American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting April
19-22, 2007 in Puebla, Mexico.

http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/

Seminars for the ACLA convention contain 9-12 papers and meet for 2-3
consecutive days. This seminar calls for papers dealing with racial mixture
in the Americas. Submissions should be sent through the ACLA webpage.

“Inter-American Faces of Racial Mixture”
Mestizaje, hybridity, transculturation, miscegenation, mestiçagem,
creolization? The multifaceted topic of racial mixture has been a common
literary and cultural preoccupation throughout the American hemisphere from
the colonial period forward. Whether cast as an aberration, a social
problem, a personal identity crisis, a rationale for lynching, a step toward
a “cosmic” future, or a nation-building tool, the theme of racial
mixture connects the literatures and cultures of the Americas from Canada to
the Caribbean and from Yoknapatawpha to Macondo. “Inter-American Faces of
Racial Mixture” hopes to continue the discussion about race and racial
mixture in the Americas that began during a seminar at last year’s ACLA
convention entitled “Mestizaje, Mestiçagem, and Miscegenation: Mixing
with the Other in the Americas.” Proposals are invited from previous and
new participants and may treat racial mixture in literature, law, political
rhetoric, film, music, the news, and/or other media.
Possible questions of interest include:

*What significance can we ascribe to the inter-American preoccupation(s)
with racial mixture?
*What subjective formations have emerged as the discourses and practices of
racial mixture have intersected with specific class and gender identities?
*How have local or national traditions of racial mixture, such as
miscegenation and mestizaje, interfaced and influenced one another?
*To what extent have the various national discourses of racial mixture in
the Americas changed from the colonial period through the twenty-first
century?
*How did territorial expansion affect attitudes toward racial mixture
throughout the American hemisphere?
*When/how does much of the discussion around racial mixture in the Americas
shift away from a biological or “blood” discourse toward a discussion of
cultural hybridity?

ORGANIZERS:
Emron Esplin, Michigan State University
email: esplinem_at_msu.edu
Brian Roberts, The University of Virginia
email: brr9k_at_mail.virginia.edu

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Received on Thu Oct 05 2006 - 01:55:26 EDT