Please join us for this year’s annual meeting, CAALS@ALA 2019, to take place Friday & Saturday, May 24 & 25, 2019 at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. As a sponsoring society of the American Literature Association, CAALS meets at the ALA Annual Conference.

Preliminary Program

Friday 5/24

8:10–9:30 / Session 7-F / Essex NC
(In)Visible: Asymmetries in Asian American Texts

Co-Chairs and Respondents: Na-Rae Kim, University of Connecticut–Storrs and Laura Wright, Berry College

1. “Seen and Heard, but Silenced: Nationalism and Music in Japanese Internment Camps,” Meghan Brown, University of Connecticut–Storrs

2. “Webcomics and the Futures of Asian American Literature,” Caroline Kyungah Hong, Queens College, City University of New York

3. “[In]Visible Language in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker,” Sara Lee, Binghamton University, State University of New York

11:10–12:30 / Session 9-F / Essex NW
The State of Asian America: Literary Representations of Asian American Space

Chair: Mai-Linh K. Hong, Bucknell University

1. “Refugee Mapmaking: Cartographies of Asian America,” Timothy K. August, Stony Brook University

2. “Moving Parts: Travel as Working Through Racial Identity in Catfish and Mandala,” Min Lee, University of California–San Diego

3. “‘A Geography of the Imagination’: Hey, Marfa and Place as Racialized Subject,” Alex Howerton, University of South Carolina

Respondent: Rei Magosaki, Chapman University

12:40–2:00 / Session 10-N / St. George D
Business Meeting: Circle for Asian American Literary Studies

6:00 / CAALS Dinner / RSVP to CAALS Co-Chairs

Saturday 5/25

9:40–11:00 / Session 15-E / Essex NE
The Dis-contents of Asian American Literary Form I

Chair: Chris A. Eng, Syracuse University

1. “Of Dis-contents and Malcontents: Asian American Closet Dramas,” Christine Mok, University of Rhode Island

2. “Pan(ic) Ethnicity: Model Minority Melancholia and the Afterlives of Vincent Chin,” Takeo Rivera, Boston University

3. “‘You Want to See the Hyphen’: Deconstructing Asian American Literature in Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book,” Douglas S. Ishii, Emerson College

11:10–12:30 / Session 16-E / Essex NE
The Dis-contents of Asian American Literary Form II

Chair: Timothy K. August, Stony Brook University

1. “The Politics of Asian American Form, or, Why There Are No Poems in Aiiieeeee!,” Timothy Yu, University of Wisconsin–Madison

2. “Writing the Invisible: Recovering Orality in Hmong American Poetry,” Aline Lo, Allegheny College

3. “Furious Dialectics: Anger, Diasporic Irony, and the Poetics of Failure in Li-Young Lee,” James Kim, Fordham University

Afternoon / Mentoring Event / contact CAALS Co-Chairs for details

3:40–5:00 / Session 19-E / Great Republic
Mediating Histories: Postmemory and Just Memory in Asian/American Literature

Chair: Caroline Kyungah Hong, Queens College, CUNY

1. “Daughters on Borders: South Asian American Postmemories and Uncanny Archives,” Dinidu Karunanayake, Miami University, Ohio

2. “Recovering Lost Histories of Labor and Protest of Early South Asian Americans,” Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University of New Jersey

3. “Fictions of the Japanese American Incarceration: Aesthetic Possibility and Political Agency in the Post-Redress Era,” Christine Kitano, Ithaca College

4. “‘Caught up in the symbolism of it all’: Neoliberalism, the Model Minority, and Islamophobia in The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” Peter Krause, Fordham University

Many thanks to our panel organizers: Na-Rae Kim, Laura Wright, Timothy August, Chris A. Eng, Caroline Kyungah Hong, and Min Lee.

For more information about the ALA Annual Conference, visit the American Literature Association website. A full ALA 2019 draft program is now available.