MELUS - Special CFPs
MELUS - Special Issue
We’re inviting proposals for a special issue of MELUS on food and ethnic literatures. Projected date of publication is 2007.
Food is the most significant medium of traffic between introjection and projection. What we swallow becomes incorporated into the self. What and how we eat organize our projection of oneness and otherness. Food not only nourishes but also signifies. Cuisine—the process of transferring Nature to Culture—is central to our sense of identity, because this process operates in the register of the imagination more than of the material. Cuisine also inculcates eaters with a deep-seated sense of diversity and hierarchy within their social group. Food practices have rendered us acquiescent to the divide in our consciousness along the lines of race, gender, age, class, and ethnicity—a hegemony that may be more effective than its social and cultural counterpart. The saying, “You are what you eat,” bespeaks not only the biochemical relationship between us and our food but also the extent to which food practices determine our systems of beliefs and representations.
We welcome proposals that locate issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, etc. in the space of food, drinks, appetite, consumption, or orality in U.S. ethnic fiction, poetry, drama, and creative non-fiction. Please submit a 2-page abstract to Fred Gardaphe <fgardaphe@notes.cc.sunysb.edu> and Wenying Xu <wxu@fau.edu> no later than December 15, 2005.
Added November 2005
MELUS Women of Color Caucus
The MELUS (Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States) WOCC (Women of Color Caucus) invites proposals for two sessions at the MELUS 20th Annual Conference, from April 27-30, 2006, hosted by Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Both sessions engage with the conference theme of “Crosscurrents: Navigating the Mainland and the Margins in U.S. Ethnic Literatures.”
The Tenth Annual MELUS WOCC Roundtable: “At Ten Years: Where have we come from, where are we going?”—This discussion will focus on academic survival and highlight strategies employed by women of color as they have struggled to create safe spaces over the past ten years. Participants are asked to pre-submit questions and topics for discussion so that issues can be grouped thematically. This session will feature an “open mic” to encourage diverse ideas and perspectives.
“Women of Color (Re)Inscribing the Disciplines”—How have the writings of women of color impacted our readings of American ethnic literatures and forced us to reconsider disciplinary approaches? Interdisciplinary trends including women of color feminisms, sexuality studies and diaspora studies—among others—may be considered.
All proposed topics and abstracts (250 words) should be submitted to Trina Philips at phillips.564@osu.edu by November 21st. Questions about the sessions or the WOCC should be directed to Georgina Dodge at dodge.20@osu.edu.
All presenters must be members of MELUS. For information about membership and renewal visit the MELUS website http://www.boisestate.edu/english/melus/annual.html.
Call for Papers: MELUS Special Issue
Multi-Ethnic American Graphic Narrative
In his book Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud explores some of the problems concerning ethnicity and graphic narrative. Not only does he argue for an increased awareness of ethnic and gender representation in contemporary comics, but he also highlights many of the ethnoracial concerns underlying the history of comics in the United States.
Using McCloud’s arguments as a springboard, MELUS plans on publishing a special issue devoted to multi-ethnic American graphic narrative. The scope of this issue could include the theoretical, literary, and historical sweep of graphic narrative and its links to multi-ethnic discourse. Possible topics could include, but are certainly not limited to, ethnic representation in contemporary comics, the links between multi-ethnic expression and the graphic novel, the growth of graphic novels as a vehicle of American ethnic expression in the wake of Art Spiegleman’s groundbreaking Maus, the ethnic other in recent film adaptation of comics, the impact of Japanese Magna on American comics and culture, the problems of ethnic representation in underground comix of the 1960s, the reading of classic superheroes as ethnic outsider, comic journalism as a medium for reporting ethnoracial conflict, the tropes of the monster/mutant/zombie as figurations of “the alien,” graphic narratives of the U.S. border (with both Mexico and Canada), and the cross-fertilization between comics and traditional narrative. Projected publication date is 2007.
For all inquiries, abstracts, and submissions, please contact Derek Parker Royal at <Derek_Royal@tamu-commerce.edu>.
Deadline for submission of final papers is June 15, 2006.
http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/droyal/melus.htm
Updated September 2005
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