CFP: NEMLA: Revisiting Asian American Women's "Articulate Silences"

PLEASE NOTE: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO OCTOBER 12, 2007

Northeast Modern Language Association (NEMLA) Annual Convention
Buffalo, NY
April 10-13, 2008

Call for Papers:
Panel sponsored by the NEMLA Women’s Caucus:
“Revisiting Asian American Women’s ‘Articulate Silences’”

In her significant 1993 book, _Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa_ (Cornell UP), King-kok Cheung links the legacies of silence for both Asian Americans and for women more broadly, tracing the connections among constructions of docility, acquiescence, silence, and inscrutability, and argues that Asian American women writers turn the assumption regarding silence on its head:

“They articulate—question, report, expose—the silences imposed on themselves and their peoples, whether in the form of feminine and cultural decorum, external or self-censorship, or historical or political invisibility; at the same time they reveal, through their own manners of telling and through their characters, that silences—textual ellipses, nonverbal gestures, authorial hesitations (as against moral, historical, religious, or political authority)—can also be articulate.” (3-4)

This panel revisits Cheung’s influential argument, as well as other pertinent analyses such as Patti Duncan’s book _Tell This Silence_, in order to extend our understandings of silence in Asian American women’s literature. What are the forms that silence takes? What kinds of articulations are possible? How is silence read? Are feminist coalitional politics enabled and/or limited by complicating the political emphasis on voice? Are various forms and styles of articulate silences traced to differences among Asian American women? (those marked by diaspora? by trauma and refugee status? by postcolonial legacies?) How are articulate silences shaped by historical contexts and the political and legal issues of the time? Proposals that address the literary, rhetorical, or political dimensions of silence and voice in Asian American women’s prose or poetry are welcome.

Deadline for presentation abstracts: September 15, 2007

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

CFP: TRANS-

WSQ:  Women's Studies Quarterly

Call for papers: TRANS-

Trans: -gender, -national, -racial, -generational, -genic,, -species. The list could (and does) go on. This special issue of WSQ invites feminist work that explores categorical crossings, leakages, and slips of all sorts, around and through the concept "trans-." While it centrally addresses the challenges presented to traditional feminist scholarship by the transgender movement of the past few decades, it aims to take feminist scholarship in an even more expansive direction by recasting trans- as a more general conceptual operation, and by articulating the interrelatedness and mutual inextricability of various "trans-" phenomena.

This WSQ special issue invites work that situates "trans-" in dialogues beyond those bounded by the politics of identity. The meaning of "transgender" itself has shifted tremendously since the word first began appearing in cross-dresser community publications in late 1960s. By the 1990s, a burgeoning body of trans-historical and cross-cultural literary, documentary, performance, political and anthropological work had developed into the new field of transgender studies (see for example, Currah, Juang and Minter 2006; Stryker and Whittle 2006). This new field linked insights and analyses drawn from the experience or study of transgender phenomena with the central
disciplinary concerns of contemporary humanities and social science research, but our goal with this special issue is to promote cutting-edge feminist work that builds on existing scholarship to articulate new generational and analytical perspectives.

A fundamental assumption of this special issue is that "trans-" can best be understood (can perhaps only be understood) as mutually co-constituitive sets of embodied material practices.  These practices traffic themselves across porous, shifting, and diffuse borders between states and territories, citizens and aliens, representational and abstract, the real and the imaginary, men and women, the clinical and non-clinical, the normal and the pathological, the rational and irrational, human and non-human, the young and the old, living and dead, academic and activist-or that call those very divisions into question. Neither -gender, nor any of the other suffixes of trans-, can be understood in isolation.

While we certainly wish to engage with theoretical scholarship, germinal analyses of policy will also find a home in this special issue. In addition, in keeping with the established format of WSQ and the methodological conventions of feminist scholarship, we also welcome first person narratives, provocations, poetry, and fiction as a means to explore, interpret, and re-consider "trans-." Regardless of methodology or discipline, however, we encourage work that understands the representations and meanings of identities, bodies, movements, and anatomies to accrue particular weights and valences depending on the cultural moments in which they are produced and circulated.  The lines implied by the very concept of "trans-" are moving targets, simultaneously composed of multiple determinants.

Some of the critical operations of trans- that we wish this issue to explore include-
-Original, grounded, empirical analyses of historical or contemporary social formations of trans- embodiments.
-Challenges to biological sexual dimorphism via new reproductive technologies and body modification practices.
-Literary, cultural, film and media criticism on and about trans-representation and performance.
-Feminist analyses of geopolitical and temporal locations and boundary-crossings, including work on individual embodiment as a geopolitical temporality.
-Theoretical and substantive analysis of migration, diaspora, borders, and surveillance as they relate to bodily normativity.
-The increasingly blurred distinctions of human/non-human boundaries, particularly as they relate to emerging biomedical and communicational technologies.
-Emotion Studies, including the "movement" of feelings as depicted or analyzed in phenomenological philosophy, art, poetry, and/or autoethnography.
-Work that examines how the legal, administrative, and bureaucratic processes of sovereign power make trans- bodies live, or let them die Work that rearticulates trans- identities in ways that circumvent  the impasses of identity politics

We invite abstracts from all disciplinary and artistic homes including but not limited to: critical theories of race/gender/sexuality, biomedical fields, literary studies, technology and science studies, legal studies, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities generally.

If submitting academic work, please send abstracts by October 1, 2007 to the guest editors at WSQTransIssue@gmail.com.  If accepted, full papers will be due by January 2, 2008.  Poetry submission should be sent to WSQ's poetry editor Kathleen Ossip, at ossipk@aol.com, by January 2, 2008. Fiction, essay, and memoir submissions should be sent to WSQ's Fiction/Nonfiction editor Kamy Wicoff, at kwicoff@yahoo.com, by January 2, 2008. All art submissions should be sent on CD or floppy disk in a high-resolution (300 dpi or more) JPEG or TIFF image to the following addresses:

Paisley Currah
Department of Political Science
Brooklyn College, CUNY
2900 Bedford Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11210
pcurrah@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Lisa Jean Moore
Purchase College
SS 1010
735 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577
Lisa-jean.moore@purchase.edu

Susan Stryker
Women's Studies Department
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive,
Burnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S
susanstryker@yahoo.com

CFP: JAAS Special Issue, Asian Americans and Violence

Call for Papers

Journal of Asian American Studies

Special Issue: Asian Americans and Violence

Please note the early deadline: July 15, 2007


This special issue invites essays that address the relationship between race, culture, and violence as it pertains specifically to Asian Americans.  Extra consideration will be given to essays that consider this topic broadly, and that focus on Asian Americans not only as the objects of violence but also its agents.  For instance, essays might address questions like: What does it mean for Asian Americans to be perpetrators as well as victims?  What effect does this have on our understanding of gender roles and gender relations?  What affect does this have on representations of Asian Americans?  How important is it for us to define violence broadly to include domestic abuse, public policies that abandon large groups to
premature death, or war?  How does focusing on violence help us to understand transformations in the structural position of Asian American racial formations?  The primary occasion for this special issue is the recent shooting at Virginia Tech.  As revelations of the shooter’s racial and ethnic identity led to expressions of worry
about a racial backlash, we are reminded of the ways in which race and violence have long been inextricably linked to one another in the U.S.  But when the shooter turns out be Asian American, adding Seung-Hui Cho’s name to a list that includes Chai Vang, Andrew Cunanan, and Gang Lu, we are compelled to consider how complex this link can be.

Because of its topicality, this special issue has been fast-tracked to appear in print this year.  The deadline for essays is July 15, 2007, and should be emailed as an attachment following the appropriate JAAS submission guidelines to the guest editor, Min Hyoung Song (songm@bc.edu).  Questions about this special issue can
also be emailed to him.

CFP: Cityscapes

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Cityscapes” Conference

March 27 – 30, 2008
Cleveland, Ohio

Proposal deadline:  September 14, 2007

Sponsored by
The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and The Cleveland Institute of Art
The Cleveland Institute of Art and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities of Case Western Reserve University will collaboratively host a conference on “Cityscapes,” to be held March 27-30, 2008.  This conference is intended to explore the intersections between the urban environment, the humanities, and social change.

The conference considers the city as a physical, political, economic, and social entity and as a real and imagined place that has inspired and continues to inform some of the most important work in the humanities. The city can be described as a:

-built environment and a confluence of architectural design and urban planning
-public space shaped by dynamics of race, gender, and class
-concentration of technology and labor
-locus for the political economy as well as institutions of church, state, education, and culture, and community
-site of resistance and memory
-situated in a larger network constituted by the local, regional, national, international, and global

This conference seeks to explore what the arts and humanities can contribute to our understanding of the city. We seek papers that investigate both the historic constitutive factors of the city and issues of urbanism today.  The conference aims to explore the city as a crucible of creative change, investigating its relationship with human cultures of the past and present and its place in envisioning possible futures. This latter aspect is especially significant today, when many cities, particularly older cities like Cleveland, are challenged by profound shifts in population, infrastructure, politics, self-identity as well as the globalization of capital and degradation of the environment.

Questions to be considered include:
-What has defined, demarcated, and signified the cityscape?
-How do past representations relate to those generated today?
-How have changing geopolitics – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally – and the emergence of cosmopolitanism and globalization shaped the cityscape and its representation(s)?
-What particular experiences of the city have informed the critical commentary of the arts and humanities and vice versa?
-What role do the arts and humanities play in relation to social change in the city? How do the arts and humanities articulate modernist and anti-modernist or utopian and dystopian visions of the city?
-How have representations of the city—in word and image—helped to conceptualize the city and/or offer critical critique that can, in turn, reshape or re-imagine the city?
-In our hyper-mediated image-saturated world, what is the role of visual culture and the humanities in conveying an understanding of the social conditions of urbanism?

The symposium welcomes papers that explore the relationship between cityscape and the humanities (Archaeology, Art, Art History, Classics, English, Film Studies, History, Linguistics, Modern Languages and Literatures, Media Studies, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Theater and Dance) in belief that these disciplines bring a necessary, yet previously under-represented, contribution to discussions of urbanism.

Paper proposals must include:
-200 word abstract (1 page);
-Cover letter delineating the proposed speaker’s expertise in the selected topic as well as audio-visual needs to support the presentation;
-C.V. (no more than 3 pages) that includes mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address
-Self-addressed postcard (for confirmation of receipt of submission) or request for confirmation if submitting electronically.

Conference presentations are expected to be 20 minutes in length; it is expected that the papers will not have been presented elsewhere.

Submission Deadline:  Due date for submission/postmark: 14 September 2007.

Submit to:  All inquiries and paper proposals should be directed to
Dr. Susan Martis, Research Associate
Baker Nord Center for the Humanities
Clark Hall 207
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland OH 44106-7120
Phone: 216-368-2242
susan.martis@case.edu
www.bakernord.org

Hand-deliveries:
           Dr. Susan Martis
           Clark Hall 207
           11130 Bellflower Road

CFP: Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies is inviting submissions for its forthcoming issues. We encourage contributions from both Taiwan and international communities addressing our special topics; articles on other aspects of literature and culture are also welcome. If your manuscript is intended as a special topic submission, please so indicate. All correspondence should be addressed to Editor, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, 162 Hoping East Road, Section 1, Taipei 106, Taiwan. [e-mail: concentric.lit @deps.ntnu.edu.tw]

Forthcoming Special Topics
Vol. 34 No. 1: "Water" (March 2008)
Guest Editor: Scott Slovic
University of Nevada, Reno
Deadline for Submissions: October 20, 2007

Water is necessary for life; likewise, the motif of water has nourished countless works of literature. The properties of water make it an excellent literary device: Water ebbs and flows, enabling an endless circulation. It can carry a vessel, or take the shape of any vessel that holds it. It occurs in various forms-vapor, rain, snow, ice-and differing intensities, from the gentle drizzle, the thunder storm to the devastating tsunami. Water has the power to give life and take it away: it quenches people's thirst and nourishes crops, yet it also floods fields and farms and homes. It is baptism and balm from Heaven; water is also the form divine retribution took to wipe Noah's contemporaries from the earth. As a major literary motif, water brings succor to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, serves as a testing ground in Melville's Moby-Dick, and opens a path to spiritual healing in Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Kate Chopin and Virginia Woolf both use water as symbol of rebirth and a pathway to creativity-but also as the site of a deadly finale, both for Chopin's protagonist in The Awakening and for Woolf herself. In recent decades, water has emerged as an important metaphor for theoretical discourses, including those of diaspora, migrations, globalization, and eco- criticism. As water is shapeless and yet able to take any shape, possibilities for investigations into the literary and cultural uses of water are fluid and multiple. The editors welcome explorations of the topic from a broad range of viewpoints.

Vol. 34 No. 2: Asia and the Other
a special issue in conjunction with the international conference on "Asia and the Other"

Date of Publication: September 2008
Deadline for Submissions: April 25, 2008

The year 1984 witnessed the taking place of a pioneering conference entitled "Europe and Its Others." With the publication of Edward W. Said's Orientalism only a few years apart, the conference organized by the University of Essex engaged in discussions heralded in Said's monumental work and presented some of the most groundbreaking writings in the then emerging field of "postcolonial theory," with the participation of numerous thought-provoking scholars, Said himself included. Now, two decades later, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies invites proposals for a special issue on "Asia and the Other," in conjunction with the international conference on the same topic, organized by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, to solicit input on Asia's positioning in light of the question of the other.

Presenting a similar-sounding theme with slight revision to the Essex conference, we would like to examine whether or not the idiom of the self/other demarcation is still relevant in the context of Asia. If yes, relevant in what ways? Is the present-day Asia still imagined in the same fashion as the Orient once was? Does the rising economic force of Asia grant Asian countries the "Occidentalist" optics through which they represent their others as Orientalists did them? Without fixed conceptual presumptions, "Asia and the Other" is interested not only in Asia's relations with "its" others, but also in Asia's relations with "the Other/other" as an ethical, political, epistemo- logical, or ontological problematic. "Asia and the Other" seeks to revisit issues taken up by earlier postcolonialist theorists with a different geo- political focus; reexamine and update theoretical apparatuses often adopted in the discussions of the self/other issue, employing the realities of Asia, past and present, as examples; and stimulate conversations regarding the tensions or mutual productivity in cross-cultural, cross-national encounters.

We welcome proposals from various disciplines, including (but not limited to) anthropology, art history and theory, cultural studies, film and media studies, gender studies, geography, history, linguistics, literary studies, performance studies, philosophy, political science, religion studies, and sociology. We are particularly interested in submissions that not only provide historically- grounded reflections, but also boldly reassess predominant theoretical concerns in their specific fields.

Manuscript Submission Guidelines

1. Manuscripts should be submitted in English. Please send the manuscript, an abstract, a list of keywords, and a vita as Word-attachments to concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw. Alternatively, please mail us two hard copies and an IBM-compatible diskette copy. Concentric will acknowledge receipt of the submission but will not return it after review.
2. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes in single space, manuscripts must be double-spaced, typeset in 12-point Times New Roman.
3. To facilitate the Journal's anonymous refereeing process, there must be no indication of personal identity or institutional affiliation in the manuscript proper. The name and institution of the author should appear on a separate title page or in the vita. The author may cite his/her previous works, but only in the third person.
4. The Journal will not consider for publication manuscripts being simultaneously submitted elsewhere.
5. If the paper has been published or submitted elsewhere in a language other than English, please make available two copies of the non-English version. Concentric may not consider submissions already available in other languages.
6. One copy of the Journal and fifteen off-prints of the article will be provided to the author(s) on publication.
7. It is the Journal's policy to require assignment of copyrights form by all authors.