CFP: Alternative Contact: Indigeneity, Globalism, and American Studies
Paul Lai and Lindsey Claire Smith, Guest Editors
Deadline for complete essays: September 1, 2009

Within standard genealogies of US-based ethnic studies, Native studies and
other racially-based studies arose from a similar moment of empowerment in
the struggles for racial and ethnic rights in the 1960s and 1970s, often in
solidarity with Third World decolonization movements. Increasingly, Native
American studies highlights connections between Native America and
indigenous communities around the world, reframing questions of sovereignty
and indigenous rights in international terms while continuing to challenge
political discourses of the nation-state. Such work decenters paradigms of
first contact with European colonial powers and subsequent domination by the
United States military and government that have overshadowed discussions of
native contact with peoples of other origins. This special issue explores
transnational and cross-ethnic flows between indigenous peoples of the
Americas, including the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, and these other
peoples in moments of alternative contact that complicate and enrich our
understanding of the links between U.S. colonial and imperial projects,
sovereignty, and racial formation. Ultimately, this project seeks to
theorize a more dynamic indigeneity that articulates new or overlooked
connections between peoples, histories, cultures, and critical discourses
within a global context.

We seek work that theorizes cosmopolitan indigeneities as the transnational
movements of indigenous peoples and their governments, social and activist
movements, arts, and critical discourse. We seek scholarship that identifies
moments of contact between indigenous Americans and ethnic others in
historically, geographically, and disciplinarily specific conjunctures and
highlights productive dissonances as well as synergies in reconfiguring
comparative ethnic studies work within the frameworks of transnational
American studies and global indigenous movements. This work might offer new
languages for discussing the global presence of indigeneity to counteract
notions of unsophisticated or parochial Native communities and offer
alternatives or rejoinders to the work of postcolonial studies in
considering issues of continuing (neo)colonialism and the relation between
indigenous peoples and state formations.

Framing such scholarship within globalism might build upon a long tradition
in Latino/a studies of examining indigenous encounters with others and
mixed-race subjectivities; query long-standing tensions between Asian
Americans and native Pacific Islanders; and continue exploring histories of
Native and African American connections. Additionally, we encourage
submissions of papers that theorize less-studied contact such as between
Native American and Asian American bodies, communities, histories,
literatures, visual arts, and politics. In these material and creative
encounters, personal, political, collective, and global conceptions of
sovereignty and citizenship point toward theoretical as well as practical
implications for resisting empire.

Email essays by September 1, 2009 to aquarter@usc.edu. Information about American
Quarterly and submission guidelines can be found on our Web site:
www.americanquarterly.org.

Call for Papers: Upcoming Special Issue of Modern Fiction Studies (late 2010)
Theorizing Asian American Fiction
Guest Editors: Stephen Hong Sohn, Paul Lai, and Donald C. Goellnicht
Deadline for Submission:  30 January 2009

The topic of this special issue of Mfs stems from the exponential growth in Asian American literary production over the past few decades and the ongoing need to understand how these texts function within the framewor! k of ethnic and Asian American Studies.  This issue seeks to account for and further the important changes that have taken place in the last decade since Susan Koshy (1996) observed that Asian American literary studies “has been weak in theoretical work,” especially in its assumptions of a coherent body of texts defined by the ethnicities of the authors. More recently, Colleen Lye (2007) argues that scholars continually problematize the discursive production of Asian America without asking why we continue to lean on “Asian America” as an organizing principle for literary study. Her project instead offers: “the sense of the theoretical generativity of speaking not of identity but of form, of trying to investigate race and nation through the relationship between aesthetic and social modalities of form.”  While Lye’s project usefully focuses on literary and narrative forms of Asia, its attempts to distance the formation of a textual coalition from authorial bodies dr! ifts somewhat from other Asian American literary studies’ political pr oject of recognizing and revaluing Asian American authors’ work. Is there a way to privilege the identities of authors even while focusing on form in defining a tradition of fiction?  If existing rubrics of Asian American literature problematically collect texts under the eye of biology, what other ways might Asian Americanists approach, categorize, and consider their objects of study?  For example, how does thinking of Asian American literature as a “subjectless discourse,” as Kandice Chuh (2003) has espoused, enable new representational and taxonomic configurations to emerge?  If a panethnic, nationally-determined category of persons is  insufficient for defining a textual body, how might interrogating the geopolitical boundaries of the field look in turning more directly to Asian North American or Anglophone Asian fictions without simply adding more racialized bodies to the fold?

To address these questions, Mfs solicits articles that have broad implications for theorizing Asian American fiction as a whole while paying attention to specific texts.  Papers might investigate: how the field must be reconstructed or redefined through discursive intersectionalities with queer studies, gender studies, class critique, post-ethnicity/post-race critical theory, area studies, diaspora, transnationalism, globalization, and/or postcolonialism; authors and texts that arguably fall out of disciplinary boundaries and/or authors and texts that have spawned debates within the field (e.g. Ha ! Jin’s Waiting, Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft, and Lois-Ann Yaman aka’s Blu’s Hanging); canon formation in Asian American literary studies and its East Asian focus; how the field can read contemporary texts alongside earlier ones; poststructuralist and postmodern discourses which de-stabilize essentialist Asian American literary definitions (”real vs. fake”); conceptions of ethnic/racial heritage and mixed-race bodies within Asian American literature; the possibilities for claiming as Asian American literature the work of non-Asian American writers (e.g. David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, Deborah Iida’s Middle Son); regionalism in Asian American literature (South Asia/East Asia/Southeast Asia/Pacific Islands, regional differences within the US and Canada, connections across the Americas); nationalism as a continuing organizing principle in Asian American (including or excluding Asian Canadian?) fiction; the (re)turn to aesthetics, genre, and form and/as politics; or how Asian American literature is defined outsid! e academic criticism (e.g. in publishing and marketing discourses).

Essays should be limited to 9,000 words, including all quotations and bibliographic references, and should follow the MLA Style Manual for internal citation and Works Cited. Please submit two copies of your essay to The Editors, Mfs, Department of English, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038.

Queries should be directed to Paul Lai (plai2@stthomas.edu).

Book Announcement

The Paintings of Yun Gee and Li-lan
Joyce Brodsky
(University of Washington Press, April 2008)

In this generously illustrated volume, teacher, author, and critic Joyce Brodsky brings together works by the expatriate Chinese painter Yun Gee (1906-1963) and his Chinese American daughter, Li-lan, exploring connections between these artists’ lives and paintings.  Both artists can be understood as cosmopolitan and transnational figures—citizens, in Homi Bhabha’s terms, of contemporary culture’s “middle passage.”  As artists who have embraced multinational, multicultural, and multiracial experiences, Yun Gee and Li-lan have combined those experiences intrinsically, sometimes in spite of the pain that such a complex passage may entail.

“Experiences of Passage represents an ambitious effort to trace the complex processes of transnational movement, cross-cultural identifications, and mixing through the work of Yun Gee and Li-lan.” — Margo Machida, University of Connecticut

Experiences of Passage is a 248-page, hardcover book with 70 illustrations.  For more information, visit:  http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/BROEXP.html

New Report: Asian American students don’t benefit from
No Child Left Behind Act—Major Reforms needed

New York, NY — At the first-ever National Asian American Education Advocates Summit held at Columbia University in April, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), a 34-year old civil rights organization, released its new report detailing several provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that must be overhauled in order to meet the needs of Asian American students.

AALDEF’s report, Left in the Margins: Asian American Students and the No Child Left Behind Act,  demonstrates how Asian Americans who are English Language Learners (ELLs) are currently set up to fail under NCLB.  Citing Census statistics and numerous examples in school districts around the country, AALDEF illustrates how this marginalized community is falling through our public education system’s cracks.  Left in the Margins puts a spotlight on particular school districts where Asian American ELL students are the most visible and also highly vulnerable due to the lack of appropriate services.

Margaret Fung, AALDEF executive director, said: “Since the No Child Left Behind law was enacted, we have not seen significant improvements in the quality of public education.  Instead, Asian Americans– especially immigrant, poor and non-English speaking students–have been left behind to fend for themselves in securing basic educational services. ”

Key recommendations from AALDEF’s report propose several major changes in NCLB:

Provide targeted language services for Asian American ELLs, since nearly a quarter of all Asian American students are ELLs.  Among those between the ages 5 and 17, over half of Hmong Americans, 39% of Vietnamese Americans, and 34% of Bangladeshi Americans are ELLs.

Use absolute numerical thresholds and/or population ratios in smaller districts or counties (rather than states) to determine the need for native language materials.  Asian American ELLs are densely populated in specific neighborhoods throughout the country.  For example, Vietnamese-speaking ELLs in Seattle constitute 16% of all ELLs in the city, but only 4% of the total ELL population in the state of Washington.  If native language materials were available only for language minority groups that made up at least 10% of ELLs in a state, then large numbers of Vietnamese-speaking ELLs would not benefit from native language materials.

Use multiple forms of assessment to measure ELL student achievement and limit the use of testing-based sanctions to abate high dropout rates among ELL students.  In New York City, the class of 2006’s ELL population had a dropout rate of 30% compared to 6.9% of all students citywide.

Provide states with funds to hire more ESL specialists, bilingual education specialists, and teachers bilingual in Asian languages. Although Vietnamese is the second most common native language of ELLs in California, there is only one bilingual teacher for every 662 Vietnamese-speaking students in the state.

Provide states with more funds to translate school documents, hire interpreters, and conduct community education for immigrant families.  Over 40% of Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese households are linguistically isolated.
Require every state to collect comprehensive student data that is disaggregated by ethnicity, native language, socioeconomic status, ELL status, and ELL program type.  Without this information, the educational needs of individual groups are concealed and will remain unaddressed.

Copies of Left in the Margins: Asian American Students and the No Child Left Behind Act are available at www.aaldef.org/docs/AALDEF_LeftintheMargins_NCLB.pdf .

###

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), founded in 1974, is a national organization that protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans.  By combining litigation, advocacy, education, and organizing, AALDEF works with Asian American communities across the country to secure human rights for all.

The University of California Press  is pleased to announce the publication of:

Street Meeting: Multiethnic Neighborhoods in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

Now Available in Paperback!

Mark Wild is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles.

http://go.ucpress.edu/StreetMeeting

“Fascinating. . . . A rare and important addition to the rich literature on ethnic and racial experiences in Los Angeles.”-_Journal of American Ethnic History _

Immigrant neighborhoods of the early twentieth century have commonly been viewed as segregated, homogeneous slums isolated from the larger “American” city. But as Mark Wild demonstrates in this new study of Los Angeles, such districts often nurtured dynamic, diverse environments where residents interacted with individuals of other races and cultures. In fact, as his engaging account makes clear, between 1900 and 1940 such multiethnic areas mushroomed in Los Angeles. _Street Meeting, _enriched with oral histories, reminiscences, newspaper reports, and other sources, examines interactions among working-class Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Italians, African Americans, and others, reminding us that Los Angeles has been a multiethnic city since its birth. This study further argues that these ethnic interactions played a crucial role in the urban development of the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is available online: http://go.ucpress.edu/StreetMeeting

The Asian American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is hiring a visiting assistant/associate professor for 2008-2009.  We are interested in applicants with PhD or ABD from any discipline and able to teach the following courses:

Hmong Experiences in the U.S., Special Topics

Hmong American Studies

If you are interested in  being considered for this position, please send your curriculum vita and a letter describing what your course content might be to:

Lynet Uttal
Director, Asian American Studies Program
304 Ingraham Hall
1155 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
ATTENTION: VAP position

Please also send your materials by email to luttal@wisc.edu.

We hope to make a decision by June 10.

For more info, contact Lynet Uttal at luttal@wisc.edu

Asian American Theatre Group
American Society for Theatre Research
2008 Conference

Co-conveners:

Esther Kim Lee, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (kim32@uiuc.edu)
Ron West, Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, NE (rwest33449@aol.com)

Asian American theatre, as an investigatory category, offers a particularly appropriate opportunity to explore the implications of migration across and within geopolitical borders and cultural boundaries. Though “migration” generally implies a willing movement of people among geographic areas, it also provides a convenient euphemism for the manipulative consequences of globalization. Thus, “migrant” populations may be compelled or encouraged to move among geographic regions but remain excluded from full membership in “settled” social and political territories such as the Americas. The borders are economically fluid, but culturally unyielding. In particular, Asian populations historically have been excluded by convention and statute from full membership in the “American” imagination, even while the! y have been exploited as economic necessities and defined as the Other. Asian American theatre likewise struggles with the relegation to contingency status, signaled by its persistent depiction as a component of the mid-twentieth century’s countercultural movement, a sidebar to the main event. Still, Asian American theatre broadly defined remains one of the most promising sites for challenging the false dichotomy of “Asian” and “American” that continues to define the constructed representation of the Asian diaspora in the Americas. Our group invites participants to address the ways in which the migration, map, and memory of Asian American theatre unsettles “American” theatre by re-settling the territory between the illusory poles of Asia and the Americas. As the first ASTR session to focus on Asian American theatre, the meeting will allow participants to explore the potential o! f Asian American theatre as a web of links rather than a series of dis crete “ethnic” discourses and thereby to examine a range of interstitial relationships that avoid isolating Asian American, yet retain a productive distinction. In part because of our hope to draw upon a broad community of perspectives, we especially encourage submissions that extend Asian American beyond the American subdivision of the United States.

Session format:
The process and implementation of the session will resemble the ASTR seminar’s 2-hour structure. Participants must commit to submitting preliminary drafts of their papers by August 1st and actively participate in an online pre-conference discussion by means of a fully secure website. The final conference drafts (8-10 pages) are due by October 15th.

By June 6, 2008 please submit an abstract (max 500 words) and brief biography (150 words) via email to:
Esther Kim Lee, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (kim32@uiuc.edu)

AND

Ron West, Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, NE (rwest33449@aol.com)

Anne Cherian has been closely associated with Asian American issues. She has taught for the Asian American Studies Department at UC Berkeley, as well as being Associate Director for the Center for the Pacific Rim at the University of San Francisco.

If you’d like to contact Anne, please email her at cherian.anne@yahoo.com

———-

A Good Indian Wife
A Novel by Anne Cherian

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring08/006523.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Indian-Wife-Novel/dp/0393065235/

ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210754720&sr=8-1

A clash of hearts and cultures set against the divergent backdrops of rural India and downtown San Francisco.

Handsome anesthesiologist Neel prides himself on his decisiveness, both in and out of the operating room. So when he agrees to return to India to visit his ailing grand-father, he is sure he’ll be able to resist his family’s pleas that he marry a “good” Indian girl. With a girlfriend and a promising career back in San Francisco, the last thing Neel needs is an arranged marriage.

Leila is a thirty-year-old teacher in Neel’s family’s village who has watched too many prospective husbands come and go to think her newest suitor will be any different. She is well past prime marrying age; her family has no money for a dowry; and then there’s the matter of an old friendship with a Muslim boy named Janni.

Neel and Leila struggle to reconcile their own desires with the expectations of others in this riveting story of two people, two countries, and two ways of life that may be more compatible than they seem.

Anne Cherian was born and raised in Jamshedpur, India. She graduated from Bombay and Bangalore Universities and received graduate degrees in journalism and comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

May 2008 / hardcover / ISBN 978-0-393-06523-7
5 1/2″ x 8 1/4″ / 320 pages / Fiction

Call for submissions

Chinese America: History & Perspectives

In 1968 and 1969 people all over the nation were taking to the streets to change the mainstream. On the fortieth anniversary of the activism that revolutionized historical knowledge and education at all levels, CHSA invites submissions to a special issue of Chinese America: History & Perspectives – the Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America.

It was in 1969, after preparing with CHSA co-founder Thomas Chinn A History of the Chinese in California, a compilation of primary source materials which, with its identification and analysis of relevant archival items, remains a core work, that architect and historian Philip P. Choy and fellow historian Him Mark Lai trained school teachers in Chinese American history, and then took the knowledge to higher education by team co-teaching the nation’s first course in Chinese American history, in the San Francisco State University history department. Chinese America: History & Perspectives – the Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America, invites submissions to a special issue for 2009, on the fortieth anniversary of a wealth of activism in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Confirmed submissions include:

“Third World Liberation Front Strikes in the San Francisco Bay Area,
1968-9” by participant Harvey Dong
Experiences in Wei Min by a Wei Min Sister, Jean Dere
on East-West newspaper (1967-1989) by Bill Wong
on San Francisco Journal (1972-1986) by Forrest Gok

The Editorial Committee highly encourages prospective authors to get in contact to discuss their ideas or outlines for contributions before submission. The Editorial Committee will review and finalize proposed submissions in early June 2008. Potential contributors must commit to being able to respond to any feedback and deliver their final, full submission by October 6, 2008.

2008 Committee members:

Russell Jeung rjeung@sfsu.edu

Him Mark Lai hmlai@aol.com

Russell Leong rleong@ucla.edu

Laurene Wu McClain lmcclain@ccsf.edu

Ruthanne Lum McCunn Ruthanne@mccunn.com

Anna Naruta anaruta@chsa.org

Manuscripts should not exceed five thousand words, excluding end notes, and be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions should be sent as a .doc or .rtf attachment to journal@chsa.org.

Thank you for your interest in the journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America!

Anna Naruta, PhD
Director of Archives
Chinese Historical Society of America
965 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
anaruta@chsa.org
(415) 391-1188 x103

New Book by Hung Cam Thai

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE:
Vietnamese International Marriages in the New Global Economy
Hung Cam Thai

(Rutgers University Press, 2008)

Marriage is currently the number one reason people migrate to the United
States, and women constitute the majority of newcomers joining husbands
who already reside here. But little is known about these marriage and
migration streams beyond the highly publicized and often sensationalized
phenomena of mail-order and military brides. Less common knowledge
actually shows that most international couples are immigrants of the
same ethnicity.

In For Better or For Worse, Hung Cam Thai takes a closer look at
marriage and migration, with a specific focus on the unions between
Vietnamese men living in the United States and the women who marry them.
Weaving together a series of personal stories, he underscores the
ironies and challenges that these unions face. He includes the voices of
working-class immigrant men dealing with marginalization in their
adopted country. These men speak about wanting “traditional” wives who
they hope will recognize their gendered authority. Meanwhile, young
Vietnamese college-educated women, undesirable to bachelors in their own
country who are seeking subservient wives, express a preference for men
of the same ethnicity but with a more liberal outlook on gender-men they
imagine they will find in the United States. A sense of foreboding
pervades the book as Thai captures the contrasting viewpoints of the
couples who appear to be separated not only geographically but
ideologically.

Professor Hung Cam Thai is an assistant professor of Asian American
Studies and Sociology at Pomona College. His general areas of interests
are race and ethnicity, gender, immigration, and the family. Thai is an
ethnographic sociologist and his research is motivated by questions of
how state policies (such as immigration laws) intrude on what we often
view as the realm of the private, which is to say the family and
intimate relations. His research employs interviews and participant
observations and aligns with feminist and race theories. He has
conducted research in Vietnam and in the United States with a special
focus on Vietnamese transpacific marriages.

The Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies (IDAAS) was
established in 1998 and currently has a core of thirteen faculty who
teach and research in Asian American Studies. At the heart of its
program, IDAAS offers an array of classes each academic year that
addresses Asian Pacific American issues and populations. The
department’s curriculum in the humanities and social sciences includes
courses in the arts, ethnic studies, history, literature, psychology,
sociology, and a number of interdisciplinary areas of study. For more
information, please visit the website at http://www.idaas.org.