Welcome to the Winter 2002 edition of NewsNotes
In this issue:
- Publication Announcements
- Call for Papers or Proposals
- News & Activities
- Fourth MESEA Conference
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Publication Announcements
From: GILLAN, MARIA - PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Poetry Center, Passaic County Community College, 1-973-684-6555
Guernica Editions of Toronto, Canada proudly announces the publication of Italian Women in Black Dresses by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Director of the Creative Writing Program of Binghamton University—SUNY, and founder and executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey. The author of seven other books of poetry, including Things My Mother Told Me (Guernica) and Where I Come From: New and Selected Poems (Guernica), she is also the editor of the Paterson Literary Review. With her daughter Jennifer Gillan, she edited Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, (Penguin); Identity Lessons (Penguin/Putnam); and Growing up Ethnic in America (Penguin/Putnam)
Italian Women in Black Dresses reads like a memoir, detailing the life of a family across generations and giving us a moving and haunting portrait of the Italian mother who is the center around which the family revolves. The mother’s stories and words shape the lives of her daughter and granddaughter, but this book is about much more than ethnicity. Gillan succeeds in transcending any single identity category and explores instead the multiple ways in which each of us learns to identify him or herself.
The book is available directly from the publisher or from the University of Toronto Press distribution, or from Independent Publishers Group in Chicago IL (1-312-337-5985) or at sporty@ipgbook.com.
Book Announcement, From: Lisa Suhair Majaj [mailto:lmajaj@cytanet.com.cy]
Just to let you know that I have two co-edited books recently out.
_Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist_ Edited by Lisa Suhair Majaj and Amal Amireh. McFarland, 2002.
_Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels_ Edited by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman and Therese Saliba. Syracuse UP, 2002.
Call for Papers
Call for Papers: Literary Aesthetics and Theory in Asian American Writing
This collection of essays addresses the place of literary aesthetics and literary theory in Asian American writing and criticism. The volume contends that in order to fully participate in the larger landscape and critical discourse of American literature, Asian American literary criticism must move beyond and across its current dominant negotiation with cultural studies and sociological approaches to literature to deploy questions of writerly performance and authorial interventions in American literary traditions and development. While keeping historical and materialist concerns within critical sight, analysis of Asian American literature must engage issues of aesthetics, genre, and form, and formulate/utilize theories that illustrate how Asian American literary works contribute to contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation. The essays should address, as George Levin suggests elsewhere, the recuperation of "the distinctive value of literature without losing crucial insights provided by ideological criticism and contemporary theory."
What is the place of literary aesthetics in Asian American narrative or poetic discourse? What role does the "literary" play in our reading and appreciation of the nuances of Asian American authorial production? These concerns can be widely interpreted to formulate essays that address one or more of the following, and support their theses with actual engagements with a literary text or texts: How does Asian American writing and criticism contribute to the larger discourse of literary aesthetics and to the history of the aesthetic? How does Asian American literary criticism negotiate the relationship between literary theory and cultural studies, or between literary aesthetics and ideology? Has the intersection between these perspectives been a valid and useful one? What meta-critical approaches to current Asian American criticism can be developed? How does Asian American literature partake of or contribute to current theoretical innovations? How do genre studies, narrative poetics, or linguistic approaches help read Asian American texts? Does Asian American writing generate/invite renewed approaches to issues of representation and aesthetics? What links does Asian American literature demonstrate, on a literary and aesthetic level, with other ethnic American literatures?
500-word abstracts, accompanied by a short vita, are due on December 15th, 2002. Final papers (5000-6000 pages, MLA Style), are due on May 1st, 2003.
Please address inquiries and send abstracts to the editors of the
volume: Sue-Im Lee, English Department, Temple University, Anderson Hall, 10th Floor (022-29), 1114 W. Berks St., Philadelphia, PA 19122-6090, USA, email: leesi@temple.edu and Rocio G. Davis, Modern Languages Department, University of Navarre, Pamplona 31080, Spain.
email: rgdavis@unav.es.
From: Paul James [mailto:paul.james@diversity-conference.com]
Dear Colleague,
This is a brief note to remind you that the current round in the call for papers for the Third International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations closed on 15 December. We've been overwhelmed by the breadth and richness of the presentation proposals so far received. Clearly, these are critically important issues to be addressing at this time.
By way of background, the conference is to be held at the East-West Center, University of Hawai'i, 13-16 February 2003. Virtual registration is available for those unable to attend. Full details are to be found at http://www.Diversity-Conference.com
Yours Sincerely,
Prof. Paul James
Director, Globalism Institute
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
ASSESSING JAMES PURDY
I propose a volume of critical essays and a small conference on the work of James Purdy (1923- ), the distinguished American poet, playwright and fictionist.
I invite papers on aspects of Purdy’s work in all genres, career and reputation, both here in the States and abroad. Interesting topics would include such issues as Purdy’s idiosyncratic style, influences from and impact upon other writers, his critical reception, his vision of small towns, his psychosexual, racial and ethnic themes, his philosophical underpinnings, his place in the canon and in the classroom.
Send inquiries or proposals by February 1, 2003. Invited papers for the volume will be due in late summer 2003. The conference will take place in Amherst in late October 2003; we plan to invite the author and to mount three panels, a total of no more than nine papers.
If you are interested in contributing to the volume or attending the conference, please contact me: J. T. Skerrett, Jr., Department of English, Box 30515, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA 01003., or by email: skerrett@english.umass.edu
News & Activities
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MESEA
The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas
Call for Papers
Fourth MESEA Conference
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
May 27 - 30, 2004
Ethnic Communities in Democratic Societies
Proposals for workshops and papers may engage the following topics, among others:
Negotiation of culture, language, religion within (non-)territorial communities / Parochialism and globalization / Community and fragmentation in global cities / Communitarianism vs. rights / Literary and artistic productions within transnational democracies / Aesthetic concerns of ethnic subjects in democratic societies / How literature reflects democratic concerns / Negotiating ethnic exceptionalism and participation in a larger collectivity / Nation states and imagined communities / Nationalism and transnational loyalties / Nativism and racism in democratic contexts / Ethnic Press and transnationalism / Ethnic community vs. local law / (Il)legal immigration / Transnational identities / Fragmented identities / Political agency, political choices / Balkanization of mentality / Bastions of ethnic tolerance / Citizenship and ethnopolitics / Civis and civility / Ethnic anxieties / Ethnic discrimination and affirmative actions / Ethnogenesis and ethnostasis / From Confrontation to Cooperation / Internal colonialisms / Mythologized nationalisms / Xenophobia/xenophilia.
- Deadline for proposals: December 20, 2003. Send a one-page proposal and a one-paragraph bio on the same page as e-mail submission to:
Dr. Heike Raphael-Hernandez
University of Maryland in Europe
Im Bosseldorn 30
69126 Heidelberg
Germany
- Only members of MESEA may present papers at this conference.
For membership information please check:
www.mesea.org