Northeast Modern Language Association
2009 Annual Convention Celebrating NEMLA’s 40th Anniversary
Boston, MA
February 26th-March 1st, 2009

Panel Title: “The Transnational of National(ist) Discourse in Asian/American Literature”

When might national—even nationalist—discourse hold within it the possibilities of transnational dynamics? Is national(ist) discourse sometimes used to express transnational desires and affiliations? How are multiple national(ist) loyalties/affinities/histories “layered” one upon another in a sort of palimpsest that operates transnationally? Do multiple national(ist) affinities always translate into a transnational sensibility more critical of the nation-state?

In literary and cultural studies, we’ve moved from an era that emphasizes immigrant literatures and the dynamics of assimilation to one that emphasizes the textual production of diaspora and more transnational affiliations. This panel seeks to address the continuing tensions between these critical models. What traces of immigrant rhetoric remain and why do they linger (whether or not one is speaking of an immigrant generation)? Is the rhetoric of immigration sometimes used to express a more diasporic sensibility? When and why do we continue to see nationalist discourse when multiple national affiliations are involved?

Asian/American literature has long been marked by the perils of multiple national affiliations. Certainly, one may consider the demand for performances of loyalty to the United States; this demand only reveals how accusations of traitorous behavior are
always just beneath the surface for those now considered the “model minority,” for the immigrant generation and beyond. For refugees forced to leave their homelands, too, how might the national(ist) rhetoric of one country be employed to express national
(ist) sentiments for another? One may also consider how literary texts negotiate the demands of national(ist) and transnational sensibilities, say, for example, the tensions among the terms “overseas Chinese,” “Chinese diaspora,” and “Chinese Americans.”

One may wish to consider how solidarities with other people of color and other diasporas may embrace and yet undermine more nation-based fantasies of a multicultural state. When might “trans-racial solidarity” speak to the instability of national(ist) identity? How do gender and/or sexual difference shape the relations between what we consider national and the transnational? How do histories of occupation and colonialism affect the employment of national(ist) discourse?

Proposals should critically assess Asian/American texts that wholeheartedly embrace nationalist rhetoric, texts that purposefully use nationalist rhetoric in order to critically dismantle it, texts that are marked by the tensions between national affiliations
and transnational connections, or even texts that test the limits of the term “transnational.”

Deadline for presentation abstracts: September 15, 2008
Please note any need for audio-visual equipment.

Please email 250-500 word abstracts to the panel chair:

Susan Muchshima Moynihan, Assistant Professor
Department of English
State University of New York at Buffalo
Email: sm246@buffalo.edu