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.