Amerasia Journal Special Issue Call for Papers
The State of Illness and Disability in Asian America
Guest Editors: Professor Jennifer Ho (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and Professor James Kyung-Jin Lee (University of California, Irvine)
We seek critical essays and articles as well as creative non-fiction and first-person accounts that engage with the intersections of Asian American discourse and illness/disability studies, for a special issue of Amerasia Journal, scheduled for publication in 2012.
Since, as scholar Michael Berube observes, “the definition of disability, like the definition of illness, is inevitably a matter of social debate and social construction,” we are interested in how these social constructions of disability and illness coincide, collide, and converge with those of ethnicity and race, along with other axes of intersectionality such as gender, sexuality, class, region, religion, age, and education. Critiquing the narrow perspective of the discipline, scholar Chris Bell has noted “the failure of Disability Studies to engage issues of race and ethnicity in a substantive capacity, thereby entrenching whiteness as its constitutive underpinning.” One goal of this special issue is to provide another forum in which to challenge entrenched whiteness within Disability and Illness Studies as well as to bring to the foreground the state of illness and disability within the Asian American community.
Contributors to this special issue may consider the following questions:
• What is the role of illness and disability within Asian American narratives—be they in fiction, non-fiction, or cinematic form—and/or how is the ill or disabled Asian American body represented within these narratives?
• How are illness and disability regarded within Asian American communities and cultural productions?
• What are the special needs of Asian Americans who face life threatening and chronic illnesses?
• What kinds of accommodations do Asian Americans with disabilities find most challenging in light of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds and/or as a result of their racialization as non-white Americans?
• How might Asian American experiences of disability and/or illness invite a reimagination of what constitutes a “good” life practice or way of living, and what kinds of social transformations would be necessary to make this so?
Submission Guidelines and Deadlines:
Due Date for one-page abstracts: June 15, 2011
Due Date for solicited final papers: January 2012
Publication Date: Fall 2012
The editorial procedure involves a three-step process: The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
- Approval of abstracts
- Submission of papers solicited from accepted abstracts
- Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
Please send correspondence regarding the special issue on illness and disabilities studies in Asian American Studies to the following addresses. All correspondence should refer to “Amerasia Journal Disabilities Studies Issue” in the subject line.
Professor Jennifer Ho: jho@email.unc.edu
Professor James Kyung-Jin Lee: jkl@uci.edu
Arnold Pan, Amerasia Journal: arnoldpan@ucla.edu
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