Transpacific Materialities
How are Asian American and Pacific Islander bodies figured across different media—in contemporary novels, poetry, and visual arts? How do the transits and residues of US empire across the Pacific inform these representations? This panel investigates texts that center AAPI bodies and their varying materialities, wherein racialized bodies take on other-than-human forms (i.e., paper, digital, textual, watery, earthy, animal, etc.). The panel aims to explore how these embodiments are shaped by the residual and ongoing violences of US empire and/or war in the Pacific.