Beyond the Maiden Voyage: Exploring Queer Studies in Asian America Now
Chair: Martin F. Manalansan IV, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dana Takagi, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz
Gayatri Gopinath, Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies, New York University
It has been more than 15 years after embarking on a journey to establish queer studies research agenda within the field of Asian American Studies. From Amy Ling convening a panel in the Ithaca conference in the early nineties to pioneering anthologies by Rusell Leong, David Eng and Alice Hom, Asian American Studies has been a hospitable place for a systematic and sustained queering of knowledge formations. This mega-session/plenary is an attempt to take stock and look back at the accomplishments, sift through the existing gaps and promising works, and chart a critical future for scholars in both fields.
Faith in a Time of Empire: Religion and Asian America
Chair: Pawan Dhingra, Oberlin College
Moustafa Bayoumi, Associate Professor of English, Brooklyn College
Prema Kurien, Associate Professor of Sociology, Syracuse University
Paul Spickard, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Religion is a central issue in the cultural lives, in the public discourses, and in the national and transnational politics regarding Asian America. Yet, it remains under-theorized relative to other social issues on the community. These panelists represent various perspectives, across the humanities and social sciences and across religious groups, and will further the conversation on how to analyze the role of religion within Asian America.
The Heart(land) of Asian American Studies: Approaches in the Midwest
Chair: Pawan Dhingra, Oberlin College
Victor Jew, University of Wisconsin Madison
Asian American Studies and Critical Regionalism: The Midwest as the Site of Racialized Governmentalities
Erika Lee, University of Minnesota
Making Asian American History in the Midwest
Mark Chiang, University of Illinois at Chicago
Asian American Studies Among the Cornfields: From Community Control to Cultural Capital
The role of geography within Asian American Studies has been problematized at least since the founding of the “East of California” consortium. Yet, the “Heartland” often remains represented as a homogenous space. The panelists discuss how the growth in the number of both Asian Americans and Asian American Studies programs in the Midwest impacts the dominant paradigms and teachings of the field at large.
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Guantanamo Bay and the Conscience of Asian American Studies
Chair: Rajini Srikanth, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Anant Raut, Counsel, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives
Defending Detainees: Why, How, and For How Long?
Gitanjali Gutierrez, Center for Constitutional Rights
Guantánamo Detainees at the Edges of Law
Marc Falkoff, Northern Illinois University College of Law
Poems from Guantánamo: The Uses of Empathy
There is remarkably little coverage of the continued questionable detention of over 300 men of Muslim heritage in the legal no-man’s land of Guantánamo Bay. Occasionally, the American public reads of the military tribunals that are held there, legal hearings in which many fundamental and basic principles of law are ignored. These are men whose existence is used symbolically to discipline the nation into accepting the overreaches of executive power and submitting to the arbitrary authority of the state. But what of the men themselves—their complex identities, their truncated lives? The presenters on this panel, all of whom serve as defense counsel for different groups of detainees, will illuminate for us the netherworld of Guantánamo Bay and, in the process, chart the conscience of Asian American studies: What are the possibilities and limits of our responsibility as scholars, educators, citizens, and Asian Americanists?