Afro-Asian American Studies Conference 2011

conference website and papers

2011-11-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

We're happy to announce that the conference website for Intersections is up! Please visit (http://www.english.upenn.edu/Conferences/Intersections/) and check out the papers!

Call for Papers (deadline: June 1, 2011)

2011-04-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Intersections: A Conversation between African American and Asian American Studies

November 18-19, 2011

Location: University of Pennsylvania

Keynote speakers:

Nikhil Singh (Social & Cultural Analysis, NYU. Author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy. Co-editor of special issue of Positions, The Afro-Asian Century)

Tamara Roberts (Music, UC Berkeley. Author of Musicking at the Crossroads of Diaspora: Afro Asian Musical Politics (diss))

Fred Ho (activist/scholar/musician. Co-editor of Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans)

Panel moderators:

David L. Eng (English, UPenn)

Josephine Nock-Hee Park (English, UPenn)

Deborah A. Thomas (Anthropology/Africana, UPenn)

Salamishah Tillet (English/Africana, UPenn)

TJ Ghose (Social Policy and Practice, UPenn)

In the past century, key political moments have brought together Africans, Asians, and members of their respective diasporas in the Americas. Events such as the Pan-African Conference of 1900, the Bandung Conference of 1955, and the American ethnic nationalist movements of the 1960s and 70s instigated a discourse on the generative potential of Afro-Asian and Afro-Asian American connections. In recent years, an increasing body of scholarship has addressed and theorized this history of contact, critically assessing as well as extending it to include events ranging from the antebellum debates over coolie labor to the 1992 LA riots.

As graduate students and scholars in African American and Asian American studies, how might this comparativist trend inform the work we do within our respective disciplines? This conference seeks to center this question by calling for papers that either explicitly theorize connections or cover themes that are central to both disciplines (such as migration/diaspora, labor/slavery, legal racialization, etc). While we invite papers that specifically illuminate Afro-Asian American intersections, we also invite abstracts that are rooted in either Africana or Asian American studies. Through this call for both papers and people, we intend to contribute to the critical conversation by opening a space to map out and create connections between African American and Asian American studies.

Possible panels include:

Afro-Asian (American) Exchanges in Literature, Past and Present

-Representations of African American in Asian American literature (and vice versa)

-Afro-Asian (American) convergences in literature

-Comparative racialization of African Americans and Asian Americans in popular and canonical works

-Texts such as W.E.B. DuBois’ Dark Princess, Cynthia Shearer's Celestial Jukebox, Patricia Powell's The Pagoda, and Cristina Garcia's Monkey Hunting.

Transnational Cultural and Political Connections

-Historical and contemporary intersections between peoples of the African and Asian diasporas

-Locations of contact outside of the United States, such as the Caribbean and Latin America

-Coolie labor

-Discursive mappings of the East and West Indies

-The Afro-Asian conferences of the early 20^th century

-Black soldiers’ experiences in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Korea

Intersections in Music, Film, and Popular Culture

(This panel is not limited to twentieth and twenty-first century cultural production)

-Blackface and yellow-face minstrelsy

-Hip-hop Orientalism

-Cinematic representations of interracial contact/conflict/alliance

-Popular discourses surrounding the Tiger Woods controversy

Praxis and Political Alliances: Past, Present, and Future

-Foregrounding Afro-Asian (American) alliances in the political and social spheres

-Histories of coalition

-Current initiatives for interracial alliance

-New possibilities for community-building and activism

*We particularly invite abstracts from the disciplines of History, Social Policy and Practice, Education, Sociology, and Urban Studies

To submit a proposal, email your name, institution, email address, proposal title and proposal abstract (no more than 500 words) to afasam.intersections@gmail.com by June 1, 2011. Papers will be pre-circulated so as to give panelists sufficient time to engage with and consider the other presentations on their panel. Once accepted, a draft of the paper (no more than 10 pages) will be expected by September 10, 2011.

Undergraduate Call for Papers (deadline: June 1, 2011)

2011-04-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Intersections: A Conversation between African American and Asian American Studies

November 18-19, 2011

Location: University of Pennsylvania

Rush Hour. The Karate Kid remake. Romeo Must Die. Nicki Minaj. Wu-tang Clan. This catalogue of popular films and musical acts reveals a prominent, if understudied, relationship between African Americans and Asian Americans. We, at the University of Pennsylvania, have organized an interdisciplinary graduate conference to examine the intersections between these two minority groups. While the conference will predominately consist of graduate panels, we have received such positive response from undergraduates that we are organizing a special undergraduate panel. We invite paper submissions that discuss the interactions between African and Asian Americans in contemporary popular culture, as well as in historical or literary contexts.

Paper topics may include (but are not limited to):

-Film and television (“cop” movies of the 90s, Shanghai Noon, Half & Half, etc.)

-Hip-hop lyrics and music videos

-Literature

-History (slave and coolie debates, Bandung Conference of 1955, the Cold War, LA riots of 1992 etc.)

-Visual art

-Urban education and/or housing

-Political coalitions/activist groups

This conference is a unique opportunity to present your work at a graduate conference. We particularly encourage students who are considering attending graduate school to apply. Papers will be pre-circulated, and the panel will be moderated by advanced graduate students specializing in literature, music, Asian American studies, and African American studies.

To submit a proposal, email your name, institution, email address, proposal title and proposal abstract (no more than 500 words) to afasam.intersections@gmail.com by June 1, 2011. Papers will be pre-circulated so as to give panelists sufficient time to engage with and consider the other presentations on their panel. Once accepted, a full version of the paper (no more than 10 pages) will be expected by September 10, 2011. Please feel free to submit a paper that you have previously written for an Asian American or African American studies-related course.