Sites of Asian American Studies: 11/3-11/4, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio

In 2001, the East of California Conference was hosted by Oberlin College. Five
years later, the EOC conference returns to the state of Ohio, to be hosted by
The Ohio State University. In the years since EOC first came to Ohio, the
nature and tenor of Asian American Studies has altered dramatically. Beyond the
simple east coast-west coast split that has characterized Asian American
Studies, regions in between—the Midwest, South, Southwest, the Great Plains and
the Mountain states—have emerged as vital places from which to document and
engage key political and social issues facing Asian Americans within and
outside of the Academy. Mindful of these critiques, this year's conference
organizers seek to reconsider the contours and practices of Asian American
communities and scholarship east of California.

With a view to enriching and broadening the ways Asian Americanists
conceptualize our subjects and objects of inquiry, we are proposing to organize
panels focused around key terms and concepts that have shaped Asian American
Studies. The reasons for this approach are multi-fold. First, we wish to
explore how the location of Asian American Studies in America's heartland—away
from the two coasts—compels us to redefine the field. How does studying the
Midwest and the South and establishing programs and departments therein
necessarily challenge the field's key assumptions and existing paradigms?
Moreover, how might we reflect on the location of Asian American Studies in
relation to other interdisciplinary programs such as American Studies, Asian
Studies, Queer Studies, and Women's Studies, particularly in terms of
implementing programs and departments? How might collaborations with the
methodological and theoretical possibilities afforded by other departments and
programs sensitive to the exigencies of race, class, culture, gender and
sexuality productively reshape the objects and subjects of our critical work?
 With these questions in mind, we invite 200-word abstracts that describe how
the key organizing concepts listed below shapes the nature of your research
and/or activism. Please note that we may not use all the rubrics, so feel free
to signal how your work might offer intersectional analyses of one or more
category.
1. Aesthetics
2. Black-white racial binary
3. California-centrism
4. Cultural studies
5. Labor
6. Nation/ empire
7. Neoliberalism
8. Queer studies
9. Surveillance
10. Transnationalism and Diaspora

We are soliciting individual papers to draw out the theoretical and
methodological complexities of engaging these key terms. Please indicate which
key term your paper engages. We envision panels of 3 presenters, in which
panelists will have the option of pre circulating papers so as to allow the
panel time to be devoted to a critical interrogation of the key concept.
We also invite you to submit a panel (consisting of three papers). We will,
however, be inviting our colleagues from OSU and Denison University to serve as
chairs and respondents. In so doing, we hope to facilitate a regionally-diverse
and rich approach sensitive to the changing needs of Asian American Studies in
places without established histories of AAS.

The 2006 EOC conference will run from Friday November 3- Saturday November 4,
2006. Our tentative keynote speaker will be anthropologist, Martin F.
Manalansan, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. Manalansan is the author of several pioneering works on gay
Asian American masculinities, and most recently, the author of Global Divas:
Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora, Duke University Press, 2004.
Please send abstracts of 200 words or less by July 15, 2006 to the conference
organizers(eoc_conf_2006_at_yahoo.com) Please include a 1 page CV with your
submission.

--Anita Mannur, Ph.D.Assistant ProfessorDepartment of English319 Barney Davis HallDenison UniversityGranville OH 43023Tel: 740-587 6237Fax: 740-587-5680 ========================================================== 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 Sun Jul 09 2006 - 10:18:45 EDT