CALL FOR PAPERS
Emergent Cartographies: Asian American Studies in the Twenty-first Century
Omni Austin Hotel Downtown @ 700 San Jacinto St.
Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Annual Conference
UT Austin, Texas April 7-11, 2010
Conference Co-chairs: Madeline Hsu (UT Austin) & Cathy Schlund-Vials (UConn Storrs)
The interdisciplinary Association for Asian American Studies invites presentation proposals from the fields of literature, geography, sociology, political science, history, cultural studies, the applied social sciences, education, anthropology, media and film, ethnic studies, public policy, psychology, and communications.
The 2010 conference site is lodged squarely between the east and west coasts and abutting Mexico. How might this location inspire us to reinscribe the terrain of Asian American Studies to capture twenty-first century realities and subjectivities? For example, to the surprise of most, Texas now holds the third highest population of Asian Americans, surpassing even Hawai’i, Illinois, and New Jersey. Journeying away from the traditional AAS strongholds on the coasts and Hawai’i suggests the urgency of regional perspectives reflecting newer, post 1965 populations and communities that may fragment the field between its oldest and newest parts. We argue that a process of dismantling is necessary so that a twenty-first century vision of Asian American Studies might be reassembled from its many messy and morphing parts.
From its origins in the civil rights era, Asian American Studies has been an emergent project intellectually and institutionally. It tracks the growth and evolution of a highly heterogeneous population constantly shifting in location, arrival narratives, socioeconomic class, cultural formations, political identifications, and demography. UT Austin presents opportunities to highlight these transformations, as well as continuities, in student activism and program building, intersections with gender and sexuality studies, hemispheric conceptions of migration, transnational and diasporic practices, transformative communications technologies, economic crises, new sites of labor and employment, communities emerging from war and refugee flight, and teaching for non-Asian populations.
To encompass the full range of research on Asian Pacific Americans, we encourage contributions from scholars at every level of seniority and papers ranging from community studies, pedagogical strategies, and programmatic models to the most experimental, and integrative, of theoretical ponderings.
All proposals must be submitted on-line by Oct. 23, 2009. For instructions on submitting proposals and other conference information, visit www.aaastudies.org/index.html. For more information, you may contact the AAAS Secretariat at piaseng@illinois.edu or the Center for Asian American Studies at UT Austin at kydawson@mail.utexas.edu.
*AV equipment will be available on a limited basis by request. Please make your requests when sending in your proposals although the Association cannot guarantee that equipment will be provided.
*To be included in the conference program, participants must be AAAS members who have paid registration fees.
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Asian American Studies Institute
Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies
215 Glenbrook Road, Unit 4025
Department of English
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269
860-486-3950 / 860-486-9412
