Call for Book Manuscripts: "Contributions on Asian American Literary
Studies"

Full book manuscripts are being sought for the series "Contributions on
Asian American Literary Studies," published by LIT Verlag (Germany) and
edited by Rocío G. Davis and Sämi Ludwig. This series is envisioned as a
medium to create an international forum for an interdisciplinary discussion
of Asian American Literary Studies. Scholars of "Asian America" have been
aware for a long time that self-definitions and authentic cultural
representation must emerge not from an easy, assimilationalist surrender to
labels supplied or inspired by others, but from independent ways of coming
to terms with their notions of culture as it intersects personal and social
histories within the multifarious world of North America. Its
contextualization in literature inspires continued study and demands a
widening theoretical framework from within which to analyze particular
texts. Corollary to this, the interactive processes of the creation of
Asian American cultural studies impose new strategies of reading
characterized by a continual call to reorientation and a new conditioning
of the determinants of meaning. In their different and yet complementary
perspectives, the manuscripts published in the series should reiterate the
lesson of pluralism. The series aims to offer a careful selection of
specific readings that show the richness, complexity, and diversity of
Asian American cultural production through critical and theoretical lenses
that focus on different writers and genres. The engagement with specific
writers and genres aims to avoiding abstraction in a negative sense. The
decision not to impose a defining theoretical paradigm therefore becomes,
in itself, a powerful statement that Asian American literature should not
be limited to any one particular perspective.

The international scope of this series is specifically aimed against
provincialist tendencies in scholarship and publication, which often tend
to follow narrow fashions of intellectual interest and, particularly in the
field of ethnic literatures, the hedging tendencies of cultural
nationalism. Our gesture, which involves associating international
scholars, pays homage to the international appeal of Asian American studies
and at the same time emphasizes the exploding plurality of approaches
possible in Asian American studies today. Acknowledging the continued value
of interrogating Asian American writing from diverse perspectives, the
series tackles oftentimes conflicting ethnic/racial perspectives. The
dialogue that it initiates—interethnic in its focus and concerned with the
most innovative expression within diverse genres and areas of
research—emphasizes a clear mood of expansion in Asian American creativity
where more writing and renewed readings continuously add to a growing body
of literary and cultural signification.

Books published in the series:
Rocío G. Davis and Sämi Ludwig, eds. Asian American Literature in the
International Context: Readings on Fiction, Poetry, and Performance. (2002.
Second edition, 2004).

Alicia Otano. Speaking the Past: Child Perspective in the Asian American
Bildungsroman. (2004).

Begoña Simal and Elisabetta Marino, eds. Transnational, National, and
Personal Voices: New Perspectives on Asian American and Asian Diasporic
Women Writers. (2005).

For queries or more information, please contact the editors: Rocío G.
Davis, Modern Languages Department, University of Navarra, Pamplona 31080
(Spain), Tel: ++34-948-425600, Fax: 34-948-425636,
email: rgdavis_at_unav.es; Sämi Ludwig, Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse
(France), Tel: ++41-62-216-6929, email: <ludwig_at_ens.unibe.ch>

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Received on Fri Feb 04 2005 - 11:59:54 EST