Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) invites submissions for a special issue on "Asian American Performance". Deadline: January 15, 2010.
Call for Papers
ASIAN AMERICAN PERFORMANCE
Special Issue of MELUS
Guest Editor: Tina Chen
Deadline: January 15, 2010
MELUS invites submissions for a special issue on "Asian American
Performance".
Asian Americans, to paraphrase Tam Lum from Frank Chin's Chickencoop
Chinaman, are "made, not born." Indeed, such identities have had to be
performed into being, enacted in order to function as a category of
both personhood and political possibility. Although Asian American
studies has always been concerned with the performance of everyday
life, scholars have only recently begun focusing critical attention on
the public production of Asian Americanness via the realm of the
performing arts (broadly conceptualized). This special issue seeks to
encourage a sustained and varied examination of the ways in which
concepts of performance--somatic, literary, visual, artistic,
linguistic--intersect with and inform Asian American subjectivity. In
what ways might performance studies provoke new understandings of the
subjects and objects of Asian American studies? How can performance
help produce critical models for theorizing Asian American cultural
and social action? Can we look to performance as a way of unsettling
the institutionalization of Asian American Studies as a field of
academic inquiry?
Topics might include (but are not limited to): performance art;
musical theater; literary concepts of performance and performativity;
video performances that highlight ethnic subjectivity or contest
historical narratives; comparative approaches to Asian American
performance; art installations that perform Asian American ethnicity;
music videos; dance; the role of the Avante-garde; comedic acts that
revise concepts of Asian American identity and/or physicality; spoken
word performance; historiographical approaches to performing race;
transnational contexts for understanding Asian American performance;
dramatic literature and its transformation into theatrical production;
performance and new media and technology; circuits of pedagogical
performance (either in the classroom or as manifested in the business
of shows that travel to various college campuses); poetics and
performance; art and activism; martial arts and the possibility of a
"kung-fu aesthetic"; conflict and confrontation in the performance
encounter; the relationship between local, national, and global
stages; performance, emotion, and affect; commodification and
performance.
TO SUBMIT: Manuscripts should be double spaced and between
6,000-10,000 words (MLA style). A blind submission policy will be
followed; as such, the author's name should not appear anywhere on the
manuscript, but an accompanying cover letter should contain the
author's name and address. Consultation on manuscript ideas is
welcome. Ideas and submissions should be sent via email to
tina.chen@psu.edu. Deadline for receipt of completed papers and
curriculum vitae is January 15, 2010.
