Eunice Lee (Harvard University)
Sunbinn Lee (Harvard University)
This panel seeks papers that discuss transpacific, transnational, and cross-racial relations in Asian/American literature. How can literature facilitate the “(Re)generation” of solidarities and exchanges across identities and borders? How can it offer a site of intimacy, which Lisa Lowe defines as “the implied but less visible forms of alliance, affinity, and society among variously colonized peoples beyond the metropolitan national center”? How does literature generate discourses around cross-group tension, conflict, identifications, and disidentifications? How do literary and social forms reflect and reformulate each other, within and across nations? Where do Asian American studies and Global Asian studies meet and diverge? Following the work of scholars such as Denise Cruz, Robin D.G. Kelley, Claire Jean Kim, and Vijay Prashad, we invite panelists to engage with both the affordances and difficulties of intimacy across racial and oceanic borders.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Cross-racial relations (e.g., Black and Asian American, Latinx and Asian American) in the United States and beyond
- Questions of identification, projection, and appropriation
- Transpacific and cross-racial literary exchanges (e.g., correspondences, anthologies, performances, collectives)
- Depictions of transnational and cross-racial contact in literature
- Migration, assimilation, displacement, and border crossing in Asian/American literature
- Colonial and postcolonial legacies in Asia and in the Americas
- Translation and reception of literary texts across linguistic and national borders
- Formal innovations in poetry, drama, and prose generated via cross-border exchanges
- Identificatory and disciplinary boundaries (e.g., Asian American, Asian American Pacific Islander, diasporic Asian)
This panel examines the transpacific, transnational, and cross-racial relations in Asian/American literature. We invite papers that explore how literature facilitates the “(Re)generation” of solidarities and exchanges across identities and borders.