From the Editors

Call for Proposals: Change and Power: Comparative US-Japan Perspectives

The American Studies Association and the Japanese Association for American Studies, with support from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUFSC), are pleased to announce a competition open to ASA members (U.S. citizens). We plan to select two ASA delegates for participation in the annual JAAS conference to be held June 5-6, 2010, at Osaka University, Japan.

We invite proposals for workshops at the 2010 conference of the Japanese Association for American Studies (JAAS), with the participation of ASA delegates, and for two post-conference pro-seminars: I. “Change and Reconciliation” and II. “Cultural Strategies in Time of Change: Minority-Majority Relations.“ The two workshops will include an ASA delegate and two or three members of the JAAS or other international delegations and will be conducted in English.

Applicants should describe their interest in and availability for a two-week period in June 2010. The award covers round trip airfare to Japan, housing, and modest daily expenses.

The ASA delegates will speak in one of the workshops named above. The delegates will be chosen by collaborative assessment and selection by the members of the ASA-JAAS Project Advisory Committee and the International Committee of the JAAS. Following the conference, pro-seminars will be held either at the site of the conference or in an appropriate venue that will enable JAAS scholars to participate. The pro-seminars will run for two days. Themes of the pro-seminars will follow from but not necessarily repeat the workshop themes, and the ASA workshop speakers, now leading the pro-seminars, will construct the syllabi and assign readings for the pro-seminars. The pro-seminars will be open to the entire range of JAAS members, from graduate students to senior scholars. Under the proposed project, the ASA delegates will spend two days at the JAAS conference, two days in their pro-seminars, plus travel time, for a total of about a week.

The ASA scholars will contribute to an intensive dialogue and interaction with a fixed group of JAAS scholars. This group will include junior members of the JAAS and academia, put into a special relationship not only with the ASA delegates but also with mid-career and senior Japanese scholars of American Studies. These benefits are expected to flow in all directions, with the ASA delegates learning from the JAAS scholars, and with senior and junior scholars alike learning about directions the field may be taking and how they each may participate in renewals of American Studies in Japan. The “Comparative US-Japan Perspectives” named in the title of the proposed three-year theme speak directly of current directions in the field of American Studies, in regard to internationalism, transnationalism, and globalism. It is expected that JAAS scholars will speak of Japanese perspectives, in comparative connection with American Studies. These talks will put the JAAS scholars on the same footing as the ASA delegates in the workshops, each participant with a certain expertise to offer.

Accordingly, the theme statements for the proposed project are broad, conceptual, and inclined toward the theoretical, though the language is simple and the statements invite applicants to provide the historical examples and theoretical bases that they feel best fulfill the broad themes.

Theme Statements:

1. “Change and Reconciliation”: JAAS framers of this theme are interested in having a dialogue on how the United States reunifies itself (if it does) following significant political changes, which necessarily involve friction and conflict. While proposed by a political scientist (a significant discipline in American Studies in Japan), the theme calls for proposals from ASA scholars in the array of fields and emphases that constitute interdisciplinary American Studies.

2. “Cultural Strategies in Time of Change: Minority-Majority Relations”: The theme calls for examinations of so-called “identity politics” and possibly new directions in minority-majority relations of power and culture in the United States in view of the US elections of 2008 and their outcomes. To address this theme, proposals that involve studies of cultural change are welcome, with the understanding that a study of “culture” may include but need not be confined to the study of arts and the humanities. Has the election of President Barack Obama affected American culture? What cultural strategies and productions are signs and interpretations of current changes in minority-majority relations? How? Why?

Here again applicants need not propose comparative US-Japan studies, but contributions to a comparative method will be encouraged by the dialogue between ASA and JAAS scholars within the workshop and in the pro-seminar to follow.

Application Procedures: Each application letter will include a summary in 300 words of the proposed paper to be presented at the JAAS annual meeting. Participants will specify the workshop to which they are applying. They will explain how the proposed paper contributes to discussion of that topic. They will include two-page curriculum vitae, emphasizing teaching experience and publications. They will also include the names and addresses of three references and a personal statement, no longer than two pages, describing their interest in this project and the issues that their own scholarship and teaching have addressed. They will devote one or two paragraphs to why they understand this scholarly visit to be central to their own development as a scholar in the world community. They may include comments on previous collaboration or work with non-U.S. academics or students. If they wish, they may comment on their particular interest in, or connections to, Japan. Prior experience of work or travel in Japan, however, is not a requirement for selection. The grant requires that applicants must be current members of the ASA and U.S. citizens. Application materials should be addressed to the ASA-JAAS Project Advisory Committee, and sent via electronic mail message, as a Word, Word Perfect, or PDF document in a single attachment before midnight (US DST) October 1, 2009, to .

Published on June 13, 2009 by John F Stephens.

American Studies Journals: A Directory of Worldwide Resources

http://www.theasa.net/journals

This website provides scholars with a one-stop shop for the latest research published in American studies journals throughout the world. Organized by the International Initiative of the American Studies Association and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this site is the outcome of a collaboration between numerous journal editors around the world.

Register for the 2009 ASA Annual Meeting (click here)

Search the 2009 Annual Meeting Program (click here)

Published on June 11, 2009 by John F Stephens.

American Quarterly Call for Papers

Alternative Contact: Indigeneity, Globalism, and American Studies
Paul Lai and Lindsey Claire Smith, Guest Editors

Within standard genealogies, Native studies and other racially based studies arose from a similar moment of empowerment in the struggles for racial and ethnic rights in the 1960s and 1970s, often in solidarity with Third World decolonization movements. Increasingly, Native American studies highlights connections between Native America and indigenous communities around the world, reframing questions of sovereignty and indigenous rights in international terms while continuing to challenge political discourses of the nation-state. Such work decenters paradigms of first contact with European colonial powers and subsequent domination by the United States military and government that have overshadowed discussions of native contact with peoples of other origins. This special issue explores transnational and cross-ethnic flows among indigenous peoples of the Americas, including the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, and these other peoples. Such moments of alternative contact complicate and enrich our understanding of the links between U.S. colonial and imperial projects, sovereignty, and racial formation. Ultimately, this project seeks to theorize a more dynamic indigeneity that articulates new or overlooked connections among peoples, histories, cultures, and critical discourses within a global context.

We seek work that theorizes cosmopolitan indigeneities as the transnational movements of indigenous peoples and their governments, social and activist movements, arts, and critical discourse. We seek scholarship that identifies moments of contact among indigenous Americans and ethnic others in historically, geographically, and disciplinarily specific conjunctures and that highlights the dissonances as well as synergies produced by reconfiguring comparative ethnic studies work within the frameworks of transnational American studies and global indigenous movements. This work might offer new languages for discussing the global presence of indigeneity to counteract notions of unsophisticated or parochial Native communities and offer alternatives or rejoinders to the work of postcolonial studies by considering issues of continuing (neo)colonialism and the relation between indigenous peoples and state formations.

Framing such scholarship within globalism might build upon a long tradition in Latino/a studies of examining indigenous encounters with others and mixed-race subjectivities, query long-standing tensions between Asian Americans and native Pacific Islanders, and continue exploring histories of Native and African American connections. Additionally, we encourage submissions of papers that theorize less-studied contact, such as between Native American and Asian American bodies, communities, histories, literatures, visual arts, and politics. In these material and creative encounters, personal, political, collective, and global conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship point toward theoretical as well as practical implications for resisting empire. Email essays by September 1, 2009, to . Information about American Quarterly and submission guidelines can be found on our Web site: http://www.americanquarterly.org.

Register for the 2009 ASA Annual Meeting

Published on June 10, 2009 by John F Stephens.

Encyclopedia of American Studies Online

http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/

The term American studies encompasses a vast range of disciplines, all of which, in one way or another, are trying to describe the cultures of the United States. In recent years American studies has also incorporated comparative studies of Canada and Latin America; and indeed a transnational, global perspective on American culture has become one of the leading currents in the field as we begin the twenty-first century. Where, after all, do the borders of America stop, when its influence was, throughout the twentieth century, so pervasive on world cultures?

This month’s featured article is The Black Intellectual Tradition

Members of the ASA have access to the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online as a membership benefit. Register here at the Johns Hopkins University Press website for free access to American Quarterly and the Encyclopedia (current ASA members only). Simply enter the member log in and password that you create or have already created for the JHU website to gain access to the EAS.

If you have questions about your membership or difficulties logging in to AQ or EAS online, please contact the customer service dept of the Johns Hopkins University Press at (410) 516-6987 or 1-800-548-1784, or email .

Many of you have a login and password for the JHUP site and are trying to use those here at the ASA website (or vice versa). To do so, you must create the same login/password at both sites.

Register for the 2009 ASA Annual Meeting

Published on April 21, 2009 by John F Stephens.

In Memoriam: Professor John Hope Franklin

We deeply mourn the grievous loss of ASA’s past president Professor John Hope Franklin. Professor Franklin has had an enormous impact on shaping the American studies as well as Afro-American history and culture through his exemplary research, mentoring, teaching, and public service, nationally and internationally. Professor Franklin has profoundly influenced our understanding of American studies broadly defined as well as generations of scholars and students. We invite colleagues to post condolences on Professor John Hope Franklin’s death.

Published on April 9, 2009 by John F Stephens.

In Memoriam: Professor Emory Elliott

It is with deep sadness that we learned a few days ago of the sudden passing of ASA past president Emory Elliott. Emory has had an enormous impact on shaping the international American studies as well as through his exemplary mentoring and teaching, nationally and internationally. Emory’s generosity and leadership will be sorely missed by us all. We invite colleagues to post condolences on Professor Emory Elliot’s death.

Published on April 9, 2009 by John F Stephens.

ASA Election Results (2009)

The voting in the 2009 ASA Election is now completed. The following members have been elected to three-year terms that shall last from July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2012.

President-Elect: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, University of Southern California

Council: Ernesto Chávez, University of Texas, El Paso
Laura G. Gutiérrez, University of Arizona
Michele Mitchell, New York University
Priscilla Wald, Duke University
Robert Warrior, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Nominating Committee: John Márquez, Northwestern University
Gail M. Nomura, University of Washington

The Council extends its appreciation to all those who agreed to run for office, congratulates the new leaders of the Association, and wishes them success in their undertakings over the next three years.

The Council also extends its gratitude to those who are completing their term of service. The councilors whose terms expire on June 30, 2009 include Judith Halberstam, University of Southern California; Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Brown University; Paula Rabinowitz, University of Minnesota; T.V. Reed, Washington State University; Vicki L. Ruiz, University of California, Irvine, Past President; and Leti Volpp, University of California, Berkeley. The Nominating Committee members whose terms expire on June 30, 2009 are Sharon P. Holland, Duke University and Amy Stillman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Ninety four percent of the members voting approved the proposed constitutional amendment to grant the Crossroads Project Director’s request to step down as an appointed officer of the American Studies Association and as an ex officio a member of the National Council. As ratification required a favorable vote of the majority of association members voting, the Constitution is thus amended effective March 1, 2009.

Published on March 2, 2009 by John F Stephens.

Welcome to Crossroads!

As Crossroads celebrates more than a decade of online innovation and collaboration, the Crossroads team has redesigned the site to better reflect the range of resources and information available to students and educators of American Studies. We hope you enjoy the changes.

http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/

Published on December 27, 2008 by John F Stephens.