Call for Papers: Carceral States

Amerasia Journal Call for Papers

CARCERAL STATES
Converging Indigenous and Asian Experiences in the Americas

Guest Editors:
Professor Karen J. Leong (Arizona State University) and Professor Myla Vicenti Carpio (Arizona State University)

Publication Date:
Spring 2016

Due Date:
Paper submissions (up to 5,000 words) due May 1, 2015

Unfree labor, dispossession, and displacement are technologies of the carceral state, which depends upon the logics of control and punishment to create hierarchies of difference and normalize its deployment of violence.

In this special issue of Amerasia Journal, we call for papers and dialogues that examine the convergence of indigenous communities and Asian communities in the Americas as subjects of the carceral state, subject to nation-state attempts to refashion them into proper liberal and economic subjects through assimilation, dispossession, militarization, and relocation. What do such relational analyses tell us about the ways in which the carceral state improvises, reutilizes, and deploys diverse methods to constitute, in Michel Foucault’s words, “the power of normalization and the formation of knowledge” of what it means to be a productive citizen, a legible and proper subject? How do relational analyses of Asian communities in the Americas and indigenous communities further illuminate the workings of the carceral state within and beyond national borders? Why and how did settlers and the colonized both become subject to the carceral state and under what conditions? How did both communities’ resistance to, or rejection of, carceral technologies forge unexpected affinities or alliances? What insights do such relational histories of Asian diasporic and indigenous experiences reveal about the workings of the carceral state and what possible interventions might relational histories suggest?

Submission Guidelines and Review Process:
The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, will make the decisions on which submissions will be included in the special issue. The review process is as follows:

• Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
• Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
• Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission

This special issue seeks papers of approximately 5,000 words in length. We encourage the submission of interdisciplinary and accessible writings that may be adopted for courses in American Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Pacific Islander Studies.

Please send correspondence and papers regarding the special issue on the carceral state in Asian American Studies to the following addresses. All correspondence should refer to “Amerasia Journal Carceral State Issue” in the subject line.

Professor Karen J. Leong: Karen.Leong@asu.edu
Professor Myla Vicenti Carpio: Vicenti@asu.edu
Dr. Arnold Pan, Associate Editor, Amerasia Journal: arnoldpan@ucla.edu

View or download the PDF version of the Call for Papers – Carceral States