Call for Papers:  Amerasia Journal's Special Issue for 2010 on "Asian Australia & Asian America: Reconceptualizing Transnational Geographies"

Co-editors:
Jacqueline Lo, School of Humanities, The Australian National University

Tseen Khoo, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University

Dean Chan, School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University

Amerasia Journal Editors:
Russell C. Leong, Editor, University of California, Los Angeles

Stephanie Santos, Assistant Editor, University of California, Los Angeles

This special issue of Amerasia Journal on Asian Australia situates sociocultural analysis of Asian diasporas within a broader transnational framework, deploying comparisons with the U.S. to illuminate the ways in which localized concepts of belonging and nation are intricately and inextricably influenced by global forces.

Asian diaspora studies in Australia and the U.S. share similarities in their developmental trajectory and representational politics. Nevertheless, while Asian American Studies is an important reference point both politically and theoretically for the development of Asian Australian Studies, there are significant distinctions based on different histories of settlement, race relations and immigration, as well as shifting agentive prerogatives and community politics that have inflected the modes of diasporic Asian studies at these locales. These considerations will be highlighted in this special issue, forming the basis for new comparative and contextual knowledge about diasporic and transnational Asian cultures.

The editors of this issue invite contributions to discussions about Asian transnationalism with particular attention to the relations between Asian Australia and Asian America.  We are keen to include a range of disciplinary perspectives including history, anthropology, sociology, community politics, education, cultural studies, literature, and popular culture analysis, as well as creative practices. The aim of the issue is to represent the depth and diversity of Asian Australian communities and cultures, and illuminate the many points of connection to, and divergence from, Asian American paradigms.

The questions we are seeking to address include but are not limited to the following:

• How are conventional ways of understanding transnationalism being re-imagined in an Asian Australian context?
• How do specific national histories of racialization impact on the ways in which diasporic Asians in Australia and the U.S. negotiate systems of power, knowledge, and representation?
• To what extent does creative and cultural production in Asian Australia and Asian America exemplify differential modes of diasporic Asian agency and empowerment?
• What are the possibilities for developing a transnational framework for comparative or inter-diasporic Asian studies?

Please send 2-page proposals by November 30. 2008 by e-mail to:
Russell Leong <rleong@ucla.edu>
Jacqueline Lo <jacqueline.lo@anu.edu.au>
Tseen Khoo <tseen.khoo@arts.monash.edu.au>
Dean Chan <d.chan@ecu.edu.au>

The editors will review proposals and contact authors about developing essays for publication consideration. All submitted essays will be reviewed by the two journal editors and two consulting guest editors, plus a blind reviewer. If your proposal is accepted, we will send you a stylesheet with format and length requirements.

The planned publication date of this special issue is August 2010.