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International Initiative

What is the International Initiative?

Announcing the ASA’s International Initiative
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University
ASA President

At the International Committee Reception last year in Hartford Alfred Hornung, President of the German Association for American Studies, came up to me with Vasil Kacharava, president of the Georgian Association of American Studies at his side, and asked me whether I thought it might be a good idea to have all of the presidents of American Studies associations around the world get together at the next ASA conference—to meet each other, brainstorm on possible collaborations, and generally open lines of communication? I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea. I thought it was a great idea.

I knew already that one of my central goals as ASA president would be to increase international dialogue in American Studies. Alfred’s idea was an excellent step in that direction. He followed up shortly thereafter with an email with further suggestions for instituting an international network at the next ASA that “could be used to exchange information and to plan joint projects,” and “be a platform for conceptualizing American Studies on a global scale in terms of scholarship, teaching and the creation of dynamic associations.” He also suggested a similar network for editors of American Studies journal editors around the world. “Such a common effort would enhance the field of American Studies tremendously,” he wrote. I agreed. The immediate outpouring of enthusiastic emails from other ASA officers and past presidents, as well as from members of the international committee and presidents of national American Studies associations outside the U.S. made it clear that this was the direction in which to take the ASA.

Facilitating ongoing conversations between international scholars of American Studies and Americanists in the U.S. can help both groups achieve a better understanding of both the multiple cultures that have shaped U.S. culture from the start, and the impact that American culture has had on other countries around the globe. Scholars in the U.S. pay a lot of lip service to the idea of “transnational American studies” –but often do little to make that concept mean something real. I view my tenure at the helm of the ASA as a welcome and exciting opportunity to foster transnational American Studies in concrete and productive ways. To that end, I have spent much of the past year as president-elect planning and raising funds to support the ASA’s International Initiative.

Building on the Past

The ASA and its leadership have been internationally engaged, with international support, for many years. For example, since 1990, thanks to the efforts of Linda Kerber, Nagayo Homma, Hiroko Sato, Steve Sumida, Masako Notoji, and John Stephens, a highly-successful and vibrant exchange of delegations between the ASA and the Japanese Association of American Studies has invigorated annual meetings on both sides of the Pacific; during much of this time there has also been a fruitful exchange with the American Studies Association of Korea. The ASA held joint meetings with the European Association of American Studies in 1992, and with the Canadian Association of American Studies in 1987, 1989, 1997, and 1999. A joint conference held with the “Recovery of the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project” of Arté Público Press in 2002 attracted a number of Latin American scholars to the ASA’s annual meeting. Both the Task Force for International Women and the International Committee have long worked on developing strategies for increased international communication.

ASA members have also been deeply involved in international exchanges on an individual and an institutional level through the Fulbright program (teaching and lecturing abroad as Fulbrighters, and sponsoring Fulbright scholars on their campuses), as well as through the Salzburg Seminars, the Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminars, and other programs (such as the conference ASA member Jonathan Auerbach organized on American Studies in Vietnam in 1999 that involved ASA members including Bill Brown, Cathy Davidson, Paul Lauter and Richard Yarborough; or the International Forum for U.S. Studies at the University of Iowa started by ASA members Jane Desmond and Virginia Dominguez in 1995; or the two-week American Studies course at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City that I organized and taught in 1992 with Bode-Pearson prizewinner Gloria Anzaldúa and ASA members Carla Peterson, Lillian Robinson, Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky and Richard Yarborough.) ASA members have also initiated collaborative ventures such as Paul Lauter’s Heath Anthology of American Literature for Asia, co-edited by a number of Asian scholars, and have served on the boards of international journals. ASA’s growing online presence through Crossroads has made many American Studies resources more accessible to international scholars, just as Paul Lauter, Randy Bass, and John Stephens hoped it would when they launched it. As Gulriz Büken of the International Committee has noted, the ASA’s recent moves to online proposal submissions and online balloting have served to facilitate the involvement of international scholars, as have the designation of an international seat on the ASA Council, the AQ editorial board, and the Women’s Committee.

[For more on these various enterprises, see these informative articles from the ASA newsletter archive, all available online at theasa.net: Michael Cowan, Emory Elliott and Eric Sandeen, “The Internationalization of American Studies” (June 1994); Mary Battenfeld and Esther Kuntjara “Teaching American Studies: Perspectives from Indonesia” (June 1994); Darrell Y. Hamamoto, “Not to Worry: The Fulbrighter in Japan” (June 1995); Cathy Davidson, “Japan-United States Collaborative Research Project, 1994” (June 1995); Tatyana Venediktova, “Prospecting American Studies in Moscow” (March 1996); Allan M. Winkler, “American Studies in East Africa” (June 2000); Allan M. Winkler, “Helsinki Diary” (December 2000); Michael Steiner, “Knowing the Place for the First Time: Discovering America by Teaching American Studies Abroad” (December 2000); Victor Greene, “The Local as International: Globalizing American Studies At Home (September 2001); Stephen H. Sumida, “Where in the World is American Studies? Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, Houston, Texas 2002,” American Quarterly, vol. 55, No. 3, September 2003; Mart Stewart, “American Studies in Vietnam” (March 2004). See also the Task Force for International Women in American Studies Report by co-chairs Alice Kessler Harris and Irene Ramalho Santos (May 2001), and the discussion of possible EAAS-ASA cooperation in the minutes of the ASA Council, 1998, all available online at theasa.net.

This year the ASA will build on these efforts by implementing some new models of cooperation and representation. The ASA International Initiative is an ongoing effort by the American Studies Association comprised of a series of special projects and activities involving international scholars and affiliated societies. We desire to encourage increased contact between international American Studies scholars and American Studies scholars based in the U.S., and to evaluate whether the existing offices, publications, and committees of the ASA are serving the needs of international members and affiliated associations. We would like to facilitate collaborations not only between the ASA and affiliated international American Studies associations, but also between international American Studies centers, programs, and journals and American Studies programs, centers and journals based in the U.S. And we would like to explore the possibility of new or revised mechanisms for supporting these ongoing and suggested activities, including seeking extramural funding.

Unprecedented Number of International Scholars Coming to Atlanta

Last fall the ASA extended invitations to the Atlanta conference to the presidents of national and affiliated regional American Studies associations based outside the U.S., as well as to the editors of as many American Studies journals and directors of American Studies programs and centers outside the U.S. as we could contact. We also made every effort to circulate our Call for Papers to international scholars, and the Program Committee made every effort to integrate the work of international scholars into the program. I am delighted to report that there will be an unprecedented number of international scholars at the next annual meeting.

On Thursday morning, the Committee on American Studies Programs will sponsor a networking breakfast for directors of American Studies program directors and scholars working to develop or strengthen American Studies programs at their institutions from around the world and across the U.S. The breakfast will be followed by a roundtable/workshop with these program directors and scholars to which all conference attendees are invited. These two events will include representatives from Austria Azerbaiijan, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Egypt, Republic of Georgia, Germany Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Turkey, the UK, the Ukraine, Vietnam and the West Bank. After introductions, members of the International Committee will serve as facilitators for small-group discussions at multiple round tables, allowing U.S. and international program directors to share ideas in a more intimate setting; each table will then pose questions, challenges, and suggestions to all those assembled for general discussion. After that session the Committee on American Studies Programs will host a third event: a panel discussion on “Beyond Interdisciplinarity: The New Goals of American Studies Programs,” which the international and U.S. program directors as well as other ASA members are encouraged to attend.

On Thursday afternoon presidents of national and affiliated regional American Studies associations based outside the U.S. will meet with members of the ASA Council. The Presidents of the Bangladesh Association for American Studies, the British Association of American Studies, Bulgarian Association for American Studies, Danish Association for American Studies, the European Association of American Studies, the Finnish Association of American Studies, the French Association for American Studies, the Georgian American Studies Association, the German Association of American Studies, Israel American Studies Association, Japanese Association of American Studies, the American Studies Association of Korea, the Nordic Association of American Studies, the Polish Association for American Studies, the Turkish Association of American Studies, and the American Studies Network of Spain, plan to attend, along with the Vice Presidents of the Asian Federation of American Studies Associations and the Russian American Studies Association.

Editors of international American Studies journals will have an extended business meeting on Friday morning with American Quarterly editors to explore potential future collaborative ventures. On Friday afternoon they will participate in a roundtable discussion open to all conference attendees. Editors of American Studies International, American Studies in Scandinavia, Amerikastudien/American Studies, ASAK Journal of American Studies (Korea), Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives, Australian Journal of American Studies, Canadian Review of American Studies, Comparative American Studies, European Journal of American Culture, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, the Journal of American Studies (Japan), Journal of American Studies (U.K.), JAST—Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Polish Journal for American Studies, Review of International American Studies, Revue Française d’Etudes Américaines, Safundi: Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies, Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, and Transatlantica plan to participate.

A Directory of the ASA International Initiative will be distributed at registration in Atlanta that will include descriptions of each of the international associations, journals and programs represented at the meeting, including email contact information to facilitate post-conference follow-up conversations.

In addition, scholars from Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Republic of Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the West Bank will be presenting papers or speaking on panels in Atlanta.

The International Committee reception on Thursday evening will be a good opportunity to meet many of these scholars, and I hope many of you will make an effort to attend. I would like to urge ASA members to attend the roundtable/workshop with international and U.S. program directors, the roundtable of journal editors, and sessions featuring international scholars. But I would like to ask U.S.-based Americanists to do more. Go up to an international scholar after hearing his or her paper and continue the conversation over coffee. Get references to their publications and exchange emails. Ask your graduate students to seek out international scholars working in areas related to their own areas of research and encourage them to explore the possibility of involving them in ASA sessions they propose in the future. Take a few minutes to peruse the international American Studies journals on display at the book exhibit. Pick up their subscription forms and bring them back to the heads of serials purchasing for your university library with a request that they subscribe. Engage international journal editors in discussions about their sense of the field. Chat with international program directors about common curricular and pedagogical challenges. Explore the possibilities of using technology to bring your students in conversation with each other (through email discussion, videoconferencing, etc.). Brainstorm with international scholars on research projects that require transnational collaboration.

The ASA owes a huge expression of gratitude to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for supporting these efforts with a generous grant of $40,000 (See article in this Newsletter). The ASA is also grateful to the Asia Foundation and the US-China Education Trust for their support in sharing the cost of bringing scholars from Vietnam and China. The grant from the Mellon Foundation, and the assistance of the Asia Foundation and the US-China Education Trust will help make it possible for a number of these international scholars to travel to Atlanta and for some of them to have observational site visits to U.S. American Studies programs following the conference. We are also grateful that so many international scholars coming to Atlanta have been able to fund their trips through sources in their own countries.

The International Initiative would not be happening without the enthusiastic support of a number of colleagues. First and foremost, Executive Director John Stephens, whose patient counsel and boundless energy have been central to each of these ventures. The dedicated and enterprising Program Committee co-chairs Shirley Geok-lin Lim, George Sanchez and Rafia Zafar devoted countless hours to making international scholars integral in every way to the Atlanta conference and to figuring out how to enable as many as possible to participate; we are all in their debt. They were ably assisted by a conscientious and hard-working Program Committee comprised of Oscar Campomanes, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Joel Dinerstein, Craig Howe, Tiffany Lopez, Estevan Rael y Galvez, Greg Robinson, Shirley Thompson, and Siva Vaidhyanathan, and by helpful suggestions from Michael Frisch, chair of the International Committee, and Gabriel Melendez, chair of the Committee on ASA Programs. American Quarterly editor Marita Sturken and editorial assistant Cynthia Willis coordinated the invitations to international journal editors with grace and skill. ASA staff member Shona Johnston played a key role in coordinating the International Initiative correspondence, and ASA staff member Larry McReynolds adeptly addressed a range of new challenges as he put together the program, while ASA staffers Aaron Palmer and Vanessa Mason provided helpful support. We would also like to thank Gerald Martin of the Asia Foundation’s Asian American Exchange, Julia Chang Bloch and Kimberly Bennett of the US-China Education Trust, and ASA members Melani McAlister and Moustafa Bayoumi for their assistance in involving scholars from Vietnam, China, and the Middle East.

I encourage you to extend a warm welcome to all the international scholars who make it to Atlanta, and to engage them in the kinds of substantive conversations that can help all of us conceive of and embark upon new ventures in collaborative, transnational scholarship in American Studies.

New International Partnerships Program Launched

If a conversation with Alfred Hornung provided the impetus for the effort to invite international association heads and journal editors to the next annual meeting, a conversation shortly after that with Vasil Kacharava suggested to me the potential value of creating opportunities for partnerships between U.S. American Studies programs and American Studies programs and centers based outside the U.S. After we met in Hartford, Vasil made me aware of the material needs of the American Studies Center at Tbilisi State University in the Republic of Georgia and also of some of the challenging projects on which they were about to embark, and asked for whatever help I might be able to provide. It occurred to me that having a “sister school” relationship with my own American Studies Program at Stanford could be stimulating and helpful to both of us, and my colleagues agreed. I realized that such an arrangement—in a range of forms—might appeal to other institutions as well. I outlined a proposal for the creation of International Partnerships in American Studies; the Executive Committee and Executive Council approved it with enthusiasm. I then sought seed money to jump-start the program, and succeeded in securing a grant of $5000 from the Renée B. Fisher Foundation to get things started. The first five International Partnerships were approved by the Executive Committee in May: George Washington University and al-Quds University, the West Bank; Rutgers University and Hebrew University, Jerusalem; San José State University and University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Stanford University and Tbilisi State University, Republic of Georgia; Washington State University and Yunnan University, China (see article in this Newsletter). The small grants that the ASA gives to institutions to help establish these sister-school relationships are seed money to help attract additional funds and to inaugurate extended commitments If your institution is interested in exploring the possibility of an International Partnership, and would like to connect with some directors of programs based outside the U.S. who would welcome such a relationship, please consider attending the International Partnership lunch in Atlanta at noon on Thursday. This lunch is free of charge to current participants in the program, and to program directors and faculty from both U.S. and international institutions considering establishing International Partnerships. You may reserve a place at the lunch by emailing by October 11, 2004. Atlanta will provide ample opportunity to lay the groundwork for an International Partnership between your institution and an international institution represented at the conference. You may then submit a proposal to the ASA for an International Partnership grant when you get home.

In addition to inaugurating International Partnerships this spring, the ASA has also embarked on a pilot project offering Electronic Fellowships to American Quarterly and password-protected Crossroads sites online to international scholars. The pilot project, formulated by Elizabeth Moore of St. Petersburg, will provide Electronic Fellowships to scholars across Russia, and may be expanded to other countries in the future. I am also pleased to report that international scholars from Canada, England, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands have agreed to serve on next year’s Franklin Prize committee, Romero Prize committee, Rourke Prize committee, and Sakakibara Prize Committee.