CAALS is pleased to announce CFPs for ALA 2025!
May 21-24, 2025, Boston, MA
Panel 1: Asian American Literature after 1965
The historic shift in immigration policies in 1965 radically changed the Asian American demographic and cultural landscape, ending pre-existing quotas from prior immigration policy and shaping new migration patterns from Asia. Focusing on a generation largely born since the mid-1960s, Min Hyoung Song’s The Children of 1965 (2013) introduced Asian American writers whose narratives revolved around the shifting geopolitical landscapes within a newly globalized cultural imagination, while grappling with race and racialization.
In Asian American Fiction after 1965 (2024), Chris Fan points out that by the 1990s, more than 70 percent of the Asian American population was foreign born. Interested in what makes an Asian American text Asian, rather than Asian American, he suggests that all post-65 generations must engage with a racial form mediated by occupational concentration, science fictionality, and post-65 Asian American authorship.
This CAALS-sponsored panel invites papers which further consider the post-1965 terrain of Asian American literary and cultural expressions. The panel does not limit itself to the effects of the globalized economy and STEM-driven highly skilled Asian immigrants arriving in the U.S. after 1965. After all, the raising of the immigration quota also accommodated refugees from war-torn countries in Cold War-era military conflicts in Asia, who were joined by those affected by post-9.11 U.S. involvement in Central Asia. Asian American writers whose family immigration history extends prior to 1965 are also developing new creative expressions and sensibilities around memory work in a globalized world operating in perpetual cultural amnesia, and what they have to say is also of interest.
We are interested in papers which expand on Song and Fan’s formulations of post-1965 Asian American literature, but also in approaches which resist or challenge their notions. Possible topics could address:
- How does race and racialization continue to shape Asian American literature?
- How do new forms of transnational migration from Asia interact with America’s racialized landscape?
- What alternative regional, professional, political and/ or cultural formations should we consider?
Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief CV (500 words max) to Akash Belsare at abels3@uis.edu by Monday, January 20th, 2025. Please be sure to mention any technological needs for your presentation.
Panel 2: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer at 10 and Southeast Asian Diasporic Stories Today
A landmark work in Asian American literature, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has been adapted for television by HBO. One decade after the book’s release, and 50 years after the official end of the Vietnam War, this panel considers how the book’s cultural impact has shaped the ways that Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian diasporic literature circulates both in the United States and abroad.
We are looking for submissions that examine how The Sympathizer and Southeast Asian diasporic literature reflects, responds to, or prompts shifts in Asian American cultural politics, and how the publication, reception, and circulation of Nguyen’s novel helps us rethink Asian American subjectivity today.
Potential papers may wish to consider, but need not be limited to, the following:
- Nguyen’s attention to war and refugee displacement remains painfully urgent ten years on. What aspects if the novel are still timely? Where may its relevance fall short?
- Given Nguyen’s interest in Southeast Asian–Southeast Asian American exchange and decentering the United States, how can the novel be understood in the context of global structures? If the novel is read as world literature, what are the implications for Asian American and/or refugee literary form?
- How does The Sympathizer engage in dialogue with other Asian diasporic texts?For example, how does this book (or its sequel, The Committed) extend Nguyen’s wider critical or creative corpus, or other work in Southeast Asian American literary studies?
- How does contemporary Southeast Asian diasporic literature—including the Sympathizer novel and its related media—engage Nguyen’s concept of “just memory” in its depiction of the nation, gender, sexuality, and so forth?
- As Asian American stories gain greater visibility in mainstream media, how can we assess Nguyen’s call for “narrative plenitude”? What conclusions may the Pulitzer’s canonization of The Sympathizer, or the commercialization of the HBO series, offer critics?
- Is there “another” Viet Thanh Nguyen on the horizon? How will achievements be measured for Southeast Asian diasporic authors after the success of Nguyen’s work? In what ways might a focus on The Sympathizer have drawn attention away from other developments in Southeast Asian diasporic literature?
If interested, please send a short abstract (maximum 250 words) and a brief one-page CV to Hui Min Annabeth Leow (annabeth@u.nus.edu) by January 20th, 2025. Do mention any technological needs your presentation may have.
Panel 3: OPEN CALL for Asian American Literary Studies
We welcome proposals on any aspect of Asian American literature and culture. Our aim is to provide a forum for new and innovative work in Asian American literary studies.
Please email your proposal (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 500 words) to Timothy K. August at timothy.august@stonybrook.edu by Monday, January 20th, 2025. Please be sure to mention any technological needs for your presentation.