HOMELAND IN/SECURITY:

Race and Citizenship in the United States

New England American Studies Association
September 15-16, 2006
University of Southern Maine
Portland, Maine
The current political moment presents new opportunities and imperatives to examine historical and contemporary formations of race and citizenship in the United States.

Race and citizenship are central to the "war on terror" in all its aspects. Transnationally, the racialized politics of US citizenship inform detainments at Guantánamo Bay (of deported Haitians as well as of multiply racialized Muslims) and the other "black sites" including Abu Ghraib, as much as they inform the ongoing military expansion in Guam, Puerto Rico, and Hawai'i. The war is also waged within United States borders, where race and citizenship are central to military recruitment policies, Patriot Act injustices, and the color-coded corruptions of homeland security.

Of course, this is not merely a military issue: Race and citizenship also define other pressing social issues including Katrina and the failures of Post-Katrina, education, prison, healthcare, immigration legislation, and the broad-based assault on indigenous sovereignty.

Race and citizenship in the United States have long genealogies. Understanding the history of race and citizenship is made doubly urgent by the contemporary circumstances. This conference will provide an opportunity to assess both current and historical materials in the explosive context of the United States post 9/11. NEASA invites proposals that consider this topic from every angle, including historical, social, political, economic, aesthetic, literary, cinematic and discursive strategies for addressing these questions in our work today. Papers and panels with a regional New England focus are welcome and we hope to receive proposals from scholars, teachers, cultural workers, and curators working within a range of institutions, cultural locations, and disciplines.

SUGGESTED TOPICS:
the early national period
the politics of suffrage
the war in Iraq
visual codes of race
cultural citizenship
alienation
outsider racialization
governmentality
nativism
genealogies of the state
blood and genetics
race and violence
equal protection
racial exclusion
racialization of sexuality
disenfranchisement of felons
the US Supreme Court
Indian gaming
sexuality
border patrols the civil war
WWII
immigration legislation
writing citizenship and race
political rights
cultural citizenship
racializing indigeneity
criminalization
indigenous sovereignty rights
tribal governance and membership
reparations
forced inclusion
land and belonging
DNA testing
the Voting Rights Act
local government
pedagogy
poets of nationalism
policing

Please submit abstract and CV as an attachment in Word, Wordperfect, or in hardcopy by March 15, 2006 to:

Dane A. Morrison, Ph.D.
Professor of Early American History
Department of History
Salem State College
352 Lafayette St.
Salem, MA 01970

(978) 542 – 7134
dane.morrison_at_salemstate.edu

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Mon Jan 30 2006 - 17:47:02 EST