Texis Tech University is pleased to announce a call for proposals for their 2010 Comparative Literature Symposium on "American Studies as Transnational Practice" on April 9-10, 2010 in Lubbock, Texas. Proposal submission deadline: January 18, 2010.
The 2010 Texas Tech University Comparative Literature Symposium on "American Studies as Transnational Practice"
April 9-10, 2010 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, the United
States of America
Texas Tech University houses the internationally known Southwest Collections
and the Vietnam Archives. Spring in Lubbock is mild and sunny.
Keynote Speakers:
Eva Cherniavsky, Department of English, University of Washington
Colleen Lye, Department of English, University of California at Berkeley
Walter Mignolo, Department of Literature, Duke University
Donald Pease, Department of English, Dartmouth College
Art Exhibition:
Margarita Cabrera, Mexican artist in El Paso, "US Immigration Policy and
Maquiladora
Practices"
Joomi Chung, Korean artist resident in Miami, Ohio, "Installation Art about
South Korean-U.S.
Relations"
Scott Townsend, U.S. visual artist in Raleigh, North Carolina, "Interactive
Installation and
Film on 'Border Relations'"
Qingsong Wang, Chinese photographer in Shanghai, "Photography and the
Consumerist
Invasion of China"
Proposal Submission Deadline: January 18, 2010
American Studies as transnational practice not only raises questions on the
changing roles that the United States has played as a great power in the
global arena since the late nineteenth century, but also calls attention to
its own disciplinary premises, interests, and imaginaries in relation to
area studies and comparative literature. As American Studies has recently
intervened in U.S. exceptionalism and neoliberal capitalism in its critique
of discourses that vary from "manifest destiny" to "market democracy," it
also foregrounds its own formation as a product of the Cold War and its
renewed influence in the post-socialist regimes in China, Russia, and East
Europe. Meanwhile, with new paradigm shifts in transnational and global
studies that encompass transoceanic, hemispheric, and planetary
consciousness, how does American Studies negotiate and reconfigure its own
field imaginaries and boundaries? If Hemispheric Studies highlights the
issue of "the Americas," how would its critical disposition "provincialize"
American Studies? If the westward movement in the nineteenth century was
central to U.S. nation-building and the national imaginary, how do the
generations of Mexican presence in the Southwest as well as more recent
northward migrations of Latinos/as impact the U.S. consciousness as
simultaneously old and new national narratives? If Trans-Atlantic movements
have informed and reshaped U.S. literary, cultural, and historical
experiences, then what new possibilities would Trans-Pacific movements pose
for American Studies in the twenty-first century? What are the new
opportunities and challenges if we reconsider U.S. literature, history, and
culture in planetary terms?
This symposium invites presentations that investigate the theory and praxis
involving American Studies in transnational contexts at various historical
junctures, and seeks projects that explore specific cases in U.S. history,
literature, and culture with global dimensions and implications. We welcome
proposals that examine American Studies from U.S. regional locales and
global sites as well as abstracts that reconsider U.S. historical and
cultural experiences in transnational and planetary frameworks.
Topics may include but are not restricted to the following:
-- Rethinking the Boundaries among American Studies, Area Studies, and
Comparative
Literature
-- Empire, Race, and Trans-Atlantic Studies
-- Race, Gender, and Class in Transnational American Studies
-- The Local and the Global in Trans-Pacific Studies
-- Borderland, Natural Environment, and Planetary Consciousness
-- Border Crossing and Critical Cosmopolitanism
-- Border Literature, Chicano/a Theory, and Hemispheric Studies
-- American Studies and Post-socialism in China, Russia, and Eastern
European Countries
-- The Trans-Pacific Movement of Asians in Diaspora
-- Wall Street and the Future of "Market Democracy"
-- Westward Movement and U.S. Southwestern Literature
-- Colonialism and Neocolonialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
-- Global and Local Wars: Displacement, Migration, and Expulsion
-- The Vietnam War and Vietnamese in Diaspora
-- Transnational Feminist and Queer Studies
-- Postcolonial Studies and beyond
-- The Role of Spanish in American Studies
-- Transnational Cinema
Please send your one-page proposal and one-page C.V. by January 18, 2010:
Dr. Yuan Shu
Department of English
P.O. Box 43091
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3091
You may email your inquiry, proposal, and C.V. to Dr. Yuan Shu at
(yuan.shu@ttu.edu). Symposium information will be available on our website:
http://english.ttu.edu/complit/.
