ethnicity and national identity

More than thirty years ago, Edward Said wrote in Reflections on Exile that “our age...is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced person, mass immigration.” As migration becomes increasingly recognized as integral to contemporary societies, how does transit become central to how we understand urban spaces, communities, and the experiences of individuals within them? We understand transit as the movement of people, ideas, memories, or emotions, and what Jodi Byrd has described as “liminal existence” in “ungrievable spaces.” In what ways does the concept of "transit" model a rethinking of the relationship between individuals and postcolonial geographies? How does mobility constitute movement through both physical and ontological space?

The presiding officer invites submissions of short works of literary nonfiction, memoir, or other sorts of creative nonfiction (such as the lyric essay) that can be presented in a twenty minute segment of the panel. Both established and emerging writers are welcome.

Please submit proposals via the online system by June 26, 2017. The PAMLA 2017 Conference will be held at the lovely Chaminade University of Honolulu (with the official conference hotel being the Ala Moana) from Friday, November 10 to Sunday, November 12. This year’s conference theme is “The Sense of Sight: Visuality, Visibility, and Ways of Seeing.”

Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity (CFP for edited anthology)

Deadline for submissions:

December 1, 2017

latinaoutsiderscfp@gmail.com

Description of the project:

We are currently seeking finished, previously unpublished articles, testimonios, essays, creative non-fiction, and poetry, for an edited anthology tentatively entitled Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity.  

We seek proposals highlighting East-West literary connections, particularly interested in cross-disciplinary approaches which compare literary topics or methodologies with the fields of history, philosophy, religion, or film. Please see the link below for information on paper proposal submissions.

Mike Sugimoto,

Presiding Officer

http://pamla.org/2017/topic-areas

On June 12, 2016, Jamaican author Michelle Cliff passed away quietly and to little public fanfare. Despite her many contributions to Caribbean literature, women’s studies, and feminist writings, her passing received only one article in the New York Times. In this article, she became a footnote to the life of her long-time companion, Adrianne Rich. For a writer and scholar of her magnitude, Cliff did not receive an elegy commensurate with the depth of her work. The avoidance of Cliff’s memory raises several questions. For example, was Cliff receiving a post-mortem censure for being a feminist and/or a lesbian? As the late Adrianne Rich’s partner, was Cliff only worthy of mention as an addendum to Rich’s life?