addition to joining ALA and registering for the conference.

1. CFP: Formal and Aesthetic Values in Asian American Literature

Sponsored by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies
Chair: Christine Kitano, Ithaca College

In the introduction to Literary Gestures: The Aesthetic in Asian American Writing, Sue-Im Lee writes, “The prevailing strength of late twentieth century Asian American literary discourse, then, lies in arguing the constructed nature of human organizations—the complex ways in which power operates in the formation of particularly racialized subjects called ‘Asian American.’” She points to how the study of Asian American (and other minority) literature initially used race as a lens of analysis, then moved beyond race to “other social categorizations and institutions such as gender, class, sexuality, nation, capital, labor, and globalism.” While she sees the importance of such cultural and materialist examinations of literature, she claims there has not been enough balance in the way we treat such texts. While cultural and materialist examinations have been primary, considering texts as literary objects has been less of a priority.

However, at this time, it seems we can afford to prioritize readings of Asian American texts as works of literature, as objects of art. Lee writes, “Asian American literary criticism at large has been slow to extend the analysis of the examination of Asian American literary works as aesthetic objects—objects that are constructed by and through deliberate choices in form, genres, traditions, and conventions.” In other words, the features that fall under the study of aesthetics—formal and genre conventions, literary devices, figurative language—are as equally “constructed” as more material concerns (race, gender, class, etc.). A study of aesthetics, then, will necessarily be critical as well.

This panel invites papers that delve into the study of form and aesthetics in Asian American literature. How do we read Asian American literature through an aesthetic and/or formal lens? What should we pay attention to? Where do we find value? Studies of individual authors are welcome, as are more global studies of trends in Asian American literary aesthetics. Creative works with an accompanying critical analysis are also welcome.

Please e-mail a 250-300 word abstract to Christine Kitano at ckitano@ithaca.edu by January 25, 2017. Be sure to mention any technological needs for your presentation. Please note that if your proposal is accepted and you agree to participate on the panel, you will need to become a member of CAALS prior to presenting, in addition to joining ALA and registering for the conference. For more information, please visit our website at http://caals.org/.

2. CFP: Transnationalism from Below in Asian/American Literature 

Sponsored by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS)
Chair: Mark Chiang, University of Illinois at Chicago

Questions of globalization or transnationalism have been central to discussions in Asian American literary and cultural studies for several decades yet they remain in a nascent stage. Transnationalism in literature is often identified with the external representational or referential dimensions of a text, i.e., in terms of the social or global relations, institutions, or political entities that are depicted or indexed in a text.

Beyond these apparent manifestations of transnationalism, though, where else might we detect its signs, reflections, or effects in the literary work? What, in other words, are the specifically literary dimensions of transnationalism in Asian/American literature? What does transnationalism look like from below? What are its hidden aspects? These might include questions of form, genre, audience, poetics, language, etc. And how does the recognition of these hidden dimensions of the transnational text impact our understanding of the politics of culture and communities around the globe, whether they are Asian American, or Asian diasporic, or others? How can these analyses contribute to the ongoing work of building connections between Asian American studies and Asian studies, or to a field of global Asian cultural production?

This panel invites papers that explore what transnationalism means in Asian American literature, or what it looks like, and it asks what might be learned or changed through the revelation of these obscure and occluded contours of the transnational in Asian/American literature.

Please email a proposal (max. 250 words) and a brief CV to Mark Chiang (mchiang@uic.edu) by January 25, 2017. Be sure to mention any technological needs for your presentation. Please note that if your proposal is accepted and you agree to participate on the panel, you will need to become a member of CAALS prior to presenting, in addition to joining ALA and registering for the conference. For more information, please visit our website at http://caals.org/.

3. CFP: Asian American Literature and the Politics of the Popular

Sponsored by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS)
Chair: Caroline Kyungah Hong, Queens College, City University of New York

At a time when US politics and popular culture appears more entwined than ever, this panel focuses on the intersections between Asian American literature and the popular. The popular, in this case, is meant broadly and encompasses a wide range of forms and genres, sites and processes that are rife with struggles and contradictions. How do we situate Asian American literature within, against, or on the margins of popular culture or the mainstream? What can we learn from studying a wide range of popular Asian American writing, e.g., in genre fiction like fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, or romance, and in forms like comics or blogs? How do pop-cultural figures and texts function in Asian American literary texts? What are the relationships between Asian American literature and popular or populist politics?

Please email a proposal (max. 250 words) and a brief CV to Caroline Hong (caroline.hong@qc.cuny.edu) by January 25, 2017. Be sure to mention any technological needs for your presentation. Please note that if your proposal is accepted and you agree to participate in the roundtable, you will need to become a member of CAALS prior to presenting, in addition to joining ALA and registering for the conference. For more information, please visit our website at http://caals.org/.

4. CFP: Roundtable on Asian American Literary Studies in the Trump Era

Sponsored by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS)
Chair: Jinah Kim, California State University, Northridge

This roundtable will focus on the challenges of reading, writing, researching, and teaching Asian American literature after Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency—work that appears to be more urgent and consequential than ever. Trump’s campaign was notable for the ways it tapped the well of deep-seated U.S. anti-Chinese hysteria and for reviving the specter of WWII-era Japanese American internment for Muslims, portending both contentious transpacific geopolitics as well as the centrality of Asian American culture, history, and dissent against this new political regime.

What roles can and should Asian American literary studies play in the Trump era, in the face of increasing threats to democracy and academic freedom? How does the institutionalization of Asian American studies within the context of the neoliberal university constrain possibilities for dissent and critique? More broadly, what possibilities and strategies does Asian American literature offer with its recovered histories and alternative futures? For example, given the U.S. legacies of war and colonialism in Asia, authors such as Chang-rae Lee, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Jessica Hagedorn describe U.S. white supremacy unfolding simultaneously with authoritarian regimes in South Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam, offering glimpses into what a U.S. authoritarian future may look like as well as ways to imagine surviving and resisting such a future.

This roundtable is envisioned as an open forum for students, scholars, teachers, and writers of Asian American literature to discuss concerns and ideas post-election. Presentations might reflect on post-election experiences, analyze specific Asian American literary texts as sites of political resistance or of complicity, and/or offer innovative scholarly and pedagogical practices. Each participant will prepare 8–10 minutes of remarks, to be followed by at least 30 minutes of open discussion. We welcome works-in-progress and creative or nontraditional academic presentations.

Please email a proposal (max. 250 words) and a brief CV to Jinah Kim (jinahnorthwestern@gmail.com) by January 25, 2017. Be sure to mention any technological needs for your presentation. Please note that if your proposal is accepted and you agree to participate in the roundtable, you will need to become a member of CAALS prior to presenting, in addition to joining ALA and registering for the conference. For more information, please visit our website at http://caals.org/.