MELUS Panel at the American Literature Association Conference
May 25-28, 2006 - San Francisco, CA

Topic: Multi-Ethnic American Graphic Narrative

We invite paper abstracts concerning the theoretical, literary, and historical sweep of graphic narrative and its links to multi-ethnic discourse for a MELUS panel to be held at the 17th annual American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco, CA, May 25-28. Consult our page for full submission guidelines: http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/droyal/melus.htm Deadline for submissions is 10 January 2006.

"Locating Feminist Mothers: The Politics and Challenges of Research on Early African American Women--A Roundtable Discussion."

As more texts written by African American women are recovered and/or texts are reconsidered, unique challenges arise in this process. Identifying and recovering texts by early African American women and locating feminist practice by 18th and 19th century African American women demand research and scholarly support that are often difficult to obtain. This session will explore these difficulties as well as the work at the center of these challenges. We invite one-page paper proposals on issues faced, particularly for women, when conducting research on African American women in the 18th and 19th centuries for a roundtable discussion at the SSAWW 2006 annual meeting. Submissions might focus on challenges researching the works/lives of early African American women, institutional/scholarly resistance to this research, or personal gendered challenges to research. Send abstracts to DoVeanna S. Fulton (doveanna.fulton@asu.edu) and Mary Loving Blanchard (mblanchard@NJCU.edu) by Jan. 15, 2006.

Call for Papers on Pauline Hopkins - Papers are invited on any aspect of Hopkins's work: her novels, short fiction, nonfiction, or her lesser known (and less available) drama. Send abstracts to Jill Bergman at jill.bergman@mso.umt.edu by January 15, 2006. From Jill Bergman, Associate Professor, English, Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, (406)243-5352, 243-2632, fax: (406)243-2556

The University of Puget Sound - Conference on Race and Pedagogy

The University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA) will host a conference on Race and Pedagogy keynoted by Prof. Cornel West on Sept. 14-16, 2006. The conference will bring together scholars, teachers, and students to discuss the pedagogical implications of race in higher education, particularly but not exclusively in institutions and programs oriented towards a liberal education in the arts and sciences. Refining, extending, and questioning our understanding of the pedagogical implications of race is critical if we are to improve the racial-cultural experiences of all our students and prepare our students for citizenship and leadership in a diverse world where race continues to matter.

The conference planning committee encourages teachers, scholars, and students across disciplines (e.g. humanities, social sciences, physical sciences) with an interest in race and pedagogy to examine the three themes which will guide the conference. We hope that you will recognize areas of interest and/or concern in these themes, and will consider joining us as either presenters and/or participants. In addition to invited speakers and panels, the conference will include refereed panels, papers, and poster sessions. For a list of confirmed speakers/participants and specific submission guidelines, please visit the conference web site at http://www.ups.edu/raceandpedagogy/ . Questions can be addressed by email to <raceandpedagogy@ups.edu >.

Theme 1: Race, Knowledge, and Disciplinarity

Overview: This theme explores the ways in which specific academic disciplines negotiate the issue of race and the ways in which race enables and/or constrains the production of knowledge.

Papers and/or panels exploring this theme might:

• explore the range of goals different instructors and/or disciplines have for student learning when engaging the issue of race;

• address such questions as: "why has race assumed a prominent position in certain disciplines?" as well as "why has race been rendered invisible in certain disciplines?";

• identify and examine disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) modes of inquiry through which race enters a discipline's scholarly conversation and its classrooms;

• explore different aspects (themes, issues, events, processes, individuals, etc.) of what constitutes a discipline's understanding of race;

• identify and examine how issues of race (e.g. racialized exclusion and inclusion, silencing and supremacy) function in the way "we" both encounter and/or construct what has come to count as knowledge (the given and primary categories and/or ways of seeing and investigating the social and material world which appear natural and which frame, identify, distinguish, reproduce, and sustain our discrete disciplinary or interdisciplinary "homes"); and,

• identify questions, objectives, perspectives, topics, methodologies, research strategies, and/or pedagogical techniques for situating race more productively in disciplinary conversations and in the classroom.

Theme 2: Racial Dynamics and Racial Performances in the Classroom (and beyond)

Overview: This theme explores the ways in which students and teachers embody and perform race, and the ways in which racial dynamics affect behavior inside and outside the classroom.

Papers and/or panels exploring this theme might:

• identify and examine the different behaviors and forms of racial performance in which students and teachers engage as well as the consequences and/or effects of these behaviors and localized, embodied performances (e.g. stereotyping, privilege, violence);

• help conference participants recognize productive and/or problematic racial dynamics and performances;

• develop strategies for responding to these dynamics and performances;

• identify strategies for hindering and promoting motivation and student learning;

• help conference participants understand how our racialized bodies work as texts that carry the inscription and memory of history;

• identify strategies for managing the selection, representation, interpretation, and reception of the knowledge that is brought to and created in the classroom; and,

• explore ways to negotiate the challenges and possibilities for building critically empowering and participatory learning communities.

Theme 3: Race, Pedagogy, and Community

Overview: This theme explores the ways in which students, teachers, administrators, and the educational institutions which they collectively constitute are situated within or in relation to broader communities.

Papers and/or panels exploring this theme might:

• identify and examine the ways through which particular historical or contemporary communities and/or social movements have challenged and changed the kinds and terms of knowledge, and the access to and representation of peoples of color in higher education.

• identify ways to locate, formulate, and question the ways in which our institutional identities as publicly accountable and obliged citizens continually shape and reshape the way we understand our contemporary pedagogical possibilities and opportunities; and

• explore tensions, partnerships, and possibilities that can shape pedagogy.

Call for Papers: Beyond Multiculturalism - American Literature Association Annual Convention

May 25-28, 2006, San Francisco, California, Conference info: www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/ala2/

The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS) and the Society for Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) seek papers on the topic BEYOND MULTICULTURALISM to be presented at the American Literature Association annual convention, May 25-28, in San Francisco.

Multiculturalism has been a driving force in U.S. society since the civil rights movement and has been credited with many advances in promoting the cause of minority groups, from altering hiring practices to transforming the literary canon. Literary production and college syllabi reflect the diversity of U.S. culture like never before. However, over the past decade, critics have begun to argue that multiculturalism, once considered the answer to the problem, is actually part of the problem. Some, like Stanley Fish, argue that multiculturalism has been hijacked by commercial cultural. Others, like Vijay Prashad, claim that multiculturalism is “racism at a distance” in that it fetishizes culture as a monolithic, primordial, and identity-defining essence. Many have turned to the postmodern sublime as a new model, where contingency, hybridity and subjectivity-shuttling frees us from the confines of cultural essence. But still others argue that racism cannot be combated with a postmodern model, or what E. San Juan Jr. calls, “the rebarbative postcolonial babble about contingency ruling over all.”

Are we in a post-multicultural era? Is multiculturalism still a viable program? If so, how can it incorporate globalization, diaspora, cultural hybridity, and other facts of contemporary life? If not, what will replace it? Is polyculturalism a viable alternative? What new paradigms are on the horizon?

Please send paper proposals to Jeff Partridge at the following email address: jeffpartridge@snet.net Proposal deadline: January 15, 2006.

REVISED CFP (DATE CHANGED) - CRITICAL ESSAYS ON MEENA ALEXANDER - DEADLINE EXTENDED - Edited Collection

Contributions are invited for a collection of critical essays on any aspect of Meena Alexander's work as poet, memoirist, novelist, literary theorist, and thinker. The publication of the tenth anniversary edition of Fault Lines as well as two recent volumes of poetry, Illiterate Heart (winner of PEN Open Book Award 2002) and Raw Silk (2004), provides a watershed moment to examine and evaluate Alexander's creative oeuvre in the context of contemporary transnational, multi-ethnic, and feminist theory and aesthetics. Although Alexander has been widely anthologized and acclaimed as a contemporary South Asian American poet and thinker, no major collection of critical commentaries on her work has yet appeared, a void that this collection hopes to address. How does Alexander's work intervene in the coruscating issues of the present moment and map the circuitous routes of violence from religious fundamentalisms in India, her country of birth, to the devastation and trauma of post-9/11 New York City, her current home? How does Alexander's work reassert the power of poetry and passionately advocate for the preservation of the aesthetic in a time of violence and strife? Critical essays examining Alexander's creative work using the methodologies of transnational feminism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, queer studies, narrative theory, cultural studies, and genre studies are welcome. We welcome essays examining interconnections between Alexander's poetic practice and thought with grassroots or pedagogic activism, as well as others that contextualize her contribution to the field of postcolonial and Asian American literatures.

Given below is a suggestive but not an exhaustive list of possible topics:

the lyric in a time of violence; transnational feminist poetics; rethinking Indian nationalism; trauma and language; migration, exile, and home; US race relations and multicultural pedagogy; postcoloniality, history and the personal essay; the body and memory; memoir as a genre; autobiographical fiction.

Send abstracts of 500 words (or completed papers) by 15 January 2006 to: Lopamudra Basu of University of Wisconsin-Stout at basul@uwstout.edu AND to Cynthia Leenerts of East Stroudsburg University at srcyn@aol.com.

Special Issue of Transformations - Teaching in Translation

DEADLINE: 15 January 2006

“Translation” raises questions of authenticity, authority, legitimization, subjectivity, and objectivity. How can we theorize translation so that it can serve as tool to present "experience” with respect for the integrity of the other? What is the relationship between the different subjects involved in the process of translation? What is the role of translation in the validation of the narratives of marginalize communities and indigenous cultures? What are the ethics of translation?

For this special issue, we use the phrase “teaching in translation“ to refer to teaching that occurs across boundaries—of language, nationality, culture, class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality as well teaching that questions traditional disciplinary and hierarchical limits.

The editors of Transformations seek articles (3,000 – 8,000 words) and media reviews (books, film, video, performance, art, music, etc. – 1,000 to 3,000 words) examining approaches to teaching translation as a broadly understood concept in a variety of contexts: creative writing (for example, the multilingual texts), literature, women’s and gender studies, anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, art, photography, geography, religion, philosophy, working-class studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, science, and others. Multidisciplinary approaches that focus on--or include--discussions of non-Western cultures are especially encouraged. Autobiographical criticism, narrative scholarship, photo-essays, and experimental work are welcome.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

How teaching in translation can be implemented at all levels, K-12 and higher education.

How teaching in translation can be relevant to progressive education.

Hybrid genres and hybrid languages.

Teaching in translation in non-academic spaces such centers for refugees.

How to formulate and incorporate translation theories into pedagogical practice.

Send two hard copies in MLA format (6^th ed.) to: Jacqueline Ellis and Edvige Giunta, Editors, Transformations, New Jersey City University, Grossnickle Hall Room 303, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305 OR email submissions and inquiries to: transformations@njcu.edu. Email submissions should be sent as attachments in MS Word or Rich Text format. For submission guidelines go to www.njcu.edu/assoc/transformations.

USACLALS, 4^th International Conference Oct. 27-29 2006, Santa Clara University, Fissures and Sutures: Sources of Division and Mutual Aid in Postcolonial Reflections on History and Literature

100 years ago, in 1906:

a 7.8 hit San Francisco (and an 8.6 earthquake hit Quito); Mt. Vesuvius erupted and devastated Naples; race riots broke out in Atlanta; Japanese students were taught in racially segregated schools in San Francisco; Theodore Roosevelt took the first official trip outside the U.S. by a sitting President; the first intercollegiate fraternity for African American students was founded; Reginald Fessenden made the first radio broadcast; the world’s first feature film (The Story of the Kelly Gang) was released; immunization against tuberculosis was developed; Richard Oldham proposed that the earth has a molten interior; the Second Geneva Convention was held; the All-India Muslim League was founded.

50 years ago, in 1956:

Pakistan became the first Islamic republic; Nasser became President of Egypt and nationalized the Suez Canal; the submarine telephone cable across the Atlantic was opened; Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, the Indian Untouchable leader, converted to Buddhism along with 385,000 followers; Fidel Castro and Che Guevara departed Mexico and landed in Cuba; Warsaw Pact troops invaded Hungary and the Hungarian Revolution began; Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula; Britain got its first female judge; Japan joined the United Nations.

We invite papers of 15-20 minute presentation time relating to the general conference theme, or to other aspects of postcolonial literature and theory (including US ethnic literatures). Among questions and topics of likely relevance are the following:

Natural and man-made disasters and their impact on communities: partitions, border disputes, chemical pollution, tsunamis
Religion and its influence in uniting or dividing peoples
Gender-related issues of justice in local and global compacts
Identity politics and class conflict over time
Technology and globalization and their effects in history and in nation-building (or nation-dissolving)

There will also be opportunities for readings by poets and novelists on these and other themes.

Among probable speakers at this time are Bill Ashcroft, Pal Ahluwalia, Kirpal Singh, and R. Radhakrishnan.

Send 200-word abstracts electronically by March 1 to: jhawley@scu.edu

John C. Hawley, Dept. of English, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino, Santa Clara CA 95053; or FAX: John Hawley, English dept.: (408) 554 4837

Contributors have much freedom on this. We focus more on the quality of each chapter and the whole project. Each article must be documented in MLA style, and can be either previously unpublished or published research. The special issue of Works and Days 2006 will be between 200-300 pages in print, and will be published in late 2006 or in early 2007. Email or mail 250-500 word abstracts with a 2-page cv and/or inquiries by January 31, 2006 and mail full-length submissions by June 30, 2006 to the guest editor, Lingyan Yang (lingyan@iup.edu), English Dept. 110 Leo Hall, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705.

Calls for Papers

Call for Papers: Beyond Multiculturalism - American Literature Association Annual Convention

Special Issue of Transformations - Teaching in Translation

DEADLINE: 15 January 2006