An International Editorial Collaboration among UCLA, Tsinghua University, and Brown University
Amerasia Journal, UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Consulting Guest Co-Editors:
Prof. Wang Ning
Tsinghua University
wangning@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart
Brown University
Evelyn_Hu-Dehart@brown.edu
Amerasia Journal Editor and Adjunct Prof. Russell Leong
UCLA
rleong@ucla.edu
Abstract Review & Publication Deadlines
Due date for two-page abstracts: December 1, 2010
Due date of final papers: April 1, 2011
Publication date of issue: Spring 2012
Abstracts and essays should be sent to the individuals above.
The editorial procedure is a three-step process. The guest editors, in consultation with theAmerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
a. Approval of abstracts
b. Submission of essays and peer review
c. Revision and final submissions
Chinese Writing in the Americas is a collaborative transnational effort among three prominent institutions and their editors in the U.S. and China: UCLA and Amerasia Journal(Russell Leong), Tsinghua University and Prof. Wang Ning, Brown University and Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart. All three—together with other scholars and writers from the U.S., mainland China, and Taiwan—participated in the recent conference at Nanjing University in 2009 organized by Nanjing University and the UCLA Asian American Studies Department by Profs. Cheng Aimin (Nanjing) and Jinqi Ling (UCLA).
More information below the fold…
In an effort to better historicize Chinese literature and Chinese diasporic literature within a global context, Wang Ning suggests that, “As the diasporic writers or intellectuals write in between two or more than two national cultures, their national and cultural identity cannot be singular. Namely, they could carry on dialogue with both people of their original countries as foreigners, and at the same time, involving themselves in their local communities. In this respect, Chinese American literature undoubtedly offers us rich research resources.
“As we all know, American culture has long been known for its inclusiveness and multiculturalism, although ethnic minority literary discourses have been marginalized to a less important place. During the past few decades, these repressed literary writings have tried to struggle against the dominant and canonical writings in an attempt to kill their symbolic ‘father’ and break through the ‘white-centric’ canon formation. We are very delighted to notice that their effort has already attracted the attention of mainstream literary scholarship and historiography. In the writing of literary history and the theory and practice of canon formation, some broad-minded literary historians have made remarkable steps forward and realized the unique contributions that those ethnic minority writers have made to contemporary American literature.”
Evelyn Hu-DeHart suggests that it is exactly the diasporic condition of “Chinese migrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who constituted the earliest diasporic populations to the Americas. Shut out of citizenship and full social and cultural participation, much of this population identified or turned to homeland politics. By the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, however, Chinese outside of China had become cosmopolitan and globalized on different levels, with their attendant cultural and literary identities taking on diverse forms, including ‘multicultural’ and ‘pluralistic’ forms in liberal democracies, or in postcolonial forms in the nations of Central and Latin America. Migration, individual histories, and education and language determined to a great extent what form such literary and cultural offerings would take: these included poetry, short story, novella and novel, and theatrical works.”
For these historical reasons discussed above, as both Wang Ning and Evelyn Hu-DeHart posit, Chinese literature of the Americas has taken on significant and interesting trajectories both linked with and divergent from past currents and trends. Chinese Writing in the Americas thus builds upon past issues of the journal, which examined globalization and diasporic influences of Asians in Canada and in Central and Latin America; see past essays and interviews in Amerasia by Lane Hirabayashi, Evelyn Hu-deHart, Shirley Hune, Russell Leong, Wu Bing, Zhang Ziqing, Sauling Wong, Gordon Chan, David Palumbo Liu, Tariq Ali, Arif Dirlik, Shan Te-hsing, and other scholars on the subject. (Visit Metapress online or your library for past research).
For this particular issue of the journal, Wang, Hu-DeHart, and Leong ask the following broad questions and are calling for essays and research that will shed insights into the following areas:
1. How do late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century Chinese diasporic movements influence the English, Chinese, and Spanish language literatures written by Chinese outside of China?
2. What specific movements, formations, cultural patterns, and literary genres are being produced—and how do history and language shape these productions?
3. How does “Chinese-American” literature (read: U.S. literature) fit into larger conceptions of a more globalized Chinese literature of the Americas? Are these separate—or linked—literatures?
4. What is the relationship of these new trends in diasporic Chinese literature to the Americas and to China?
5. What should be the role of transnational interpretation, translation, and analysis—e.g. the international conference at Nanjing University or other gatherings at Beida and elsewhere in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong?
6. What interesting case studies exist of new writers and new literary works of Chinese writing in the Americas?
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