Call for papers
Working the Frame: Comparative Approaches to Asian Canadian Literature & Culture
John Douglas Taylor Conference 2012
McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
October 25 & 26, 2012
Call for Papers
The emergence of Asian Canadian literature and culture as an identifiable force over the last twenty years is abundantly clear: Asian Canadian fiction and poetry have won major literary prizes, there are several active Asian Canadian theatre groups in major cities, and film festivals on Asian and Asian Canadian film are held annually. Despite the growing prominence of Asian Canadian arts, however, the broad public perception that we are living in a post-racial or even a post-national world makes it difficult to establish institutional grounding for a field founded on exploring racial, ethnic, and national identity; to date, no university program or department devoted to Asian Canadian Studies has emerged. Yet, as the recent Macleans article Too Asian? and the strong responses it has generated demonstrate, racial identity politics are neither obsolete nor dead, although new possibilities for coalitional opportunities have arisen between and among different racialized groups in Canada, and between different communities in the Asian diaspora. While the politics of race and identity have shifted over the last two decades with the turn to diaspora and transnational approaches in critical race studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies, it is precisely this shift that demands attention to new developments in the circulation of knowledge about and the experience of race and nationality in Canada.
The purpose of this conference is to explore the current formation and future developments of Asian Canadian literature and culture in a comparative/relational frame, examining the possibilities and responsibilities of coalitional politics and collaborative cultural production, as well as the very definition of the term Asian Canadian. We invite proposals that engage with Asian Canadian literature and culture and are especially interested in research that investigates cross-cultural relationships, collaborations, and antagonisms recounted in, enacted by, or in conversation with Asian Canadian cultural products.
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