cfp.english.upenn.edu

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Ethnic Studies

Harvard University
Committee on Ethnic Studies

Friday, April 9, 2010
Proposals due: March 8, 2010

Hosted by the Committee on Ethnic Studies, Harvard University

Few fields of academic study encompass as wide a swath of methods as “ethnic studies.” It is a voracious field, continually revising its themes, methods and concerns with every successive generation of scholars, fashioning new disciplinary approaches for our ever-changing present. It is this same freedom that makes it a difficult field to define, some forty years after its founding. The Committee on Ethnic Studies invites papers for its annual spring conference that consider and/or embody, celebrate and/or critique these varied “practices” that comprise ethnic studies.

We seek presentations from faculty, graduate students and artists of approximately 20 minutes. We encourage a broad, expansive interpretation of “practice.” Possible presentation topics include (but are not limited to): new approaches to identity and community in literature, theory, film, art, history or sociology; translation studies and comparative literature; migration, displacement and diaspora; the “post-racial” and Obama; popular culture and cultural studies; performance and performativity; ethnic studies and globalization; humor studies; putting studies into “practice.”

Our keynote address will be delivered by Professor Robert Warrior, director of the American Indian Studies program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. His paper will consider the dilemma of disciplinarity and proposes to rethink the “practice” of Ethnic Studies and Native Studies.

Please submit a proposal of no more than 300 words to harvardethnicstudies@gmail.com by March 8, 2010. Please include your name and affiliation.