CFP: Aesthetics, Politics & Marketing of Asian American Genre Fiction
(1/10/08; ALA/CAALS, 5/22/08- 5/25/08)

CAALS is a member of the American Literature Association. The ALA meeting will
be held in San Francisco, May 22-25, 2008 (Memorial Day weekend).

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS) invites papers for a
panel that addresses the growing number of Asian American writers working in
alternative prose fiction genres such as mystery/detective/crime fiction,
romance/”chick lit”, science fiction, graphic novels, or any other genre that
falls under the categorization of “genre fiction.” Once thought of as a
literature of “ill-repute” by the belletristic mainstream, genre fiction was
long relegated to the margins of the literary academe. Many Asian American texts
were first published by small presses and/or university presses, but more
recently, mass market and trade publishers have been promoting a number of
titles written by Asian American authors. We seek papers on works by Asian
American writers who consciously choose to write genre fiction as a subversive
or complicit narrative act. The aim of the panel is to investigate whether Asian
American genre fiction expands or constrains the models and vocabularies of
Asian American literary representation by negotiating established formal and
thematic conventions, navigating the demands of fan culture and the publishing
market, and interrogating genre fiction’s pop-cultural cachet vis-à-vis what
Sven Birkerts calls “literature with a capital L.”

Please email a 250-word abstract and a two-page CV to BOTH Betsy Huang and Greta
Niu, co-chairs, by January 10, 2008. Please feel free to contact us with any
questions.

Betsy Huang
Department of English
Clark University
bhuang@clarku.edu

Greta Niu
Department of English
University of Rochester
greta.niu@rochester.edu