USACLALS

Call for Papers

Department of English
Maharaja Agrasen College
(University of Delhi)

Vasundhara Enclave, Delhi-110096

In collaboration with:

FORTELL (Forum for Teachers of English Language and Literature)is organizing a two-day international conference

De-territorializing Diversities: Cultures, Literatures & Languages of the Indigenous
(February 6 & 7 2013)

Historically, diverse and multicultural India has partnered many in addressing the paradoxes of identity and ethnicity of its first peoples and the indigenous. Colonial histories, pluralistic economies, multicultural social landscape and displaced indigenous interests, intersect its dominant discourses in dynamic expressions through its literature, language, cinema, folklore and other cultural matrices.

This two-day trans-disciplinary international conference explores the dynamics of the problematic relationship within discourses hitherto marginalized and combating extinction. These ‘other’ voices, their lived experiences and ideological burdens need to be excavated and resurrected through meaningful explorations. We invite scholars/ littérateurs/practitioners/folklorists and cultural scientists from all disciplines and professions to deliberate and share their personal and research experiences in a collective, deliberative and dialogical academic environment. This conference offers the opportunity to consider at the level of both theory and practice, new means for managing diversities, establishing a sense of belonging and new methods for engaging the ‘other’.

The subjects under consideration will be drawn from but are not limited to the written and the oral, cinema, theatre, sound, music, festival performances, geography, art, economics, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, systems study, cultural studies perspectives, third-world aesthetics, subaltern studies, new media, political activism, religion, utopian studies, and the like. These are indicators only and contributions in related areas are also welcome.

Papers are invited, but not restricted to the following sub-themes:

· Managing Diversities: tradition and innovation
· Common/Uncommon registers: India and other nations
· Stories of healing and reconciliation
· Re-imagined/ing communities
· Endangered Cultures: Erasure & Extinction
· Tangible and intangible discourses & cultures
· Marginalised aesthetics, literatures & pedagogies
· Geographies of non-urban: migration and movement
· Indigenous practices and social division / cohesion
· Colonial impacts and Postcolonial perspectives
· Emerging Voices/Noises: indigenous cosmopolitanism & literary nationalism
· Indigenous rhetoric and theory
· Indigenous art and artists
· Life Writing and native literatures
· Cultural memories: Knowledge Keeping and preservation
· Cinematic representations and stereotypes
· Using Local Literatures in English
· Pedagogy of/about the indigenous
· Taking indigenous cultures to the classroom

Details of abstract submission, travel & hospitality

Please email a 300-word abstract with the requisite information (paper title, name, designation, affiliation, contact information: Address, email ID & phone no.) along with a 75-word bio note to maconf2013@gmail.com latest by 31st October 2012. Early submissions are welcome.

The subject line of your email should read “Abstract MACONF 2013: (YOUR NAME)

All abstracts will be peer reviewed before acceptance.

In your proposal, please outline your presentation plan and any audio - visual and space needs. We also seek proposals for panels, workshops and performances that address the central theme of the conference.

Presentation time for the delegates will be to 15 – 20 minutes.

Accepted abstracts will require a full draft paper, double-spaced, in not less than 3000 words and not exceeding 4000 words to be submitted electronically in MS-Word by 20th December 2012. Select papers presented at the conference will be published as part of a digital or paperback book.

Local Delegates from Delhi and those who do not need accommodation are required to pay registration fees of Rs 800 which will entitle them to the conference kit and meals.

Delegates from India and abroad requiring accommodation are required to pay Rs. 1500/ USD 60 which will entitle them to accommodation, conference kit & meals.

Overseas delegates may contact us at the given email id for payment details.

Mode of payment will be via Demand Draft drawn on any nationalized bank payable to Maharaja Agrasen College, Delhi payable at Delhi latest by 20th December 2012.

Delegates will have to fund their own travel to Delhi, India: venue of the conference.

Boarding and Lodging (on shared basis) will be provided to limited delegates at University guesthouses/hostels etc from the afternoon of 5th February till forenoon of 8th February, 2013. Early registration and confirmation on a first - cum- first serve basis will be the criteria for the same.

Important Dates:

Last Date for Abstracts
31st October, 2012

Intimation of acceptance
15th November, 2012

Last Date for Registration Fees
20th December 2012

Last Date for complete paper
20th December 2012

Conference:

6th and 7th February, 2013 (Wednesday & Thursday)

Invited Speakers
1. Dr Jeannette Armstrong, first indigenous woman novelist of Canada & Director, Enowkin Center, Pentictin, Kelowna, Canada
2. Prof. Julie Cruikshank, author and anthropologist, Canada.
3. Prof. Malashri Lal, Dean, Academic Activities & Projects, University of Delhi
4. Prof. Anjali Gera Roy, IIT, Kharagpur
5. Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet and critic, Delhi
6. Prof. Jawahar Handoo, President, Indian Folklore Congress, Mysore
7. Prof. Ronald Strickland, Michigan Technological University USA
8. Dr Deana Reder, Simon Frazer University, Canada
9. Dr Beatrice Smith, Michigan Technological University, USA
10. Prof Saugata Bhaduri, Jawaharlal University, Delhi
11. Dr Nancy Wochowich, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
12. Dr Simi Malhotra, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi

Please visit http://mac.du.ac.in/ for further announcements and details.

Hope to see you at MAC in Delhi!

Prem Kumari Srivastava Gitanjali Chawla
Convenor Organizing Secretary

Maconf2013@gmail.com

CFP: RACE AND THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA
13th Annual SALA (South Asian Literary Association) Conference
Holiday Inn Brookline, Boston, USA
2-3 January 2013

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: Friday 31st AUGUST 2012

Labeled “Pakis,” “coolies,” “ragheads,” “heathens,” “Hindoos,” and “wogs,” South Asians have been racialized historically and across multiple geographies. As a result of forced and voluntary migrations over the centuries, they have been inserted in, impacted on and contributed to the racial economies of U.K., North America, Africa, Caribbean, Asia-Pacific, and so on. The increasing racial diversity of populations in different parts of the world demands a continuous engagement with race and its coordinates of racism and racialism. From science-driven taxonomies to contemporary sociocultural explorations, literature, film, theatre, and other cultural productions have become sites that articulate, confront or contend with multiple registers of race and continue to model new meanings. The hierarchies ascribed to colour underpin existing understandings of race as well as forge alternative discourses to study it. For the SALA 2013 conference, we seek to place as central the category of race as constitutive of the South Asian diasporic experience to examine how the “old” and the “new” diasporas of South Asians have been shaped by and/or have responded to race and racism—imperial or neo-imperial—in a variety of geographies. We invite papers on literature, film, culture, criticism, and activism that explore different meanings of race and experiences of South Asians in the diaspora and focus especially on the complex interplay between race and gender, sexuality, religion, socio-economic class, age, language, etc. Contributors may explore, but are not restricted to, the following questions and topics:

 How have different formulations and cultural productions of diaspora conceptualized and/or considered race?

 In what ways—historically and in the present—have geopolitical and global economic forces affected the reception and racialization of South Asians?

 How do the contested discursive practices of difference, such as assimilationism and multiculturalism, unsettle politics of identity that are couched in racialized nation-building projects?

 In what ways have diasporic artists and writers articulated or visualized these differences in literature, cinema, and other productions?

 How have South Asians responded to or positioned themselves with regards to indigenous peoples and other ethno-racial minorities?

 How might the intricacies related to the discriminatory attitudes towards the “other” implicate the racial subjectivities of South Asians?

Possible topics may include:

 Race: historical and contemporary processes
 Comparative Racializations
 Race and Colourism
 Race and Law (legal systems, immigration policies, exclusionary acts, citizenship laws, etc)
 Race and Popular culture (brown-face, Indo-chic, media representations, etc.)
 Race and Space (rural/urban, ghettoes/ethnic enclaves, local/national, etc.)
 Race, gender, and sexuality (queer diaspora, race and masculinities, honor killings, transnational feminisms)
 Race and the Body (labouring bodies, sexed subjects, outsourcing reproduction, tortured bodies, etc.)
 Race and Violence (everyday routine violence, political, hate crimes, race-riots, etc.)
 Race in/and Academia
 Race and Politics and the Electorate
 Race and Health
 Race and Religion (“clash of civilizations,” racializing of religion, etc.)
 Race and Sports
 Race and Nation/Nation-State (long-distance nationalism, cultural nationalism, etc.)
 Racial Melancholia
 Race and Visual Arts
 Race and Technology (performing race in virtual/online communities, racism in digital environments, South Asian digital humanities, etc.)
 Race and Military, Police, and other organizations
 Policing race, profiling, surveillance
 Resistance, activism, coalition-building
 Multiple migrations and racial subjectivities
 Official/unofficial categories and racial formations (visible minorities, people of color, model minority, census designations, etc.)
 “Markers” of race (accent, clothes, skin color, etc.)
 Color consciousness in South Asian societies (premium on fairness, caste-race analogies, intra-minority prejudices, etc.)
 Transnationalism and globalization (outsourcing, adoption, etc.)

Please send a 250-300-word abstract of your paper and a 5-6 line bio-note listing your institutional affiliation and current email address by Friday, 31st August 2012 to the conference co-chairs at the email addresses given below. The subject line of your email should contain the words “SALA 2013.” If you have any questions, please feel free to email the co-chairs

Dr. Anupama Arora, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth aarora@umassd.edu and
Dr. Prabhjot Parmar, University of the Fraser Valley prabhjot.parmar@ufv.ca

2012 MELUS/USACLALS Program

The 26th Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) and the 8th Conference of the United States chapter of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (USACLALS)

April 19-22, 2012
Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, California

Hosted by Santa Clara University

THEME: Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism

As an ongoing and vital process through which societies and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communications, economics, and politics, globalization addresses the transnational circulation of ideas and languages. Its impact on literature is manifold, with both positive and negative associations, wherein cultures receiving outside influences ignore some, adopt others as they are, and then immediately start to transform others. Certain aspects of globalization – such as hybridity and multi-rootedness – are increasingly present in literary texts as we witness ways in which they shape new literary forms, interrogate existing canons, and explore the emergence of ethnic canons.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Bill Ashcroft, Wlad Godzich, Francisco Jimenez, David Marriott

As President of the US chapter of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, and as Chair of the Department of English at Santa Clara University, may I welcome you to Silicon Valley!  We are delighted to be hosting this joint conference of MELUS and USACLALS, and sorry that it has grown so large that we have had to move it off campus.  If you get a chance, please do take the #22 bus down Santa Clara Avenue, which quickly becomes the Alameda, and then just as quickly becomes the historic El Camino Real: and in five minutes’ time you’re at the entrance to our campus.  Beautiful enough, and historic enough (a Jesuit University, the oldest college in California, and the site of one of the original Mission churches), that the quick ten minute bus ride from the Fairmont is well-worth making.  Have a great and intellectually stimulating conference, everyone! 

I.                  Thursday April 19   2:30 – 4:00

A)    Cupertino: Countering Hegemonic Narratives: South Asian American and Arab American Authors’ Quest to Tell the Untold

Moderator: Alamri, Neama.  California State University  at Fresno

Deol, Amrit.  California State University  at Fresno.    “Identifying Parallel Narratives: A Closer Look at Nationhood and Sexuality in Cracking India.” 

Ayala, Carrie.  California State University  at Fresno.  “‘Blooming Buds’: Growth Through Narrative in Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat.” 

Alamri, Neama.  California State University  at Fresno.   “Empathy Through Narration: Moving the Center in South Asian American and Arab American Literature.” 

B)    Hillsborough: Reading Race: Critical Classroom Pedagogy and Transnational Feminisms 

Moderator: Quinn, Roseanne.  DeAnza College.    

Lodhia, Sharmila.  Santa Clara Univ “Disciplinary Disquiet in a Transnational World: The Politics of Curricular Change.” 

Trainor, Jennifer Seibel.  San Francisco State University.    “Racial Memory and Classroom Practice: Emotioned Narratives of Race.” 

Ruiz, María Luisa.  St. Mary’s College, CA.  “Visualizing the Américas in the Foreign-Language Classroom.” 

Chow, Karen.  DeAnza College.  “Dialoguing Southeast Asian American and Pacific Islander Narratives: Converging and Diverging Politics of Identity and Place.” 

C)    Fairfield: Contemporary Arabic Images

Moderator: Marrouchi, Mustapha. University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  

Mahamdi, Cynthia.  Santa Clara University.   “Revisioning El Andalus in Contemporary Arabic Historical Fiction and Film.” 

McGrath, Christina.  California State University  at Fresno.  “Same Story, Different Night: Exoticizng the Other in Craig Thompson's Habibi.” 

Pickens, Therí.  Bates College.  “‘Never Trust the Teller?’: Patient Care in Rabih Alameddine’s Hakawati.” 

D)    Belvedere: Making and Breaking Codes

Moderator: Turner, Anastasia.  Gainseville State College. 

Schettler, Meta.  Cal. State University at Fresno.  “Radical Connections/Radical Breaks: African American Writers and the Haiku Form.” 

Lin, Yuqing.  China Normal University  / University of California at Berkeley.  “Warrior and Writer: Ishmael Reed and Frank Chin—Constructing Ethnic Manhood through Pre-Christian Folk Cultures.” 

Nanda, Aparajita.  University of California Berkeley.  "Sexuality, Race, and Imperial Anxiety in Octavia Butler's Lilith’s Brood ."  

E)     Piedmont:  Exclusion

Moderator:  Brada-Williams, Noelle.  San Jose State University. 

Sibara, Jennifer Barager.  University of Southern California.  “Disability and the Alien Body: The Literature of Sui Sin Far in the Era of Chinese Exclusion.” 

Baxter, Christa.  Brigham Young University.   “Transnational Feminism and the Reversal of the Male Gaze in Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings.”  

McNeil, Elizabeth.  Arizona State University.   “‘Your body in mine’: Reclaiming Female Agency through the Shamanic Limn of Water in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman.” 

F)     Glen Ellen:  Beyond Hatred

Moderator:  Grace, Daphne.  University College of the Bahamas. 

Tanemura, Janice.  University of California at Berkeley.  “The Defense of Ethnic Literary Humanism in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Sapphire’s Push.” 

White, Katrina.  University of California at San Diego.  “Presenting Absence: The CritiCalifornia Function of Lacunae in José Luis González’s ‘El arbusto en llamas’ and Ken Gonzales-Day’s ‘Erased Lynchings.’” 

Mehan, Uppinder.  University of Houston – Victoria.  “Neoliberalism in South Asian Fiction.” 

II.               Thursday April 19   4:15 – 5:45

A)    Piedmont:  “But Don’t They Deserve It?”: Teaching Multi-Ethnic Literatures at Comprehensive State Universities

Moderator:  Nuñez, Gabriela.  California State Fullerton. 

Lee-Keller, Hellen.  California State Sacramento.   “Disrupting the Model Minority Myth: Teaching Milton Murayama’s All I Asking For is My Body.”  

Hester-Williams, Kim.  Sonoma State University,   Teaching Precious African American Urban Representation: Dyson’s Tupac and the Transfiguration of PUSH.”  

Mattox, Jake.  Indiana University, South Bend.  “Situating Racial Knowledges in the Midwest: Teaching Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.” 

B)    Cupertino:  Auto/Biographies

Moderator: Mahamdi, Cynthia.  Santa Clara University. 

Velasco, Juan.  Santa Clara University.  “The Topography of the Total Self: The Bilingual Trilogy of Francisco Jimenez.” 

Hernandez-Jason, Beth.  University of California at Merced.  “Reading John Rechy Across Borders: The Transnational Reception of City of Night, Rushes and Numbers.”  

Fielder, Elizabeth.  University of Mississippi.  “Filling in your gaps”: This Bridge Called My Back’s Legacy in Queer and Ethnic Studies.” 

Rosenthall, Karen.  Rice University.   “The Woman in Battle: Tracing the Disguises of a Wartime Profiteer.” 

C)    Glen Ellen:  Indigenous Performance

Moderator:  Billings, Simone.  Santa Clara University.  

Andrews, Tria.  University of California Berkeley.  “Socialization through Basketball: Reinforcing Racial Stratification on the Reservation.” 

Rohrleitner, Marion.  University of Texas, El Paso.  “Performing Indigeneity: The Uses of Indigenous Identities in Contemporary Literature of the Americas.” 

Godfrey, Kathleen.  California State University at Fresno.  “‘Family Karma Kickback’: Genealogy and White Identity in Wendy Rose’s Itch Like Crazy.” 

D)    Belvedere: Transoceanic Influences

Moderator:  Nanda, Aparajita.  University of California at Berkeley. 

Mance, Ajuan.  Mills College.  "‘The Haytian Scheme’: U.S. Black Writers on Haitian Independence and African American Emigration, 1852-1895.” 

Metherd, Molly.  St. Mary’s College, Moraga.  “Diplomat or Critic?:  James Weldon Johnson in Latin America.” 

Isenberg, Sarina.  Queen’s University.  “‘Coercion by a Sweeter Name’: A Reevaluation of Henry David Thoreau's Orientalist Cosmopolitan Stance towards Hinduism in Walden and 'EthniCalifornia Scriptures.” 

E)     Hillsborough: available

F)     Fairfield:  Rooted in Two Worlds: Iran and the Literature of Its Diaspora

Moderator: Motlagh, Amy.  American University (Cairo)

Arghavan, Mahmoud.  Free University (Berlin).  “Configuration of a Nation’s Collective Past in the Individual Narratives.”

Nasrabadi, Manijeh.  New York University.   “In Search of Iran: Resistant Melancholia in Iranian American Memoirs of Return.” 

Rahimieh, Nasrin.  University of California Irvine. “Diversity and Fictional Genres in Iranian-American Literature.” 

Karim, Persis.  San Jose State University.     “Poetry Still Matters: Iranian American Writers and the Poetics of Diaspora.” 

Thursday April 19   6 – 7:30

Atherton             Reception           No-Host Bar

Friday  April 20 8 – 8:45

          Glen Ellen MELUS membership meeting

Friday April 20 8 – 9:30  Breakfast Buffet (near registration)

III.           Friday April 20   9 – 10:30

A)    Piedmont: Roundtable: The Politics and Aesthetics of Shailja Patel’s Migritude

Moderator: Macharia, Keguro.  University of Maryland.      

Bady, Aaron.  University of California at Berkeley.  “The ‘Missing Performance’ in Migritude.” 

Mesbah, Targol.  California Institute of Integral Studies.  “Transnational Approaches to Teaching Global Studies.” 

Davis, Lawrence-Minh Bùi.  University of Maryland. “Asian American Studies and Migritude.”  

Patel, Shailja.  Author.    Respondent.  

B)    Glen Ellen:  Globalizing Los Angeles: Urban Literary Imagination in the Global Post-Race Era

Moderator: Kim, Jinah.  Northwestern University. 

Kim, Jinah.  Northwestern University.    “Global Utopias: Women of Color Reimagine Los Angeles.” 

Itagaki, Lynn Mie.  Ohio State University.   “Bystander Citizenship, Multiracial Belonging: The Trauma of the Post-Civil Rights Nation.”  

Nishikawa, Kinohi.  Northwestern University.   “The South Side of Edinburgh.” 

C)    Belvedere:  Love, History, and Power in the Novels of Toni Morrison

Moderator: Henke, Suzette.  University of Louisville. 

Wyatt, Jean.  Occidental College. “Love, History, and Narrative Form in Morrison’s Jazz” 

Morgenstern, Naomi.  University of Toronto. “Maternal Love/Maternal Violence in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy.” 

George, Sheldon.   Simmons College, Boston.  “The House that Patriarchy Built: Fantasy and Female Sexuality in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Paradise.” 

D)    Cupertino:  Eastern Religions in Ethnic American Literatures

Moderator: Pearson, J. Stephen.  University of Tennessee, Knoxville.  

Gardam, Sarah.  Temple University.  “Asian American Tragedy”

Zhang, Benzi.  Chinese University of Hong Kong.  “Buddhism, Cultural Memory, and Asian American Literature.”                         

Turner, Anastasia Wright.  Gainesville State College. “Images of Buddhism in the Works of Marilyn Chin.”  

Garton, Kyle.  University of Maryland.  “Alice Walker’s Ethnic Dharma: Indian Religion in The Color Purple (1982) and Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004).” 

E)     Fairfield: Native Emergences and Interventions: History, Genre, Nation

Moderators:  Muller, Lauren (City College of San Francisco) and Anderson, Eric  (George Mason University)

Lowe, John.  Louisiana State University.   “Two Trains Running: The Dual Tracks of Ethnic Humor in Alexander Posey’s Fus Fixico Letters.” 

Muller, Lauren Stuart.  City College of San Francisco.   “Wynema, Iola, and Elaine: (Inter)national Dialogues about Educational Uplift.”   

Wong, Hertha Sweet.  University of California Berkeley.  “Countering Visual Regimes: History, Place, and Subjectivity in the Work of Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds.” 

Anderson, Eric G.  George Mason University.   “Demon Theory for Beginners, or, The Intertextual Badlands of Stephen Graham Jones.”  

F)     Atherton:  Moving Affectively: Narratives of Community Crossing

Moderator:  Biswas, Mitali.  Santa Clara University

Ford, Sachelle.  Brown University.   “‘ Vivid Expression of Feeling’: Love as HistoriCalifornia Singularity in Jamaica Kincaid’s Narrative of Family.”  

Lee, Seulghee.  University of California at Berkeley.  “‘Exotic Fagdom’: Queer Love as Abject Political Modality in Delaney and Baraka.” 

G)    Club Regent:  Toward Cross-Cultural Understanding: Reading Trauma in a Global Context

Moderator: Rod McRae, University of West Georgia. 

McMahand, Donnie.  Tulane University.   “Now is the Time to Open Your Heart: Alice Walker’s Model for a Global Black South.” 

Propst, Lisa.  University of West Georgia.  “Indefinable Connections in South Africa and Northern Ireland: A Transnational Reconciliation Discourse.” 

McRae, Rod.  University of West Georgia.   “Disposal and Diaspora: Post-Colonial Displacement in Australian Drama.” 

Feikema, Denise.  University of North Carolina at Pembroke.  “‘Writing Could Be the Boat Carry You to the Other Side’: Self-Expression Resolves Family-School Conflict in Sapphire’s Push.” 

Coffee Break   10:15 – 11:00

IV.           Friday  April 20   10:45 – 12:15

A)    Piedmont:  Ethnic Lite

Moderator:  Rohatgi, Avantika.  Santa Clara University

Skinazi, Karen.  Princeton University. “Picturing the Passing Body in Marion: The Story of an Artist’s Model and films of 1927.” 

Boo, Kyung-Sook.  Sogang University (Korea).  “Becoming American: Culturally Performed American Identity Construction and Shifting Racial Paradigms in Contemporary American Fiction and Film.” 

Mukherjee, Sharmila.  Bronx Community College, CUNY.   “Bollylite.” 

B)    Glen Ellen:  Poetry, Performance, and Gender in Poetry of the Americas

Moderator:  Robbins, Wendy.  University of New Brunswick. 

Neigh, Janet.  Pennsylvania State University, Erie.  “Restaging Recitation in Contemporary Caribbean and First Nations Women’s Poetry.”  

Bloch, Julia.  Bard College.  “U.S. Women Poets Perform the Archive.”

Dowling, Sarah.  University of Pennsylvania.  “Performance Reimagines the Page: M. NourbeSe Philip’s Unpoetic Translations.” 

C)    Belvedere:  Translations and Translocations

Moderator:  Moukhlis, Salah M.  California State University at San Marcos. 

Menon, Nirmala.  St. Anselm College.  “Re-Imagining Postcolonial Translation: Imaginary Maps and the Need for New Approaches to Translation Theory.” 

Rojas, Theresa.  Ohio State University.   “Melodrama in Translation: The Global Rise of the Telenovela.” 

Yoo, JaeEun.  Hanyang University, Korea.  “Looking After Translation: Politics of Difference in Please Look After Mom.” 

D)    Club Regent: Alternative Modernities, I

Moderator:  Lynn, Thomas J.   Pennsylvania State University. 

Huh, Jang Wook.  Columbia University.   “Translation for Canonization: Melvin B. Tolson, Modernism, and the Poetics of Grafting.” 

Dao, Anh Thang.  University of Southern California.  “A Different Modernism: Race, Language and colonialism in Monique Truong’s Book of Salt.” 

Zerby, Deighton.  Louisiana State University.   “Modernism, Affect, and the Expression of Alterity in American Ethnic Literatures.”  

Glazer, Lindsay.  Florida International University.  “Anti-Semitism as Metonymy in The Great Gatsby and Modernism.” 

E)     Fairfield: Borderlands, I

Moderator: Zaghmouri, Lena M.   California State University at Fresno. 

Dennihy, Melissa.  CUNY, The Graduate Center and Baruch College.  “Linguistic Borderlands: Reconceptualizing Multilingualism in the Field of ‘American’ Literature. 

Fernandez, Miriam.  California State University at Fresno.  “Borderland Narratives: Tensions in Representation, Identification, and Race.”  

Armstrong, Jasmine Marshall.  Independent Scholar.  “Hybrid Heritages, Transnational Concerns and Living in La Frontera: The Mexican American Poets of California’s Central Valley.” 

F)     Atherton:  Women of Color Caucus: Teaching Across Difference

             Join a facilitated Civic Reflection discussion about pedagogy in the diverse classroom.

             Moderator: Georgina Dodge, University of Iowa. 

G)    Cupertino: A Transnational ‘Genius’: Yiyun Li

Moderator: Chua, C. Lok.   California State University at Fresno. 

Yang, Lingyan.  Indiana University of Pennsylvania.    “Between the Brutal Winter and the Free Spring in Post-Cultural Revolution China: Yiyun Li’s Literary Naturalism in the Novel of The Vagrants (2009).” 

Li, Wenxin.  Suffolk Community College, State Univerisity of New York.  “Yiyun Li’s ‘Immortality’ as PolitiCalifornia Allegory.” 

Brada-Williams, Noelle.  San Jose State University.  “Feminine Identities and Relationships in Yiyun Li’s ‘The Proprietress.’” 

Chow, Balance.  San Jose State University.  “From Ethnography to Ethnology: Global Contextuality and Transnational Identity.”  

Friday April 20  12:15 – 1:15  lunch break, on your own

1:00   Piedmont          Book Launch      (dessert served)

Literature for Our Times: Postcolonial Studies in the Twenty-First Century.

Ashcroft, Bill, Ranjini Mendis, Julie McGonegal, and Arun Mukherjee (Eds.) Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, 2012.

V.              Friday  April 20   1:30 – 3:00

A)    Piedmont:  Redefining Canons of Ethnicity

Moderator: Mullis, Angela.  Rutgers University. 

Smyth, Heather.  University of Waterloo (Canada).  “Coalition as an Alternative to Ethnic Canons in Transnational/Multicultural Literatures.” 

Srivastava, Prem Kumari.  Delhi University.   “Leslie A Fiedler: Re-bordering the American Canon (A Post-colonial Perspective).” 

Taylor, Richard A.  East Carolina University.   “Something there is that doesn't love a wall.” 

Tuszynska, Agnieszka.  University of Illinois.  “You Cannot Change Your Grandfathers: Louis Adamic's Counternarrative in Grandsons Vis-à-vis The Repressed Past in The Great Gatsby.”   

B)    Glen Ellen: Britain’s Hybrids

Moderator:  McCallum, Pamela. University of Calgary. 

Valkeakari, Tuire.  Providence College.  “George Lamming’s Dialogue with French Existentialism in The Emigrants.” 

Husain, Kasim.  McMaster University.   “Neoliberalizing Hybridity: ‘Bling-Bling Economics’ and the Politics of Asian British Identity in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani.” 

Kattekola, Lara.  Temple U/New Jersey City University.   “Transnationalizing the Nation in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend it Like Beckham.” 

Santesso, Esra.  University of Georgia.  “Transnationalism and the Muslim Diaspora in Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly.” 

C)    Fairfield: Children’s Literature

Moderator: Godfrey, Kathleen.  California State University at Fresno. 

Snell, Heather.  University of Winnipeg.  “Outward Bound: Exploring the Emergence of a Multi-Ethnic Canon of Young Adult Literature in Canada and the United States.” 

Lesuma, Caryn.  Brigham Young University.   “Transcultural Dialogism: Decolonizing Fairy Tales in Josephine Evetts-Secker’s Tale Collections for Children.” 

D)    Cupertino: Religion and Ethnicity

Moderator:  Edelstein, Marilyn. Santa Clara University.   

Lesa, Alexis.  Brigham Young University.   “That’s Not Kosher: Sammy Clay’s Jewishness and Homosexuality in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.”  

Gravely, Jessica.  Prairie State College.  “Seeking ‘Sacred Respect’: Figuring the Holocaust in the Contemporary Ethnic American Imagination.” 

Luca, Ioana.  National Taiwan Normal University.   “Toward an Eastern European Canon in Contemporary American Literature?” 

E)     Belvedere: Borderlands, II

Moderator: Mahamdi, Cynthia. Santa Clara University. 

Perez, Richard.  John Jay College, City University of New York.  “Aesthetic States; Identified Borders: The Art of Bare Life in Across A Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande.”

Perez, Tabitha.  Texas A&M, Corpus Christi.  “Along the Border: The Study of  the South Texas Borderlands as an International Space and the Interaction of Different Cultures in Literature.” 

Villalba, Carolina.  University of Miami.  “Playing Border Games: The Transnational Figure of the Child in the Works of Henry Roth and Ernesto Galarza.” 

F)     Atherton: Women and Arabic

Moderator:  Marrouchi, Mustapha.  University of Nevada at Las Vegas. 

El Gendy, Nancy.  University of Oklahoma.   “Exploring Muslim Women: The Representation of the Female Body in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent.” 

Terzian, Sylvia.  Wilfred Laurier University.   “Feminist Voices in the Arab Diaspora: Representing Muslim Female Identity in Arab-American Women’s Writing.” 

Harris, Will.  United Emirates University.  “Phillis Wheatley, Inti Bi Tikhi Arabi (Do You Speak Arabic?).”  

G)    Club Regent: Identities

Moderator:  Xu, Wenying.  Florida Atlantic University. 

Ashtiani, Maryam.  California State University at Fresno.  “The Physical and Bodily Intersections of Racialized Identities in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” 

Calihman, Matthew.   Missouri State University.   “Race, Ethnicity, and the Intellectual Type in John A. Williams’s The Man Who Cried I Am.” 

Kraus, Joseph.  Scranton University.   “Between Amputation and Gangrene, or Learning to Live with Ambivalence: A Cool Reading of Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son.” 

VI.           Friday  April 20   3:15 – 4:45

A)    Piedmont: Taking It to the Streets: Ideas for Community Engagement Through the Multi-Ethnic Literature Classroom

Moderator: Stanciu, Cristina.  Virginia Commonwealth University. 

Fazio, Michele.  University of North Carolina, Pembroke.    “Class Reflections.” 

Askeland, Lori.  Wittenberg University.   “Down on the Farm: 19^th Century ‘Orphans’ Meet 21^st Century ‘At Risk’ Urban Youth.”  

Turner, Anastasia Wright.  Gainesville State College.  “Educating Otherwise: Combining Education, Literature, and Multiethnic Studies in the Deep South.” 

Floreani, Tracy.  Oklahoma City University.  “Creativity and Civic Engagement with Human Rights Issues.”

B)    Glen Ellen: Jhumpa Lahiri

Moderator: Guttman, Anna.  Lakehead University 

Chatterjee, Antara.  University of Leeds, UK.  “Articulating a Transnational Subjectivity: Jhumpa Lahiri and the Bengali-American Diasporic Experience.”  

Ding, Yuan.  University of Kansas.  “Transnational Imagination and Locality in Jhumpa Lahiri's Novel The Namesake.” 

Marwah, Anuradha.  Delhi University.   “Marketing Authentic India in the Time of Globalization: From Arundhati Roy to Jhumpa Lahiri.”  

C)    Belvedere: Native American Questions

Moderator:  Muller, Lauren Stuart.  City College of San Francisco. 

Udel, Lisa.  Illinois College.  “Literary History in the Works of LeAnne Howe and Diane Glancy.” 

Busse, Cassel.  McMaster University.   “Animal Ghosts, Colonial Haunting: The Shadows of History Beyond Benjamin and Derrida.” 

Anderson, Eric G.  George Mason University.   “Black and White and Red All Over: Reading ‘Southern’ through ‘Native.’” 

D)    Cupertino: Border Crossings

Moderator:  Jayathurai, Nimmi.  University of Houston. 

Edelstein, Marilyn.  Santa Clara University.   “Imagining Cross-Racial and Cross-Cultural Empathy in Short Fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri and Sandra Cisneros”

Mermann-Jozwiak, Elisabeth.  Texas A&M, Corpus Christi.  “Immigrant Enclave or Transnational Switching Point? Demotic Cosmopolitanism in Francisco Goldman’s Brooklyn.” 

Torres, Jonathan.  Georgia College.  “Refusing the Return: Identity over Nationalism in Caribbean Women’s Fiction.” 

Das, Amrita.  University of North Carolina at Wilmington.  “Daniel Alarcón: A Case Study of a Transnational Author.” 

E)     Fairfield: Public Performance

Moderator:  Fielder, Elizabeth.  University of Mississippi. 

Hoagland, George.  University of  Minnesota, Duluth.  “Paul Beatty, Myth, and Resistance.” 

Wanjala, Alex.  University of Nairobi.  “The Poetics of ‘Genge’: Jua Cali’s Niimbie.” 

Van Dahm, Stacey.  Philadelphia University . “Narrating Belonging: Latino/a Mural Art in Philadelphia.”   

F)     Atherton: Historical Retrieval, I

Moderator: Robbins, Wendy.  University of New Brunswick. 

Ferguson, Sally Ann.  University of  North Carolina, Greensboro.  “Angelina Grimke's Rachel: Black Infanticide and Literary Darwinism.” 

Johnson, Sherry.  Grand Valley State University.   “(Re)Viewing the Promiseland in Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes.” 

Meyers, Helene.  Southwestern University (Texas).  “Here and/or Elsewhere?: Locating Contemporary  Jewish American Literature.” 

G)    Club Regent: Asian American Presentation

Moderator:  Yang, Lingyan.  Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Zeng, Minhao.  University of  Alberta.  “Contemporary Asian American Drama: Staging Ethnic Cosmopolitanism.”  

Gardam, Sarah.  Temple University.  “Theories of Tragedy in Asian American Literature.” 

Santos, Jorge.  University of Connecticut.  “Donald Duk and Double-Dissonance: Rescuing History from the History Books.” 

Friday  April 20   5:30 – 6:45

Club Regent   Plenary   David Marriott and Francisco Jimenez

Saturday   April 21   8:00 – 8:30 

          Piedmont    USACLALS Business Meeting

Breakfast Buffet  8:00 – 9:30 (near registration)

VII.       Saturday  April 21      8:30 – 10:00

A)    Piedmont:  Graduate Student discussion,

Chris Gonzalez, coordinator. 

B)    Glen Ellen:  Writing Across Cultures:  Collisions and Continuities

Moderator:  Ruvoli, JoAnne.  University of California at Los Angeles. 

Bona, Mary Jo.  State University of New York at Stony Brook,.  “‘She’s Got a Ticket to Ride’: Hester’s Needle, Migratory Women, and Mending Fragmentation in the New World.” 

Hendin, Josephine.  New York University.   “Universal Cities: Transnationalism, Urban Ethnicity, and Postmodern Form.”  

Quinn, Roseanne.  DeAnza College.  “‘The Women lay down in front of the bulldozers’: Embodied Feminist Poetics and Transnational Feminist Trends in the Work of Diane de Prima.” 

Ruvoli, JoAnne.  Respondent. 

C)    Belvedere:  Transnational Reconfigurations of Race in Multiethnic Literature 

Moderator:  Hemstrom, Cassie.  University of Nevada at Reno. 

Yamshon, Lyndee.  University of Illinois, Chicago.   “Representations of Jewish Marriages Across a Transnational Covenant.” 

Das, Smita.  University of Illinois, Chicago.    “New England Writers and Transnational Body Politics.” 

Malik, Surbhi.  University of  Illinois, Chicago.  “Transnationalism and Politcal Consciousness in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”  

D)    Cupertino:  Roundtable: Transnational Asian American Studies, or Teaching Asian American Studies Outside of the U.S.

Moderator: Zeng, Minhao.  University of Alberta. 

Beauregard, Guy.  National Taiwan University   “Voices in the Clouds? Asian American Subjects in Taiwan.” 

Chung, Hyeyurn.  Sungshin Women’s University (South Korea).  “Teaching to Transgress?: Teaching Asian American Literature in Korean Classrooms” 

Tong, Donna.  Fu Jen University (Taiwan).  “Teaching Asian American Women Writers in Taiwan.” 

E)     Fairfield:  Canada

Moderator: Mendis, Ranjini.  Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Canada).   

Austen, Veronica.  St. Jerome’s/Waterloo University (Canada).  “The Photograph as Prosthesis in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.” 

Chen, Leilei.  University of Alberta.  “Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation and Zhangzi’s Taoism.” 

Robbins, Wendy.  University of New Brunswick.  “Academic Women’s Memoirs:

Transnational Feminisms and the Transformation of Literary Studies in Canada.”  

F)     Atherton: Caribbean Questions

Moderator:  Elizabeth McNeil, Arizona State University. 

Collins, Corrine.  Brigham Young University.   “The Voodoo Gods and Haitian-American Female Identity in Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!” 

Stratford, Candice.  Brigham Young University.   “Trauma Recovery through Ritual in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker.”

Kilinski, April.  North Georgia College & State University.   “Erna Brodber’s Myal: The Female Body as Metaphor for Social Disease.” 

Birkhofer, Melissa.  University of North Carolina.  “Rewriting a Family Herstory in Achy Obejas’s Memory Mambo.” 

G)    Club Regent: Transnational Exchange

Moderator:  Nenevé, Miguel.  University of Rondonia (Brazil). 

Little, Jonathan.  Alverno College.  “Theories of Transnational Exchange: From Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell.” 

Anderson, David.  University of Louisville.  “Global Pilgrimage in Marilyn Nelson’s The Cachoeira Tales.” 

Chen, Wilson.  Benedictine University.   AutobiographiCalifornia Performance and the Global South:  James Weldon Johnson’s Inter/National Subject in Along This Way.” 

VIII.     Saturday  April 21      10:15 – 11:45

A)    Piedmont: Nigeria

Moderator:  Egbunike, Louisa.  School of Oriental and African Studies, London. 

Arseneault, Jesse.  McMaster University.   “Negotiating Humanity Alongside Animal Others: Lessons from Animals in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen.” 

Choi, Sodam.  State University of New York,  Buffalo.  “Speaking the Unspoken: From the Transnational to the Anti-Anthropocentric.” 

Ihejirika, Anne.  York University (Canada).  “The Transnational Trend in Contemporary Nigerian Poetry.” 

B)    Glen Ellen: Latin Hybridity

Moderator:  Latorre, Sobeira.  Southern Connecticut State University. 

Adams-Handy, Amanda.  University of Hawaii.  “Singing the Self: Testimonio and the Internalization of Racism within Americo Parades’s With His Pistol in His Hand.” 

HHWilliams, Malinda.  University of Denver.  “Too Light to be Right: The Shifting Implications of Color in Angie Cruz’s Soledad.”  

Freed, Joanne Lipson.  Ohio University.   “Genre, Truth, and Diaspora in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” 

Wu, Shaojing.  University of  Arkansas.  “Garden as a Social Enclave in the Twentieth Century.” 

C)    Cupertino: Representation

Moderator: Kaiserman, Adam.  UC Santa Barbara

Kaiserman, Adam.  University of California at Santa Barbara, Center for Black Studies Research.  “Media Literacy in Ishmael Reed’s Juice!”

Dietrich, Lucas.  University of New Hampshire.  “‘Mr. Dooley’s Discourses’:  Irish-America and Popular Print Culture.”     

Cristina Stanciu.  Virginia Commonwealth University.   “The Complicit Silents: Americanization on the Silver Screen, 1902-1920.”  

D)    Belvedere: Violent Vestiges

Moderator:  McNeil, Elizabeth.  Arizona State University.

Moynihan, Susan M.  State University of New York, Buffalo.  “‘Welcome Home’: The Transnational Inheritance of Violence in Vietnamese American Memoirs.”  

Nguyen, Vinh.  McMaster University.   “The Refugee Gangster in Vietnamese American Literature.” 

He, Yuemin.  Northern Virginia Community College.  “Past War and Present Construction of a Southeast Asian American Identity in Memoirs.” 

Martin, Holly.  Appalachian State University.  “Mental Illness as a Trope of Resistance in Hualing Nieh’s Mulberry and Peach.” 

E)     Fairfield: How to Publish and Not Perish: A Practical Roundtable

Moderator: Amritjit Singh, Ohio University.   

F)     Atherton: Documenting Places, Placing Documents

Moderator: Yang, Lingyan.  Indiana University of Pennsylvania. 

Xu, Wenying.  Florida Atlantic University.  “Chinatown, San Francisco in the Novels of Mae Myenne Ng.” 

Paudyal, Binod.  University of Utah, Salt Lake City.  “Paper Fathers Produce Paper Sons: Documents in Kingston’s China Men.” 

McCallum, Pamela.  University of Calgary (Canada).  “Writing at the Crossroads: Intersections of storytelling in Biyi Bandele’s The Street.” 

Saturday  April 21     Noon – 1:30

Club Regent   Luncheon  (those who have indicated special dietary needs have been supplied with a color-coded ticket in their registration packet; please place this prominently on your table setting)   Speaker:  Wlad Godzich

“Beyond Identity: Bearings”

IX.           Saturday April 21   1:45 – 3:15

A)    Piedmont:  Roundtable: State of the Multiethnic Union: Archives

Moderator:  Bona, Mary Jo.  State Univerity of New York, Stony Brook. 

Chua, Lok C.  California State University at Fresno.  “Maxine Hong Kingston.” 

Ruvoli, JoAnne.   University of California at Los Angeles.  “Accessing Archives and Making Archives Accessible.” 

Cutter, Martha.  University of  Connecticut, Storrs.  “Sui Sin Far and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.” 

Whiteman, Deborah.  Santa Clara University. “Special Collections.” 

Gardaphe, Fred.  Queens College/CUNY.  “Research Archives and Ethnic Studies programs.” 

B)    Glen Ellen: Hamid and Halaby

Moderator:  Maini, Irma.  New Jersey City University. 

Altmaier, Catherine.  Florida State University.   “The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s “Ugly Feelings”: Founding Traumas and Cultural Stereotypes.”  

Schultermandl, Silvia.  University of Graz (Austria).   “Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Performing Transnationalism through Narrative Ambiguity.” 

Najmi, Samina.  California State University,  Fresno.  “The Personal and the Pedagogical: Teaching as a Pakistani American Muslim Feminist.”    

C)    Belvedere: African Representation

Moderator:  Hawley, John C.  Santa Clara University. 

Mueller, Anne.  University of California at Los Angeles.   “Where was the West? : The Implications of Europeans in the Rwandan Genocide as Read in Le feu sous la soutane and Le passé devant soi.” 

Pipino, Mimi.  Lake Erie College.  “Where is the Where? Explorations/Representations of Africa in Contemporary U.S. Texts.” 

Salzer, Maureen.  Pima Community College.  “How to Write About White Africa: Alexandra Fuller through the Looking Glass of Binyavanga Wainaina.” 

D)    Cupertino:  Shifting Cartographies, I

Moderator:  Kilinski, April.  North Georgia College and State University. 

Harris, Allison.  University of Tennessee. “Azucar Loca: Transnational Neuroses and Maternal Nourishment in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban.”  

Herrera, Cristina. California State University at Fresno.  “Snapshots from the Mother Road: Travel and Motherhood in Lorraine López’s The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters.”  

Gonzalez, Christopher.  Ohio State University.   “‘Echando Palabras’: Narrative Cartography and the Innavigable Roadmap in Sandra Cisnerso’s Caramelo.” 

E)     Fairfield: Historical Retrieval, II

Moderator:  Srivastava, Prem Kumari.  Delhi University. 

Bushnell, Cameron.  Clemson University.  “Rita Dove’s Sonata Mulattica: A New Genre for the Restoration of History.” 

Andrews, Jennifer.  University of New Brunswick.  “Reading The Bricklin: Rethinking the Atlantic Region through the Disco Era.” 

Chadha, Simran.  Delhi University.   “Ethnic Deconstructions in Writings from a Post Colony.” 

Singh, Amritjit.  Ohio University.   “Lures of Empire and Ironies of Victimhood in World War II:  Internment Camps in North America and Indonesia.” 

F)     Atherton: Indian Transnationalism

Moderator:  Paudyal, Binod.  University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 

Prasad, Murari.  D.S.College, Bihar, India.  “Perspectives on Globalization in Indian English Writing.” 

Shende, Dharamdas.  Nagpur University (India).  “Reading Her-stories in Daughters and Desirable Daughters: Constructing American Conscience.” 

Coffee Break     3:00 – 3:30

X.              Saturday April 21   3:30 – 5:00

A)    Piedmont:  Re-Imagining the California Dream: Developing a New Cultural Narrative

Moderator:  Noy, Gary.  Editor-in-Chief, Sierra College Press. 

Noy, Gary.  co-editor, The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology, chair of panel, Director, Center for Sierra Nevada Studies, Editor-in-Chief, Sierra College Press

Nanda, Aparajita.  University of California Berkeley.    editor, Black California: A Literary Anthology,

Nolan, Ruth.  College of the Desert, Palm Desert. editor, No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California’s Desert.  

Heide, Rick.   editor, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California; co-editor, The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology, 

B)    Atherton: Revolution

Moderator:  Santesso, Esra.  University of Georgia. 

Marrouchi, Mustapha.  University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  “Willed from the Bottom Up: The Postcolonial Turned Revolutionary.” 

Maini, Irma.  New Jersey City University.  “Arab Spring and Arab American identity in Laila Halaby’s works."

Koegeler,  Martina.  State University of New York at Stony Brook.  “Transnational Trauma Aesthetics in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land.” 

Zahiri, Abdollah.  Seneca College.  “Another Voice from the Margin of Postcolonial Theory: An Anticolonial Reading of Forough Farrokhzad’s Poetry.” 

C)    Belvedere: African Locations

Moderator:  Snell, Heather.  University of Winnipeg. 

Egbunike, Louisa Uchum.  School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.  “The Commodified Body and the Restless Spirit in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street.” 

Fernandez, Jose.  Western Illinois University.    “The Material Side of Paradise in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.” 

Moura- Koçoğlu, Michaela.  Florida International University.    “After Conflict, Into Struggle: Gender Roles and Revisions in Lusophone and Anglophone African Women’s Writing.” 

Rosenblithe, Anita.  Raritan Valley Community College.  “On and Off  ‘Colour’ in Wicomb’s David’s Story: The Legacy of Saartje Baartman in the New South Africa.” 

D)    Cupertino: Border-Crossing Tales

Moderator:  White, Katrina.  University of California at San Diego. 

Nenevé, Miguel.  University of Rondonia (Brazil).  “Ethnicity and globalization in Pauline Melville´s The Ventriloquist´s Tale.” 

Grace, Daphne.  University College of the Bahamas.  “The ‘Waters Where Hell Begins’: Perils of the Transnational Voyage in Contemporary Caribbean Literature.” 

Latorre, Sobeira.  Southern Connecticut State University.   “Afro-Boricua Women’s Testimonios.” 

E)     Fairfield: Limits of Multiculturalism

Moderator:  Zeng, Minhao.  University of Alberta. 

Wang, Su-ching.  University of Washington.  “Asian American Critique and Multiculturalist American Domesticity.” 

Lee, Hsiu-chuan .  National Taiwan Normal University.   “Asian America in Asia/America Distance and Transference: Asian American Studies in Taiwan.” 

Guttman, Anna.  Lakehead University.    “Jewish/Indian/American: Narrating Between Race, Faith, Ethnicity and Nation in Carmit Delman’s Burnt Bread and Chutney (2002) and Sadia Shepard’s The Girl from Foreign (2008).” 

F)     Glen Ellen: The Person in Context

Moderator:  Anderson, Sara.  University of California at Davis. 

Huang, Su-ching.  East Carolina University.    “Racial Melancholia in Suki Kim’s Novel The Interpreter.” 

Jayathurai, Nimmi Agnes.  University of Houston.  “Rising Phoenixes: Subjugation and Agency in Mother-Daughter Relationships in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Joss and Gold and Lydia Kwa’s This Place Called Absence.”  

Patterson, Christopher.  University of  Washington.  “Labor-Power versus Cultural-Power: Ethnicity as Symbolic Capital in Hwee Hwee Tan’s Mammon Inc.” 

Stefani, Debora.  Georgia State University.    “National Identity Reconsidered: The Intersection of Ethnicity and Sexuality in The Book of Salt.” 

Saturday  April 21   5:30 – 6:45

Club Regent   Plenary    Bill Ashcroft

“A Borderless World: Literature, Nation, Transnation”

XI.           Sunday April 22   9 – 10:15

A)    Piedmont: “Ethnic and Transnational Literatures: Pedagogical Issues and Approaches.”

Moderator:  Lynn, Thomas J.  Pennsylvania State University, Berkshire 

Lynn, Thomas J.  Pennylvania State University, Berkshire.    “On Teaching Chinua Achebe and ‘Other’ Writers: The Sky Is not Falling But the Canon May Be Falling Apart.” 

Stanciu, Cristina.  Virginia Commonwealth University.      “Teaching United States Ethnic Literatures with Film and Other Media.” 

Smith, Tom.  Pennsylvania State University, Abington.  “‘Why Should I Care About Postcolonial Theory?’: Teaching Postcolonialism in a General Education Course.” 

Deka, Mayuri.  University of the Bahamas.  “‘Same/Different’: Empathic Reading within the Transnational Literature Classroom.” 

B)    Belvedere:  Shifting Cartographies, II

Moderator:  Bushnell, Cameron.  Clemson University.  

Moukhlis, Salah.  California State University at San Marcos.  “Localized Literatures in the Age of Multiculturalism."

Linda, Dana M.  University of California at Los Angeles.  “Chronicled Cartographies: Reading the U.S. South as Serial Narrative Across Yoknapatawpha and Belken County.” 

Pooch, Melanie.  University of Mannheim (Germany).  “The Transcultural Novel: Multi-Ethnic Literature and the Global City of Los Angeles.” 

Ahmadi, Farnaz  University of Tabriz, Iran. “The Role of Space in Making Jim ‘One of Us’ in  Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim/A Postcolonial Spatial Perspective.” 

C)    Glen Ellen:  Savage Harvest: Capital, Farm Labor, and Chicana/o Farm-Worker Fiction

Moderator:  Armstrong, Jasmine Marshall.  Independent Scholar. 

López, Dennis.  California State University at Long Beach.   “The Ghosts in the Barn: Fetishism, Farm Labor, and the Body as an Accumulation Strategy in Helena María Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus.” 

Ramírez, Abraham.  University of California at Berkeley.  “Silenced Histories, Variable-Capital, and the Zone of Non-Being."

González, Marcial.  University of California at Berkeley.  “Chicano/a Farm Worker Narratives: Storytelling in Lieu of Class Struggle” 

D)    Cupertino:  A Queer Diasporic Time and Place: On South Asian and Southeast Asian American Literatures

Moderator:  LaGuardia, Dolores.  Santa Clara University. 

Solomon, Amanda Lee.  University of California at San Diego.    “The Queer Trans-Nationalism of Philippine Independence.”  

Kini, Ashvin.  University of California at San Diego.  “‘Cultural bastards, dat is what we is’: The Time and Space of Queer Diaspora.” 

Tagle, Thea Quiray.  University of California at San Diego.    “Ifugao spirits in the opposite of Eden: On a Filipino / American Poetics of Place."

E)     Atherton:  Radical Displacement and Home-Seeking in African-American and Indian Narratives

Moderator:  Mitra, Keya.  Gonzaga University. 

Maucione, Jessica.  Gonzaga University.   “Southern Nostalgia in Edward P. Jones’s All Aunt Hagar’s Children.” 

Mullis, Angela.  Rutgers University.    “Reversed Migrations:  Return without Renewal in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods.”  

Mitra, Keya.  Gonzaga University.    “Displacement and Untouchability in Arundhadi Roy’s The God of Small Things and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.”  

F)     Fairfield:  Roundtable: Spaces of Crossing: Tracing Home in Latina/o and Chicana/o Poetics

Moderator:  Esquibel, Catriona Rueda. 

Alarcón, Wanda.  University of California at Berkeley.  “Could I Be Chicano Without Carlos Santana?: Chicana/o Subjectivity and Sound.” 

Silva, Liana.  Binghamton University.   “Waking Up Dominican: The Myth of Assimilation and Hybrid Identity in Angie Cruz’s Soledad.” 

Pérez, Annemarie.  Loyola Marymount University.    “Cosmopolis Aztlán: Chicana/o Poetics and Resistance to Nation.” 

Garcia, George G.  Univ. of Texas at Brownsville.  “Poetry of Rodolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzales and Daniel Garcia Ordaz.” 

            Discussant: Catriona Rueda Esquibel, San Francisco State University. 

XII.       Sunday April 22  10:30 – 11:45

A)    Piedmont: Alternative Modernities, II

Moderator:  Menon, Nirmala.  St. Anselm’s College. 

Dar, Huma.  Mills College.  “Gender/Political Drag and Un(Man)ageability of Postcolonial Pakistan.” 

Rohatgi, Avantika.  Santa Clara University.   “The Global Charge of the Bollywood Brigade: Cultural Regeneration of the Indian Ethos through Modern Cinema.” 

Nexica, Irene.  University of California at Berkeley.  “Bollywood songs and their signification of cultural inclusion/exclusion.” 

B)    Glen Ellen: Leslie Marmon Silko

Moderator:  Gonzalez, Marcial.  University of California at Berkeley. 

Silva, Marisol.  University of California at Berkeley.  “Un-American? Alternative? Other? Knowledge and Epistemology in U.S. Ethnic Literature and Culture.” 

Le, Nhu. University of California at Santa Barbara.  “Ugly Alliances, Uneasy Solidarities: Affect and Asian America in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Hemispheric Vision of Decolonization.” 

Anderson, Sara.  University of California at Davis.  “Reading the Historial Future of the Americas: The History of Almanacs and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.”  

C)    Belvedere:  Chicana Feminisms

Moderator:  Perez, Annemarie Perez.  Loyola Marymount University. 

Garcia, Mary.  University of California at Santa Barbara.  “Chicana Writers and the Embodied Notion of Loss.” 

Álvarez, Erin.  California State University  at Fresno.  “La Nueva Chicana:  Estrella and the Chicana Feminist Movement in Under the Feet of Jesus.” 

Perez, Annemarie.  Loyola Marymount University.  “Sisterhood's Elizabeth Sutherland, or The Case of the Second Chicana.” 

D)    Cupertino:  Jessica Hagedorn

Moderator:  Cutter, Martha.  University of  Connecticut. 

Crawford, Danielle.  San Jose State University.   “Lost Voices: Uncovering the Babaylan/Catalonan in the Postcolonial Filipino Novel.” 

Lawrence, Patrick.  University of Connecticut.  “Multiple Perspectives, Singular Visions: Varieties of Narrative Power in Dogeaters and Tropic of Orange.” 

Hemstrom, Cassie.  University of  Nevada, Reno.  “Post-neo-neo-neocolonialism”: American/Philippines Exchanges and Linked Constructions of Race, Class and Identity in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle.”  

E)     Fairfield: Disparate Forces of the U.S.-Iraq Wars

Moderator:  Smith, Thomas Russell.  Pennsylvania State University, Abington. 

Cook, Ryan.  California State University at Fresno.  “Musical Seduction and Haunting Noises in Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet.” 

García, Adam Donny.  California State University at Fresno.  “Conversations in Identity: Nuha Al-Radi’s Baghdad Diaries and Misrepresentation of Iraqis.” 

Zaghmouri, Lena.  California State University at Fresno.  “Moving Toward Empathy: Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet.” 

F)     Atherton: “Theater of Witness: Representations of the Post-9/11 Other  in Transatlantic Drama”

Moderator:  Souza, Christopher.  California State University at Fresno. 

Souza, Christopher.  California State University at Fresno.  “Radicals for Peace in American Tet and Prophecy.”  

Davis, Michelle.  California State University of  at Fresno.  “The Monsters We Make: Dehumanization in Lydia Stryk’s American Tet.”  

Reed-Nolan, Yinka Rose.  California State University  at Fresno.  “Bearing Witness in Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.”  

Acknowledgments:

Sincere thanks for financial support from the following units on the Santa Clara University campus, and from local colleges and Universities:

Santa Clara University English Department; USACLALS; SCU College of Arts and Sciences; SCU Provost’s Office; SCU Dept of Political Science; Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies; SCU Law School Center for Global Law and Policy; SCU Dept of Theatre and Dance; SCU Dept. of History; SCU Law School Center for Social Justice and Public Service; SCU Women’s and Gender Studies program; SCU Dept of Liberal Studies; SCU Dept of Modern Languages; Stanford University  English Department; University of California Berkeley English Department; California State University at Fresno English Department; SCU Dept of Philosophy; SCU Department of Anthropology; SCU Dept of Sociology; SCU Latin American Studies program; Mills College English Department; University of California at Los Angeles American Indian Studies Center; SCU Dept of Religious Studies.

Thanks to Jessica Norred and Jefferson Dela Cruz, administrative assistants in the SCU English department, for organizational details (Jessica) and program design and production (Jefferson); to Kim Long, who handled registrations through Paypal; to Wenying Xu and Amritjit Singh, for sage counsel; to Chris Gonzalez, for organizing the graduate student participants; to Mary Lynn Howe, of The Scholar’s Choice, for the book display.

The 27th MELUS Conference Call for Papers March 14-17, 2013 Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Theme: The Changing Landscape of American Multiethnic Literature

through Historical Crises

When we look back, what kinds of historical, global, national, institutional, political, cultural, racial, socio-economic, and sexual crises has American multiethnic literature engaged in, critiqued, reflected, challenged, reacted to artistically, and moved beyond?  How have the various landscapes of American multiethnic literature changed?  How has the American multiethnic literature challenged and enriched the American national literature and culture as well as contributed to the Anglophone global literature?  How has the multiethnic genre changed and evolved?  How have the multiple critiCalifornia categories of language, race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, culture, power, history, nation and geography complicated and enriched our scholarship and pedagogy in American multiethnic literature? 

As we look forward, what are the new directions in American multiethnic literature in the 21^st century?  How do globalization, transnationalism, postcoloniality, and diaspora impact the studies and teaching of American multiethnic literature?  What are the new studies in American multiethnic women’s literature?   What are some of the cross-ethnic comparative literary analyses that can be exiting?

We invite paper abstracts and complete panels, workshops, and roundtable proposals on all aspects of the American multiethnic literatures of the United States.  We are particularly interested in proposals that explore the changing landscapes of American multiethnic literature either in the past centuries and decades through multiple global, national, institutional, or cultural crises, or the various new directions in American ethnic literature in the 21^st century.  Any proposal for a complete panel, roundtable, or workshop should include a short description of the central topic, supplemented by brief individual abstracts.  Please also indicate clearly if you need audiovisual equipment.

Deadline for abstracts and proposals (250 words in Microsoft Word): Oct. 31, 2012.

Please email abstracts to both Professors Lingyan Yang (lingyan@iup.edu) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Kim Long (kmlong@ship.edu) at Shippensburg University  of Pennsylvania.  They are MELUS 2013 Conference Committee co-chairs.

All presenters, chairs, and moderators must be members of MELUS.  Colleagues in USACLALS are welcome to participate.  MELUS membership information can be found on the MELUS website at www.melus.org.  MELUS membership dues and registration fees must be mailed directly to MELUS.

CFP:  RACE AND THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA

13^th Annual SALA (South Asian Literary Association) Conference

Boston, USA  2-3 January 2013

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: SUNDAY, 5th AUGUST 2012

Labeled “Pakis,” “coolies,” “ragheads,” “heathens,” “Hindoos,” and “wogs,” South Asians have been racialized historically and across multiple geographies. As a result of forced and voluntary migrations over the centuries, they have been inserted in, impacted on and contributed to the racial economies of U.K., North America, Africa, Caribbean, Asia-Pacific, and so on. The increasing racial diversity of populations in different parts of the world demands a continuous engagement with race and its coordinates of racism and racialism. From science-driven taxonomies to contemporary sociocultural explorations, literature, film, theatre, and other cultural productions have become sites that articulate, confront or contend with multiple registers of race and continue to model new meanings. The hierarchies ascribed to colour underpin existing understandings of race as well as forge alternative discourses to study it. For the SALA 2013 conference, we seek to place as central the category of race as constitutive of the South Asian diasporic experience to examine how the “old” and the “new” diasporas of South Asians have been shaped by and/or have responded to race and racism—imperial or neo-imperial—in a variety of geographies. We invite papers on literature, film, culture, criticism, and activism that explore different meanings of race and experiences of South Asians in the diaspora and focus especially on the complex interplay between race and gender, sexuality, religion, socio-economic class, age, language, etc. Contributors may explore, but are not restricted to, the following questions and topics:

·         How have different formulations and cultural productions of diaspora conceptualized and/or considered race?

·         In what ways—historically and in the present—have geopolitical and global economic forces affected the reception and racialization of South Asians?

·         How do the contested discursive practices of difference, such as assimilationism and multiculturalism, unsettle politics of identity that are couched in racialized nation-building projects?

·         In what ways have diasporic artists and writers articulated or visualized these differences in literature, cinema, and other productions?

·         How have South Asians responded to or positioned themselves with regards to indigenous peoples and other ethno-racial minorities?

·         How might the intricacies related to the discriminatory attitudes towards the “other” implicate the racial subjectivities of South Asians?

Possible topics may include:

·    Race: historical and contemporary processes

·    Comparative Racializations

·    Race and Colourism

·    Race and Law (legal systems, immigration policies, exclusionary acts, citizenship laws, etc)

·    Race and Popular culture (brown-face, Indo-chic, media representations, etc.)

·    Race and Space (rural/urban, ghettoes/ethnic enclaves, local/national, etc.)

·    Race, gender, and sexuality (queer diaspora, race and masculinities, honor killings, transnational feminisms)

·    Race and the Body (labouring bodies, sexed subjects, outsourcing reproduction, tortured bodies, etc.)

·    Race and Violence (everyday routine violence, political, hate crimes, race-riots, etc.)

·    Race in/and Academia

·    Race and Politics and the Electorate

·    Race and Health

·    Race and Religion (“clash of civilizations,” racializing of religion, etc.)

·    Race and Sports

·    Race and Nation/Nation-State (long-distance nationalism, cultural nationalism, etc.)

·    Racial Melancholia

·    Race and Visual Arts

·    Race and Technology (performing race in virtual/online communities, racism in digital environments, South Asian digital humanities, etc.)

·    Race and Military, Police, and other organizations

·    Policing race, profiling, surveillance

·    Resistance, activism, coalition-building

·    Multiple migrations and racial subjectivities

·    Official/unofficial categories and racial formations (visible minorities, people of color, model minority, census designations, etc.)

·    “Markers” of race (accent, clothes, skin color, etc.)

·    Color consciousness in South Asian societies (premium on fairness, caste-race analogies, intra-minority prejudices, etc.)

·    Transnationalism and globalization (outsourcing, adoption, etc.)

Please send a 250-300-word abstract of your paper and a 5-6 line bio-note listing your institutional affiliation and current email address by Sunday, 5^th August 2012 to the conference co-chairs at the email addresses given below. The subject line of your email should contain the words “SALA 2013.” If you have any questions, please feel free to email the co-chairs

Dr. Anupama Arora, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth  aarora@umassd.edu

and

Dr. Prabhjot Parmar, University of the Fraser Valley prabhjot.parmar@ufv.ca

 Insert Routledge Ad here.

Deadline Extended: The response to our Call for Papers has been terrific, but some have asked for an extension. We are therefore accepting abstracts till the end of this month: November 30. If you've been busy about many things, but want to join us: now's the time to spend a few hours putting together an abstract, and sending it in. Thanks--this promises to be a large and very interesting conference.

2012 MELUS and USACLALS JOINT CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS

(26th Annual MELUS Conference and 6th Conference of the United States Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies)

April 19-22, 2012
Santa Clara University, California

THEME: Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Bill Ashcroft, Wlad Godzich, Francisco Jimenez, David Marriott

As an ongoing and vital process through which societies and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communications, economics, and politics, globalization addresses the transnational circulation of ideas and languages. Its impact on literature is manifold, with both positive and negative associations, wherein cultures receiving outside influences ignore some, adopt others as they are, and then immediately start to transform others. Certain aspects of globalization – such as hybridity and multi-rootedness – are increasingly present in literary texts as we witness ways in which they shape new literary forms, interrogate existing canons, and explore the emergence of ethnic canons.

We invite paper abstracts and complete panels, workshops, and roundtable proposals on all aspects of the multi-ethnic literatures of the United States and elsewhere. We are particularly interested in proposals that explore globalization in terms of its influence on ethnic canons, and vice versa, and encourage presentations on all global frameworks of analysis, such as Atlantic studies, global feminisms, pan-Africanism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, global indigenous studies, etc. Submissions should detail requests for specific audiovisual equipment, if needed. We also ask that a proposal for a complete panel, roundtable, or workshop include a short description of the central topic, supplemented by brief abstracts of individual speakers’ contributions.

Deadline for abstracts and proposals (250 words in Word or rtf format): November 30, 2011.

Please e-mail abstracts to:

Prof. John Hawley
jhawley@scu.edu

Hotel rooms ($139) have been set aside at the Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, where the conference will be held.

170 South Market Street
San Jose, California
TEL (408) 998-1900
http://www.fairmont.com/sanjose

All presenters, chairs, and respondents must be members of USACLALS or MELUS. Membership information can be found on the USACLALS website http://www.usaclals.org/ or the MELUS website at http://www.melus.org/membership.htm. All payments of membership dues must be mailed directly to USACLALS or MELUS, not to the conference organizers.

The long-term goal of USACLALS is to study postcolonial literatures (including those of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Canada, New Zealand and Australia) in relationship to the varied and vital cultural contexts of the Americas. We encourage studies which reach beyond the literatures of the British Commonwealth to use comparative frameworks in relation to francophone literatures, ethnic American literatures, and African-American literature.

To see Past MELUS conferences, go to http://webspace.ship.edu/kmlong/melus/confarchive.htm .

Call for Papers (Deadline 1st May, 2012)
Comparative Feminism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism: Gender and Sexual Identity in Contemporary Turkish Literature and Culture

We seek chapter proposals for our forthcoming anthology to be published in Spring 2013. Turkey is considered a space where there is a perfect balance of Eastern and Western cultural mores and traditions, but one can see conflicts and contradictions within various texts depicting gender and sexual identity constructions. Despite nearly a century of reform and advancement toward equality for women, there is a disjuncture between the ideology of modernism and the implementation of it. Upon its foundation as a nation state, Turkey embarked upon a state- centered elite driven path toward modernization and Westernization which, at the same time, sought to produce a monolithic culture. In recent years, this model of state-centered secular modernity has come under intense scrutiny and criticism as Islamists, Kurds and other minorities pressed their claims for recognition in the public sphere and force a rethinking of current understandings of Turkish identity and subjectivity.

These controversies, contradictions, and ambiguities are reflected in women’s lives and are indeed waged over women’s bodies by various factions. How are these disjunctures and contradictions reflected in modern Turkish literature and the media? Who writes about women and how are they depicted? Turkish television continues to portray women’s bodies as commodified and sexualized in order to sell products. These representations of rampant sexuality in music videos and commercials do not reflect the current material reality of the women in households and Turkish society. How are women rewriting themselves from being objects to subjects? Do women still feel solidarity and communal ties with each others in the modern and urban spaces, or are they increasingly isolated? What are the new formations of gender identity that are emerging? How are women reaching across what were previously seemingly unbridgable gaps to claim more than one identity space? How are the women in these intersections creating new identities for themselves?\

How about minority and immigrant women and their rights? Are there representations of the LBGTQQ community members, even if they are “invisible” in Turkish culture? How are Muslims, who continue to observe the headscarves, viewed? How do they view themselves? Can feminisms in Turkey accommodate Islam and /or observant women within its definitions and conceptualizations? Can Islam reconcile itself with feminism? How are secular identities being redefined in a post-secular globalized world? How do all of the ideological flux and flow impact ideas of feminism and the creation of new understandings of feminism in Turkey?
These and other issues will be considered for inclusion in the anthology. We welcome essays that analyze the repertoire of texts - fiction, biographies, films, documentaries, poetry, short stories, and so forth—that are engaged with examining issues of gender identity from feminist, postmodern and postcolonial perspectives.

Please send a 250 word abstract, along with a one page CV by 1st May 2012, to jsingh@nmu.edu, mloneil@khas.edu.tr, sehnaz.sismanoglu@khas.edu.tr
The editors are published scholars of a monograph, anthologies, and critical articles. Essays selected for inclusion in the final volume will be peer-reviewed by specialists in the field.

Jaspal K. Singh, Ph.D.
Professor, English Department
Northern Michigan University
Marquette, MI 49844

Mary Lou O’Neil
Department of American Culture and Literature
Kadir Has University
Cibali 34083
Istanbul, Turkey

Şehnaz Şişmanoğlu Şimşek
Turkish Language and Literature Coordinator
Kadir Has University
Cibali 34083
Istanbul, Turkey

ESSE Conference, Istanbul 4-8 September 2012 Post-9/11 Cultures of Terror in South-East Asian Literature and Film The shockwave of 9/11 has generated a wealth of critical literature as well as its own literary canon with the emergence of the subgenre of terror fiction – Liter(r)ature – as writers recreated or reconstructed the terrorist attacks directly or obliquely in their fiction. However, the first edition of our conference held at the University of Turin, established that Terror is asymmetrical and complex, not monolithic as the GWOT implies with its Manichean binaries. The United States does not have a monopoly of Terror and the US and Euro-centric debates about 9/11 which predominantly focus on security and international relations issues tend to overlook the abuses of State Terror in connection with the legacies of colonialism, decolonization and the Cold War. The second edition of Cultures of Terror to be held within ESSE 2012 a the Bogazici University of Istanbul from 4th to 8th September 2012 seeks to explore the fictional representation of State oppression and brutalization of the most vulnerable, whether in the name of national security or as a result of collateral damage to domestic or foreign military operations. We welcome papers that think through and beyond the predominant rhetorics and narratives of Terror and which address violent forms of postcolonial sovereignty, or ethnically-motivated, religion-based or caste-related violence in modern South Asia. We invite 15-minute long contributions focusing on film and fiction that responds to the conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s tribal areas, Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. We are also convening a round table on the same issues and invite/welcome guest speakers to participate in a wide-ranging debate. Procedure for submitting paper proposals: Colleagues wishing to participate in the Seminar or round table are invited to submit a 250- 300-word abstract and a brief bio to the three convenors before 11th February 2012. We will notify the participants of acceptance of their proposals by 29th February 2012. Dr Stephen Morton, University of Southampton: S.C.Morton@soton.ac.uk Dr Veronica Thompson, Athabasca University: thompson@athabascau.ca Dr Pascal Zinck, University of Lille: cap.zinck@wanadoo.fr All the information concerning the ESSE-11 Conference in Istanbul can be found on the Conference website http://www.esse2012.org

Assistant Professor of Post-WWII British Literature The Department of English at Ohio University seeks to appoint a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Post-WWII British Literature. A secondary interest in Postcolonial Literature is strongly desired. Requirements: PhD in English at the time of appointment, evidence of research excellence or potential, experience teaching a range of courses effectively, and a commitment to teaching students from diverse backgrounds. Candidates should expect to participate in departmental/university governance. Applicants should apply online http://www.ohiouniversityjobs.com/postings/1550. Upload a cover letter, CV, 25-page writing sample, and three contact names and e-mails for letters of reference. Review of applications will begin January 16. Questions should be directed to snyderc3@ohio.edu. Ohio University is an equal access/equal opportunity and affirmative action employer with a strong commitment to building and maintaining a diverse workforce. Women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply.

Dalit Literatures - In, Out and Beyond Call for Contributions Series PoCoPages, Coll. « Horizons anglophones » Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée http://www.pulm.fr/index.php/collections/horizons-anglophones/pocopages.html The history of Dalit literature can be traced back to centuries. But Dalit literary/cultural expressions were never taken into consideration due to the hegemonic nature of the field of literary production. The emergence of Dalit as a political category and identity coincide with the emergence of Dalit literature. Current researches by scholars reveal the widespread character of Dalit writings in various parts of India. Research also shows that Dalit literature had long before acquired a distinct language through its heterogeneous and plurivocal character which challenged dominant literary canons. Dalit literature acquired a recognizable identity towards the middle of the twentieth century. The term ‘Dalit literature’ – 'Dalit' meaning oppressed, broken and downtrodden — came into use officially in 1958 at the first conference on Dalit literature in Mumbai. The emergence of the Dalit Panthers (a political organisation formed in 1972 in Mahrastra) is a significant moment in the history of Dalit literature which was furthered by various political/literary movements across India. Dalit literature for a long time was disregarded and not taken seriously in the literary circles. The publication of translations from modern Marathi literature entitled Poisoned Bread edited by Arjun Dangle with a prefatory note by Gail Omvedt had already sparked debates in the literary circles. Under the impulsion of such academics as Arun Prabha Mukherjee (York University, Toronto) who translated Omprakash Valmiki's Joothan (1997) into English in 2003 and wrote an introduction to it, the initial reluctance to accept new literary genres by the dominant literary discourses, has, over time, given way to wider acceptance and circulation of Dalit literature in and outside India. The recent volume on Dalit writings from two south Indian states No Alphabet in Sight edited by Susie Tharu and K. Satyanarayana, opens up a new debate on the long history of Dalit literature and its current prominence in the contemporary scene of literature and politics. It also shows how Dalit literature moves beyond the usual discourses of literary modernity. The debate between Gandhi and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956), one of India’s foremost revolutionaries, an untouchable and a fierce critic of Gandhi, is a major event in Indian history. Ambedkar famously said ‘Mahatma, I have no country’. Fictionists like Avinash Dolas and others have explored the depth of this theme. This discussion between Ambedkar and Gandhi has provoked debates on nationhood and Hindu religion. The well-known book by D.R. Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet, is a case in point. Although untouchability was abolished with the 1950 Constitution of India (drafted by Ambedkar), Ambedkar’s experiences continue to be the lot of India’s 170 million Dalits today. Dalit literature in its initial stages (and in a broader sense, even today) was identified as specific protests directed against everyday humiliations that individual dalits and Dalits as a community face. In this context, contradictions between Marxism and progressive literary movements (which works on larger abstractions) with Dalit literature (and Dalit movements) have to be taken into serious consideration. Most of the debates around/about Dalit Literature have failed to adequately acknowledge the new vocabulary of imagination and aesthetical sensibility produced by these literatures. Dalit literature cannot be reduced to an engagement with victimhood. In the hands of poets like S. Joseph, it has spawned new literary cannons by disturbing the usual language available in the pre-existing canonical literary circles. Dalit Literature today has established itself as a new mode of literary/aesthetic imagination and writing. The fact that John Berger, Arundhati Roy and Joe Sacco saluted the publication of the graphic novel Bhimayana : Experiences of Untouchability (Delhi: Navayana, 2011), may be the sign that something is changing in the context of Dalit literatures. The visual, the literary and the political dimensions closely intertwine in this graphic biography of Ambedkar. The artists Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam, together with Srividya Natarajan and S. Anand for the story, crafted a book that has broken new ground, not least because it did so in a controversial way. The publication of Bhimayana could be a signal that Dalit cultures are edging out of the restricted areas where they were formerly circumscribed. This could also be an opportunity to examine Dalit expression and literatures in a renewed way and from different perspectives. Far from concentrating on the historical, social and economic circumstances of the untouchable communities that are described by Dalit writers or non-Dalit writers (such as Raja Rao, Arundhati Roy or Rohinton Mistry), the editors of the projected volume of PoCoPages encourage contributions that will foreground the following issues: - the linguistic questions linked to translation from regional Indian languages into English and other international languages; more generally the question of accessibility; questions linked to sub-Indian and international distribution; magazines, books and the web; - the attention Dalit literatures are getting outside the limited circles of activists in India and outside India; more generally the question of reception; Dalit literature and its readership; who writes for whom; - the generic questions linked to the literary choices made by the writers : poetry, short story, novel, autobiography, biography, graphic novels, photo-journalism, recorded oral narratives, theatre, etc; the poetics and politics involved in such literary choices; - the gender question: male and female writers; male and female readers; the relationship between caste and gender, in the specific context of the Dalits; - the relationship between Dalit literature and Dalit politics, including the impact of literature on the social situations faced by the untouchables; the transformative value of such literature and on what grounds; - the contact zones between Adivasi literature and Dalit literature; - the marginalisation of minority Dalit literature (Christian, Muslim, Sikh Dalit literature for instance); - the resistance that Dalit literature is facing from dominant literary groups and the legitimacy it is slowly being granted, or not; - the pitfalls of literary fashion and stereotypes; - Dalit literatures and the film industry (film adaptations, documentaries, etc); - the relationship between Dalit literatures and the Indian literary canon; the relationship between Dalit literatures and other literatures (postcolonial, African-American, subaltern and trauma literatures, etc); intertextuality within Dalit literatures; - the relationship between Marxism and Dalit literature, specifically in terms of how the questions of class and caste overlap and conflict; the perspective of Indian Marxists; - Dalit self-writings and their specificities; narrative voice and perspective; - last but not least, the problematics of inside and outside: writing on or from a Dalit perspective; the academic perspective and the non-academic perspective; the perspective of Indians, and Indian writers, of the diaspora; the Indian and the non-Indian perspective; bridging the western and the eastern perspective on Dalit writing. PoCoPages is a peer-reviewed series in the collection "Horizons anglophones" published by the Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée (Pulm). India and the Diasporic Imagination is the latest volume (2011). http://www.pulm.fr/index.php/collections/horizons-anglophones/pocopages.html General Editor : Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak (Paul-Valéry University – Montpellier 3, France). This volume, to be published in 2013, will be co-edited with Joshil K. Abraham (Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi). Please submit a 300-word abstract with a short bio (200 words maximum) by January 31, 2012 to Joshil K. Abraham and to Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak . If the preliminary proposal is accepted, final essays (33,000 characters, spaces and footnotes included, bibliography on top) will be due by May 31, 2012.

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference Title: “DIASPORAS AND ‘RACE’” Conference dates: October 25-27, 2012 DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: February 1, 2012 Place: Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA) In the wake of the 2011 conference on “Diasporas and Cultures of Migration” that was held at Montpellier, University Paul Valéry, the convenors of this conference wish to extend and expand the reflection on the concept of diaspora, its uses, its limits, or even its outright rejection as a useful concept, by focusing on the links between diasporas and “race.” Diasporas have always had to negotiate new articulations of ethnic/ racial identities while individuals had to make do with contexts already defined by certain types of racial relations and the evolutions of racial transnational references. The emergence of new racisms and of new racialized identities reconfigures class hierarchies, which often results in violence against migrants. Does the prism of diaspora allow for a clearer conceptualization of the concept of “race” as a socio-historical construction and a surface of projection that depends on context? Does diasporic belonging constitute a response to racism and imposed ethno-racial identities? How have populations appropriated it to foster local and global socialities and practices? The terms creolization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, which certain scholars prefer to diaspora, entertain certain specific relations to “race”: do these new concepts help or create blind spots when it comes to racial identity, racialization, multiracialism or the erasure of “race”? What happens when we also address these issues in terms of gender and class? What role does the mediation of art and literature play in these evolutions? Are there specific artistic creations that emerge from/at this juncture? Is there an aesthetics that simultaneously addresses issues of race and diaspora? Can one point to the appropriation, the creation and the circulation of images that translate diasporic sensitivity? Is race a component of this aesthetics or is it left out as irrelevant? If diaspora moves “beyond race”, how does diaspora intersect with gender relations, religious identities and concepts of geography and space? Can we address the link between the environment and the migrations linked to diasporic movement? Can we speak of a postcolonial ecology? Can these issues ultimately be thought within the wider frame of the human and the natural? DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS (maximum 250 words): February 1, 2012 Please submit a short bio-bibliographical notice as well (maximum 200 words) and copy the five co-convenors of the conference in your email. “Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’” Conference series This will be the second meeting in the series organized by the research center EMMA (University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France) over 2011-13 which gathers leading scholars in the field to identify and assess the joint evolutions of “Diaspora Studies” and “Race studies” to better understand: 1) how these approaches can be cross- fertilising; 2) how socio-economic and political changes have affected race relations and diasporic communities; 3) how literature and the arts, the social sciences and cultural studies have seized that question. This project entails a redefinition of terms and concepts and the confrontation of different, but not necessarily divergent, perspectives. A preparatory symposium, “Diasporas and Cultures of Migration” was held at University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3 in June 2011, in partnership with CAAR (Collegium for African-American Research), the Centre de Recherches Littéraires et Historiques de l’Océan Indien (CRLHOI, University of La Réunion), the Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS, University of Edinburgh, UK), the Department for Continuing Education (University of Oxford), the Institut de Recherche Intersite Etudes Culturelles (IRIEC, University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3), the International Institute of Migration (IMI, University of Oxford), the MSH-Montpellier (Maison des Sciences de l’Homme-Montpellier), Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA), Wesleyan University (USA). Leading scholars assessed the state of the debate in preparation for this second event. The third conference, “African-Americans, ‘Race’ and Diaspora”, scheduled for June 13-15, 2013 at University Paul- Valéry, Montpellier 3, will be specifically dedicated to the interlocking issues of “race” and the Black Diaspora. The concluding symposium, scheduled for October 25-26, 2013, at the University of Oxford, UK, will allow for final reflections. Partners for the conference at Wake Forest University: CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) (to be confirmed) Department for Continuing Education (University of Oxford, UK) IRIEC (Institut de Recherche Intersite Etudes Culturelles, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France) EMMA (Etudes Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone, Université Paul- Valéry, Montpellier 3, France) MIGRINTER (CNRS, Université de Poitiers, France) Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA) Co-convenors: Dr Sally Barbour (Wake Forest University, USA) barbour@wfu.edu Dr David Howard (University of Oxford, UK) david.howard@conted.ox.ac.uk Dr Thomas Lacroix (IMI, Univ. of Oxford, UK; MIGRINTER, Université de Poitiers, France) thomas.lacroix@univ-poitiers.fr Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak (EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3, France) judith.misrahi-barak@univ-montp3.fr Pr Claudine Raynaud (EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3, France) claudine.raynaud@univ-montp3.fr

Negative Cosmopolitanisms: Abjection, Power, and Biopolitics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, 11-13 October 2012 Keynote Speakers: Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota); Pheng Cheah (University of California, Berkeley); Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia); Peter Nyers (McMaster University) This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the array of negative cosmopolitanisms operating today—all those ways in which cosmopolitan subjects are still stigmatized, disempowered, excluded, and denied. Against the superficial liberal celebration of cosmopolitan diversity in the world today, negative cosmopolitanism instead reveals experiences of rupture, exile, oppression, and imperialism. The conference will bring researchers together to explore the histories and constitution of cosmopolitanism past and present, with the aim of better understanding the complex experience of power today. Themes you may wish to consider include: *The history /representations of cosmopolitanism *Slum- or ghetto-based cosmopolitanisms *Imperial cosmopolitanism (e.g. the military complex, the War on Terror) *Labor and Internationalism *Community or the Commons *Piracy *Trafficking, dislocation, border-crossing *State sovereignty/state vulnerability *Communication & information technologies, new media *Biopolitics *Religious movements *Feminism Proposals shall consist of an abstract of 350-500 words and a one-page CV. Please send applications to Dr. Terri Tomsky by 21 October 2011. Terri Tomsky 3-5 Humanities Centre University of Alberta Edmonton, AB Canada T6G 2E5 Email: tomsky@ualberta.ca

CALL FOR PAPERS

2011 Special Number of the South Asian Review
South Asian Diasporas

South Asian Review, the peer-refereed journal of the South Asian Literary Association, invites submissions for its 2011 special number, Volume 32, Number 3, devoted to South Asian Diasporas. South Asian Review calls for papers that examine the work of diasporic writers, artists, and filmmakers of South Asian origin from around the world. The papers should address individual works or groups of works from a scholarly vantage point. Topics of interest may include diasporic writers from the colonial and postcolonial periods, first-, second- or third-generation diasporic writers, South Asian writers in Africa or the South Pacific, Indo-Caribbean writers, and South Asian writers in North America and Britain. Critical essays that discuss diasporic art, literature, and culture under such rubrics as the diasporic imaginary, diaspora politics, diasporic hybridity, diaspora-homeland relations, diaspora and empire, diaspora and the nation-state, and diaspora and globalization are also welcome.

Articles of 15-25 pages, prepared in accordance with the MLA style, along with an abstract of 8-10 lines and a biographical note of 50 words, should be sent electronically by August 15, 2011 to Dr. B. P. Giri at BP.Giri@Dartmouth.EDU.

Inquiries regarding book reviews should be addressed to Professor P. S. Chauhan at chauhanp@arcadia.edu. For further information about the South Asian Review, please refer to the SAR website at: http://www.upj.pitt.edu/southasianreview.

All inquiries concerning this special number of the South Asian Review should be addressed to:

Dr. B. P. Giri
Guesteditor
Department of English
HB 6032
Dartmouth College
New Hampshire 03755
USA

CALL FOR PAPERS The 2012 Special Topic Issue of SAR The Literature and Culture of South Asian Modernism South Asian Review, the refereed journal of the South Asian Literary Association, invites scholarly submissions for the 2012 Special Topic issue, Volume 33, Number 1, on The Literature and Culture of South Asian Modernism. By revamping all prior conventions of the arts such as idealism, realism, and naturalism, European modernism rewrote the artistic-literary project, and, from providing a fixed point of reference for a culture conceived in homogeneous terms, literature became a domain of active experimentation in which writers and artists exploded notions of unity, objectivity, and self-coherence. How did modernism impact South Asian colonial and postcolonial writers and artists? It is clear that, while three generations of westernized South Asian writers and artists have reproduced, in some ways, the elitist nature of the modernist movement itself (“high modernism”), this elitism has not neutralized modernism’s inherent tendency to fragment and destabilize any unitary claims to truth, including the Truth of Empire. Accordingly, South Asian modernism need not be viewed as an apolitical aesthetic. It is the articulation of a difference—racial, ethnic, cultural, historical, gendered—that may reside at the very foundation of the colonial experience. Contributors may consider the following broad topics as they formulate their own specific topics: • Modernism and Modernity • Modernism and Postcoloniality • Modernism and Postmodernism • Modernism and Historicism • Modernism and Feminism. Contributors may also wish to address underrepresented authors and authors working in languages other than English. Critical articles of 15-25 pages, prepared in accordance with the MLA style, along with an abstract of 8-10 lines and a biographical note of 50 words, should be sent electronically by 10 January 2012 to Alpana Sharma at alpana.sharma@wright.edu. Inquiries regarding book reviews should be addressed to Professor P. S. Chauhan at chauhanp@arcadia.edu. For further information about the South Asian Review, please refer to the SAR website at: http://www.upj.pitt.edu/southasianreview. Alpana Sharma Guesteditor Associate Professor and Director of Honors Program in English Department of English Wright State University Dayton, OH 45435 Phone: 937-775-2070 Fax: 937-775-2707

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2011 Special Topic Issue of
The South Asian Review, Volume 32, Number 1

Transnational Realisms and Post-Realisms in South Asian Literature and Culture

South Asian Review, the refereed journal of the South Asian Literary Association, invites submissions for the 2011 Special Topic issue, Volume 32, Number 1, devoted to South Asian Realisms and Post-realisms that examines the ways in which South Asian realist writers unsettle and rework realist codes. How might we account for the ways in which colonial and post-colonial South Asian writers dismantle the opposition between realism and modernism? Transnational or planetary realisms provide us new paradigms. In the frame of planetary realisms, realism is not cathected to nationalist narratives; the realist writer need not be an apologist for the nation state and is not tied down to strictly mimetic conventions of representation. South Asian Review invites papers on literature, criticism, film, cultural, and social activism that explore any aspect of South Asian realisms within national, vernacular, and diasporic contexts. Papers may explore, but are not restricted to, the following themes: realism’s narrative forms and migratory routes; emergence of realism as a theme in modern South Asian literatures; the progressive realist literary movement; interrogating the nature and contents of reality (whose reality does realism narrate?); queer, gay, lesbian and transsexual debates about pushing the envelope with regard to representational conventions of realist texts; neo-realist film; affect and the realist genre; realism as language-neutral versus realisms specific to vernaculars; ways in which Dalit literature, women’s writing, and queer cultural texts rework the historical significance of realism.

Critical articles of 15-25 pages, prepared in accordance with the MLA style and accompanied by an abstract of 8-10 lines and a biographical note of 50 words, should be sent by April 30, 2011 to:

Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh, rashmi@pitt.edu and rashmidubebhatnagar@gmail.com

Rajender Kaur, Department of English, William Paterson University, kaurr@wpunj.edu

The subject line of your email should contain the words

“SAR 2011 Special Issue”

For information about the South Asian Review, please refer to the SAR website at
http://www.upj.pitt.edu/southasianreview

2011 CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS

 
25th Annual MELUS/USACLALS Joint Conference 

April 7 – 10, 2011 

Florida Atlantic University
 Boca Raton, FL 


THEME: Ethnic Canons in Global Contexts


As an ongoing and vital process through which societies and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communications, economics, and politics, globalization addresses the transnational circulation of ideas and languages. Its impact on literature is manifold, with both positive and negative associations, wherein cultures receiving outside influences ignore some, adopt others as they are, and then immediately start to transform others. Certain aspects of globalization – such as hybridity and multi-rootedness – are increasingly present in literary texts as we witness ways in which they shape new literary forms, interrogate existing canons, and explore the emergence of ethnic canons. 



We invite paper abstracts and complete panels, workshops, and roundtable proposals on all aspects of the multi-ethnic literatures of the United States and elsewhere. We are particularly interested in proposals that explore globalization in terms of its influence on ethnic canons, and vice versa, and encourage presentations on all global frameworks of analysis, such as Atlantic studies, global feminisms, pan-Africanism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, global indigenous studies, etc. Submissions should detail requests for specific audiovisual equipment, if needed. We also ask that a proposal for a complete panel, roundtable, or workshop include a short description of the central topic, supplemented by brief abstracts of individual speakers’ contributions.



Deadline for abstracts and proposals (250 words in Word or rtf format): NOVEMBER 15, 2010 



PLEASE NOTE:

e-mail abstracts to: John Hawley at jhawley@scu.edu AND to Prof. Nora Erro Peralta and Prof. Taylor Hagood at melus2011@gmail.com

Hotel rooms have been set aside at the: 


Renaissance
Boca Raton Hotel
($99/night) 

2000 NW 19th Street Boca Raton, FL 33431

(561) 368-5252

All presenters, chairs, and respondents must be members of a chapter of ACLALS (preferably USACLALS).

Membership information can be found on the USACLALS website at: MEMBERSHIP 

It remains to be determined whether or not participants will also need to become MELUS members at half the regular charge.


The 2nd Annual Postcolonial Studies Association/Journal of Postcolonial Writing Postgraduate Essay Prize 2011

The Postcolonial Studies Association and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing are pleased to announce that entries for the 2011 Postgraduate Essay Prize are now open.

The competition is open to any student registered for a postgraduate degree at any institution in the world on the closing date for submission (30 April 2011).

Essays should not be more than 7500 words long (including bibliographic citations and footnotes), must be presented in accordance with the style guidelines of the MLA and may be on any topic related to postcolonial studies.

Only one submission per person is permissible. All submissions should be made electronically and include two separate attachments:

a completed application form
the essay itself.

The author's identity should not be identifiable from the essay in any way (candidates must ensure that electronic tags such as those generated by MS Word are removed).

Essays or parts of essays that have been published in any form previously are not eligible. Please note that previous entrants are welcome to enter the competition again with a different essay.

Incomplete submissions and submissions which do not meet the above criteria will not be considered.

A prize of £250 will be awarded to the winner, and the winning essay will, subject to editorial approval, be published in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Should the recipient of the prize not be an existing PSA member, a complimentary year-long membership to the PSA will also be awarded. It is not compulsory for candidates to be members to enter the prize.

The winner will be formally notified on 1 July 2011 and the winning essay will be announced at the 2nd PSA conference at Birmingham University on 7-8 July 2011.

Please submit all entries to

psajpw@postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk

by 30 April 2011.

All essays will be evaluated anonymously by a panel of academics selected by the PSA Executive and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. The judges’ decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

Click here to download PSAJPW Postgrad Essay Prize Advert

Click here to download PSAJPW Postgrad Essay Prize Application Form

ENGLISH ACADEMY OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

2011 INTERNATIONAL GOLDEN JUBILEE CONFERENCE

Literature, Literacy and Language

Cape Town

27-30 September 2011

The English Academy of Southern Africa was founded in 1961 and for the past fifty years has dedicated itself to stimulating interest in the English language and its literatures as well as promoting the effective use of English as a national resource in Southern Africa. The English Academy interests itself in English in education, promotes research and debate, organizes lectures, conferences and seasonal schools, makes representations about language matters, rewards excellence and fosters the creative, critical and scholarly talents of users (and would-be users) of English in Southern Africa.

Call for papers

The conference invites established and emerging researchers, teachers and policy makers to engage with challenges and issues in the three areas of English literature, literacy studies, and English language education. While papers are welcome in any of these areas, there is a particular interest in their interrelationship.

• The area of English Literature will include both papers on texts and theoretical analyses, especially in the areas of postcoloniality and global literature.

• The potential that English has in literacy education in a multilingual society, with particular emphasis on reading and critical educational approaches in English teaching, is of pressing concern for contemporary southern Africa. The concept of literacy used here goes far beyond acquiring a set of technical skills for reading and writing, focusing on a capacity to use these skills in making sense of the world. Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all, and is essential for eradicating poverty and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy.

• Language education papers will address the wide repertoire of challenges and innovations in a range of educational/work contexts (schools; colleges; universities; workplaces).

Thoroughly researched papers dealing with topics and issues related to any of these areas are invited from colleagues throughout the world. There will be a 20 minute time slot for each paper with associated discussion. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes. Selected papers will be published in the English Academy of Southern Africa’s accredited and peer-reviewed journal, The English Academy Review. The first deadline for the submission of abstracts, which will be reviewed by an advisory committee, is 30 November 2010. An abstract should not exceed 300 words. Colleagues are encouraged to send their abstracts early as the conference can accommodate only a limited number of papers.

The conference will be organised around themes and issue-centred concerns, and there will be a core of invited contributions on these topics. We invite papers on the following or related themes:

• Literacy and work/community/diversity;
• Inequalities and epistemologies: exploring knowledges, oracies and literacies;
• Literacy in schools and higher education;
• Multi-modal literacies;
• Postcolonial and global writings;
• Literature in schools and universities;
• English language education; and
• English and Englishes.

Several outstanding speakers of international stature will deliver plenary addresses at the conference. The programme consists of three days of plenary presentations and a diverse range of concurrent workshops and parallel sessions for paper presentations.
The academic programme will be complemented by social activities including a welcome reception, a poetry reading festival and a closing gala dinner to celebrate the jubilee of the English Academy of South Africa.

This conference will be one of the most significant events on the education calendar for 2011.

Timeline:

1st announcement and call for papers: 20 August 2010
2nd announcement and further call for papers: 30 September 2010
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 November 2010
Extended deadline: 15 January 2011
Notification of acceptance of abstract: 15 February 2011
Draft programme design: 30 March 2011

Conference Convenor: Prof. Rajendra Chetty
Conference co-convenor: Ms Marie-Anne Ogle
Conference Secretariat: Ms Naomi Nkealah
Conference committee: Dr Barbara Basel, Prof. Rajendra Chetty, Dr Janet Condy, Ms Anne Hill, Ms Naomi Nkealah, Ms Marie-Anne Ogle, Prof. Mastin Prinsloo, Prof. Stanley Ridge and Mr Philip Thraves.

Conference Fees: Delegates from Southern Africa
Early registration (before 30 April 2011)
– ZAR1500
Late registration – ZAR1750

Delegates from overseas and outside Southern Africa
Early registration – $250 (US)
Late registration – $300 (US)
Currency converter website - www.xe.com.

Venue: District Six campus, Cape Peninsula University of Technology

District Six is in the 'city bowl' of Cape Town and at the foothill of Table Mountain, so the campus is close to most of Cape Town’s main attractions. It is a fascinating area, known not only for its historic significance (forced removals during apartheid) and the District Six Museum, but also for its artistic vibrancy in terms of the arts, literature, music and culture. Artists from District Six include Alex la Guma, Richard Rive and Abdullah Ibrahim.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:

Email 300-word abstracts together with full contact details by 30 November 2010 to Ms Naomi Nkealah at englishacademy@societies.wits.ac.za

Call for Papers
Crossing the Borders: Reflections on Indian Diaspora and Transnationalism

What does it mean to be multinational? Who in the 21st Century is on the brink of melting into the pot, and who is clamoring to ensure that their culture is left unmarred? Now more than ever, multiculturalism in an era of “clashing civilizations” may be the answer to preservation. On the other hand, it may mean the permanent isolation of transnational groups. What are your thoughts and findings on the cultural dislocation of first and subsequent generations of continental Indians in the Americas, Europe, Africa or Australia? We are looking for a wide variety of responses from first-hand accounts to in-depth analysis of how the displacement of Indians has affected their culture in their new country and what affect this has had on the surrounding cultures.

We invite your submission of both scholarly papers and personal experiences of the transnational Indian. Please submit a 250-word proposal in MS Word, or RTF format by December 15, 2010. MLA is preferred, but APA is accepted to deenas@ecu.edu

Dr. Seodial Frank Deena, Professor of Multicultural & Transnational Literature, Criticism, and Culture
Department of English, Bate 2201
East Carolina University, NC 27858 USA

The Journal of Postcolonial Theory and Theology welcomes all scholarly interrogations of postcolonial theories and theologies, without restriction to any particular political/cultural ideology or to specific critical practices. JPTT seeks to encourage the broadest possible variety of approaches and viewpoints, and the generation of wide-ranging, productive debates. Submitted articles will be evaluated for quality of their argument rather than personal agreement with the results or method.

We are seeking contributions from scholars dealing with all aspects of religion and representing the realities of local communities throughout the world, including experiences of diaspora or hybridity. We invite essays dealing with colonial and postcolonial histories of religion, current expressions of religiosity, theoretical interventions in religious discourse, applications to postcolonial theory to religious situations, theological critiques of postcolonial innovations, and theologies beyond empire. JPTT intends to open broad discourse among new voices, emerging scholars, and established voices in multiple sites throughout the world, and so we welcome intentionally scholars who have not published before and who are at the beginnings of their investigations and careers, at the same time we invite those whose insights have already shaped the field.

Papers and inquiries should be sent to Joseph Duggan, at nyclaman@googlemail.com.

The Journal of Empire Studies

Deadline for Spring 2011 submissions: November 15, 2010
Deadline for Summer 2011 submissions: March 15, 2011

A new scholarly journal on global studies, The Journal of Empire Studies, is looking for articles on topics within the broad range of empire studies. Of particular interest are examinations of specific subjects comparing eastern and western empires.
For specifics, we welcome you to visit the beta web site:

http://www.iflair.biz/jes/

Please direct inquiries to Tom Durwood, Valley Forge Military College, tbird3080@aol.com

In the wake of the twentieth Anniversary of the publication of The Empire Writes Back/
Dans la foulée du vingtième anniversaire de la publication du livre The Empire Writes Back, we proudly announce the following event/ nous organisons un colloque international:

Future Postcolonialisms: Comparing, Converting, Queering, Greening/
Le postcolonial-en-devenir

on Friday and Saturday 27 & 28 May 2011
A Paris, les vendredi et samedi 27 et 28 mai 2011
Salle Dussane, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45, rue d’Ulm, Paris

Conveners/ Organisateurs: Chantal ZABUS, IUF [Institut universitaire de France] Chair of Comparative Postcolonial Literatures and Gender Studies, CREF/G – EA 4400 – UParis3-Sorbonne Nouvelle; & Dominique COMBE, Théorie de la littérature, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris; CREF/G-EA4400-UParis3-Sorbonne Nouvelle
Tentative Programme/ Programme provisoire:

Friday 27 May 2011/
Le vendredi 27 mai 2011:

9:45: Welcoming Speech/ Allocution de bienvenue: TBA
10:00: Keynote Address: Bill ASHCROFT & Gareth GRIFFITHS: “On The Empire Writes Back and Beyond”

10:15
Comparing/
Etat des lieux sur le Postcolonial en France

Dominique COMBE (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris): confirmé- titre à venir

Jean-Marc MOURA (UParis Ouest-La Défense): "Les études postcoloniales de l'aire francophone: entre France, francophonie et monde."

Xavier GARNIER (Paris3-Sorbonne Nouvelle): "Ecrire avec l'Apocalypse: littératures postcoloniales au Congo."

11:00: Pause-café/ Coffee Break

11:20
Greening/ Ecocritique postcoloniale

With the participation of Helen TIFFIN (UWollongong): "What is Indigeneity?"

Graham HUGGAN (ULeeds, U.K.): “Attenborough, Colonialism, and the British Tradition of Nature Documentary”;

Cheryl STOBIE ( UKwaZulu Natal, South Africa): “Dystopian Dreams from South Africa: Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland and Zoo City”;

Ferial GHAZOUL (American University Cairo, Egypt): “Greening in Contemporary Arabic Literature: The Transformation of Mythic Motifs into Postcolonial Discourse.”

LUNCH/ Repas de midi

2:30

Queering and Browning/ Nouvelles sexualités dissidentes

John HAWLEY (Santa Clara University, California, USA): “Late to the (Political) Party: Who’s Gay when Everyone’s Queer?”

William SPURLIN (University of Sussex, U.K.): “Postcolonially Queer: Comparative Representations of Same-Sex Desires in the Maghreb and Southern Africa”;

Unoma AZUAH (Lane College, Tennessee, USA/ Nigeria): “The Video Closet: Nollywood’s Gay Stories”

Evening Free/ Soirée libre

Saturday 28 May 2011/ Le Samedi 28 mai 2011

10:00

Religion et identités/Converting

Gareth GRIFFITHS (University of Western Australia): “Transacting Identity: Religion and Identity in Postcolonial Spaces”;

Srilata RAVI (University of Alberta, Canada): “Representing Afro-Asian Identities in Indian Ocean Literatures”;

Klaus STIERSTORFER (University of Muenster, Germany): “Fundamentalism and the Postcolonial: Limitation or Creative Stimulus?”

Coffee break/Pause-café

11:20
Round Table/Round Table: Janet WILSON (Northampton U, U.K.): “Speaking from Experience: The Journal for Postcolonial Writing and EACLALS”, Marta DVORAK (UParis 3, to be confirmed) & Chantal ZABUS on Commonwealth.

Repas de midi/ LUNCH

2:30

Le postcolonial-en-devenir/Futures

Elleke BOEHMER (Oxford University, UK), “The Empire in the World”;

Mike HILL (State University of New York at Albany, USA): “Ecologies of War: Racial Complexity in an Age of Failed States”;

Bill ASHCROFT (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia): “Future Thinking: Postcolonial Utopianism”.

Dinner at/ Banquet au Le Train Bleu (Gare de Lyon) (for those who have registered)

Registration details will be available in the course of December 2010.

CALL FOR PAPERS

11th Annual South Asian Literary Association (SALA) Conference
Los Angeles, January 2011

Transnational Realisms and Post Realisms in South Asian Literature and Culture

This conference examines ways in which South Asian realist and postrealist writers unsettle and rework realist codes. South Asian cultural and narrative forms are erased or occluded in the realism/anti-realism debate. The normative account in literary histories posits realism as the precursor to modernism. South Asian literary realisms diverge from, and are discontinuous with, the long history of debate about Platonic and neo-Platonic art as copying a copy of the real. Neither the philosophic-scientific development of the doctrine of the real, nor 19th century realism as the objective expression of the world view of the European bourgeoisie, can be fully claimed by South Asian realisms except in indirect, synoptic, and belated ways as the travel of ideas through Empire. How might we account for the ways in which colonial and post-colonial South Asian writers dismantle the opposition between realism and modernism? Categories troubled by the South Asian writer include conventional oppositions between realism and myth: realist versus non-realist art: written realisms as distinct from realism in oral storytelling: novel versus petit récit (short tale): realism in frame narratives in relation to realism in episodic or cyclic narratives: social realism as a contrast to magical realism.

Once these binaries are exploded, new paradigms are made available to us: planetary and transnational realisms. Space, time and identity in South Asian realisms are not always situated within the frameworks of nationalism. Transnational, or planetary realisms, suggest that the South Asian writer need not be an apologist for the nation state and he/she does not have to be tied to or encumbered by strictly mimetic conventions of representation. We invite papers on literature, criticism, film, cultural, and social activism that explore any aspect of South Asian realisms and/or post(-)realisms within both national and diasporic contexts. Papers may explore, but are not restricted to, the following ideas and questions:

Realism’s narrative forms and migratory routes. How can we theorize verbal,
discursive, characterological, digressive, as well as truth telling realist conventions in South Asian narrative forms (such as the qissa, dastaan, kathasagar, Puranic tale, folktale, or epic recitation)?

Whose reality does realism narrate? Which classes, communities, genders and
castes constitute the privileged subject of South Asian literary realisms? In what ways have new reading publics among South Asian, diaspora, and non-South Asian communities generated local and global markets for writers of fresh and unexpected South Asian literary realisms?

Affective Realisms. Realism seduces by producing an essential reality and unity
of affect. How might new wave or neo-realist literature, music, and film construct an essentialism of affect? How is the local and the global imagined in such constructions?

The Language of Realism. Is realism language-neutral or are there distinct
formations of realisms in each South Asian vernacular literature? Is it possible to trace a non-Western history of metaphysics that attends to the material, the social, and the everyday, and moves fluidly between realist registers and the unseen?

Activist Realisms. The author/playwright/filmmaker-activist who deploys realist and neo-realist modes often aims to make social and physical reality the basis for consciousness raising. How might Dalit literature, women’s writing, and queer cultural texts re-read and rework the historical significance of realism, or speak to current political issues requiring activism? What are the narrative modes for representing the empirical realities of violence and/or movements for social change?

Socialist or Liberal Realisms. New narratives and narrative technologies in Bollywood essay global neo-realisms, such as the investigative documentary, films themed around terrorism and/or police brutality, and films that document the immigrant’s return home. In post-liberalized India, can we speak of right wing statist appropriations and co-opting of literary and cinematic realisms?

Subaltern Realisms. Subaltern realisms emerge from lower classes and castes that critique dominant religious practices and modes of domination. For example, how has Bhakti realism invented and reinvented itself in the cinematic and literary-cultural consciousness of South Asian cultural production?

Realism and Reality: reassessments, influences, updates

Please send, in an email, a 250-word abstract of your paper and a 5-6 line bio-note listing your institutional affiliation and current email address to the conference co-chairs at the email addresses given below. The subject line of your email should contain the words “SALA 2011.”

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 25 August 2010

Co-chairs and Email addresses:

Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar, University of Pittsburgh, rashmi@pitt.edu

Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University, kaurr@wpunj.edu

Postcolonialism and Labour

EACLALS Postgraduate Conference
Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

26 - 27 March 2011

Keynote by Professor Frank Schulze-Engler (Goethe University, Frankfurt)

The conference is mainly for those who are currently working on their postgraduate/doctoral thesis. However, early career researchers (who are usually defined as up to five years after obtaining a PhD) are invited to present as well.

This inaugural postgraduate conference aims to provide a space for debate and discussion on reconfiguring the category of ‘Labour’ within Postcolonial Studies. Historically speaking, given its Marxist affiliations and the tropes of eurocentrism in universalising ‘Labour’ as a normative category against the local and particular, Postcolonial Studies has not engaged critically with the notion of ‘Labour’. However, the concept is now gaining purchase in the field owing largely to globalisation, international division of labour, immigration and the radical restructuring of work and professions both within and outside the West. Yet, despite these recent developments, Postcolonial Studies can be criticised for effectively abandoning the economic essence of cultures by ceaselessly reworking ‘difference’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘disjunctures’ as the cultural markers of historical and persisting inequalities. In the last twenty-five years we have witnessed the emergence of a wide range of literary and filmic productions that reconfigure the notion of ‘Labour’, including Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (2003), Hari Kunzru’s Transmission (2004), Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger (2008).

This conference seeks papers that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

How, and in what ways, can the concept of ‘Labour’ be redressed from a culturally contingent perspective (as opposed to totalising Marxist approaches)?
How does the recent surge of immigrant and diasporic literature and film reflect the workings of ‘Labour’ in their narratives?
In light of globalisation – the increasing global division of labour, shifts and uncertainties of financial markets – is there a need for Postcolonial Studies to embrace the Marxist concepts of labour without categorically abandoning its culturalist project?

We invite papers from postgraduates working in the disciplines of literature, history, cultural studies, sociology, film and media studies, human geography, linguistics, politics, religious studies and communication among others. Proposals reflecting an interdisciplinary approach are particularly welcome. Some suggested themes are:

Labour and its Cultural Constructions
The aesthetics of writing labour
The visual aesthetics of labour

Labour and Power Relations
Restructuring labour in the Post-Imperial era
Neo-imperialism and labour

Labour and Globalisation
New technologies and new forms of labour
New technologies and old forms of labour

Labour and Capitalism
Revisiting Marx in the global economic crisis
Transformations in the working class

Labour and Gender
New Feminism in the age of globalisation
Deconstructing the gender divide in the job market

Labour and Identity
New Ethnicities for a new labour market
Crossing national identities

Labour and Exploitation
Legitimising the exploitation of illegal immigrants
Illegal exploitation of immigrants

Labour and Exile
Reflections on exile as survival
Refugees, migrant workers and exile

We also welcome presentations in the form of workshops where postgraduate students can share and discuss their work in progress. In addition to the paper presentations, postgraduate students are encouraged to present early findings of their research in the form of posters.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for individual presentations (20 minutes), workshop presentations or poster presentations to eaclals.pg.conference@googlemail.com. Include your name, affiliation, email address, a brief biography and indicate whether you will present in a PANEL, WORKSHOP or with a POSTER.

Abstracts: Deadline for abstracts is: 01 November 2010

For further information about the conference, please see the website at www.eaclals.ulg.ac.be/pg-conference

Participants must be EACLALS members. Please see the EACLALS website at http://www.eaclals.org for subscription rates and further information.

A special issue of JPW on Pakistan is being edited by Muneeza Shamsie, This will be issue JPW 47.2 which will be published in April 2011 (copy due at publishers in February 2011).

The theme is 'Beyond Geography: Literature, Politics and Violence in Pakistan" and the issue will look at the the thin dividing line between diaspora and non-diaspora in Pakistani English writing, as well as the literary response to the current events - and other aspect of politics and turmoil in Pakistan. She would like to make the issue as comprehensive as possible by including other dimensions of Pakistani English Literature - identity, nation, gender, social disparity etc. Her aim is to compile an issue which will examine the dynamics of current event sin Pakistan, and in particular the literary response

Muneeza Shamsie would also like to include an article discussing the works of both Mohsin Hamid and Mohammed Hanif (on a comparative basis). This should be no longer than 7000 words and should follow the JPW style-guide (which is essentially the same as MLA) . Alternatively she would also consider TWO separate articles one on each author, if you were able to write on only one of them.

If you are interested in contributing to this special issue an article which covers the work of both or alternatively one of these authors please contact her on mshamsie@gmail.com.

The deadline for abstracts and expressions of interest is 15th June and for final submission to her is 30th November.