The Politics of the Archive: Reimagining Visual Histories of Asian Diasporas

Special Issue of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas

Guest Editors: Stephanie Kang (University of Denver) and Eunice Uhm (San Diego State University)

Call for Abstracts - Due May 1, 2025

In The Intimacies of Four Continents, Lisa Lowe describes the colonial archive as “a material bureaucracy of rule and the historical trace of imperial activities.” She argues that the organization of the colonial archive conceals the connections and interdependencies of histories and that one must read across various archives to nuance these entanglements. The epistemological and ontological formation of the Asian diaspora, whose histories have been ruptured through transnational and transgenerational experiences of displacement, erasure, and/or trauma, reveals the limited and contested nature of the colonial archive. Following Lowe’s work, this special issue seeks to trouble and destabilize the notion of the archive in the visual history of Asian diasporas in the Americas. In so doing, we aim to remap the structural boundaries that shape its historical and contemporary conditions. How have Asian diasporic artists worked with and/or against the colonial archive of the Americas? How have the failures of the colonial archive yielded productive means of recovery within diverse Asian diasporas, creating historical, geographical, or temporal connections? How have artists imaginatively reworked the absences and ambiguities of the archive to open the possibilities of alternative historical trajectories? We invite papers on a range of geographies, periods, and media that attend to the incomplete archive of histories, exploring the complex interconnections between Asian diasporas and the Americas.

We welcome submissions for consideration in the format of scholarly articles, artist pages or curated artist pages, interviews or conversations, and book or exhibition reviews.

• Scholarly articles: minimum 5,000 words, not including notes and references, 5-6 images.
• Edited interviews or conversations: approx. 2,000-3,000 words, 3-4 images.
• Artist pages: 300-word statement, 3-4 images, and biography. Curated selections are also accepted; 500-word statement, 4-10 images, and biographies of artist(s) and curator(s).
• Book or exhibition reviews:  800-1,000 words, 1-3 images, notes should be kept to a minimum. 

For more information on author guidelines, see: www.brill.com/adva.

At this stage of the process, we are accepting proposal abstracts (250-300 words) until May 1 with the expectation that accepted articles will be completed by August 1, 2025. Authors will be notified by May 15, 2025.

Please email all submissions and inquiries about the special issue to guest editors Stephanie Kang (stephanie.kang@du.edu) and Eunice Uhm (euhm@sdsu.edu).