New Deadline for abstracts: 14 January.

From the Ground Up: Reimagining Collective Dissent in the Transnational Age

The authors of Transnationalism From Below remind us of the cleft between the theories and practices within the transnational rubric to argue that “the power to resist hegemonic projects, exists latently at all levels of the global system. But to materialize, it must be socially organized, and cannot be taken for granted as inherently embedded in phantom discourses ‘from below'.” This panel will revisit the issue of collective dissent to explore how notions of solidarity and resistance have been altered, reconfigured, and reimagined in fluid global contexts.

While collective dissent has been articulated primarily around class, race, nationality, sexuality, and ethnicity, the ‘transnational turn' toward newer imaginaries and the growth of social media has surely complicated the notion of resistance. The panel welcomes perspectives from a wide range of disciplines within American Studies. Paper proposals might address some of the following questions: What faces have collective dissent taken in the transnational age? How does transnational dissent circumvent, negotiate with, appropriate, absorb, or explain away cultural, national, ethnic, and racial differences and affinities? In what ways has theory caught up with the practice of multidimensional, transnational organizing? How has the growth of social media impacted the organization and practice of dissent?

Please submit paper abstracts (300 words) and a C.V. to Bimbisar Irom (bsirom@gmail.com) by January 14, 2013.