H-Migration daily digest: 21 new discussion items have been posted

Table of Contents

  1. cfp – Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific; Identities, Social Networks and Media
  2. CFP ‘Governing Migrant Transnationalism’ (IMISCOE 2015)
  3. CFP – Race, Mobility and Imperial Networks: Charting the Transnational Asia-Pacific World, 1800-2015
  4. Massachusetts Historical Society Jan 15 Fellowship Deadline
  5. seminar: The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands
  6. cfp: Postcolonial Studies Association Convention, 7-9 September 2015
  7. cfp: Austria and America: Cross-Cultural Encounters 1955-2015 (extended call for papers)
  8. cfp: Critically Mediterranean: Aesthetics, Theory, Hermeneutics, Culture
  9. cfp: Colonization, Emigration and the Back to Africa Movement
  10. cfp: Migration to Japan conference at Waseda
  11. cfp: South Asian Canadian Literature and Culture for the journal South Asian Review 36.3 (2015)
  12. cfp: Local and regional impact of the Great Irish Famine
  13. cfp: Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific: Identities, Social Networks and Media
  14. cfp: Journal of Pan African Studies Special Issue on Afro-Latinos/Afro-Latin-Americans: An Ongoing Dialogue
  15. cfp: “North of Misery: Migration, Affect, and Action” (ASA 2015)
  16. cfp: Decolonial Futures in South Asia and Beyond
  17. cfp: Food Culture Studies 
  18. job: Assistant Professor, Political Science and Global Studies, Governors State University
  19. job: Director, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
  20. job: Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South Postdoctoral Fellowship, Duke
  21. review: Rebecca Shumway. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora Series

cfp – Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific; Identities, Social Networks and Media

by Catherine Gomes

Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific; Identities, Social Networks and Media

12 November 2015

RMIT University, Melbourne

 

Call for Papers

‘Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific’ is a symposium supported by the Australian Research Council and hosted by RMIT University. Temporary migration is increasingly part of everyday life in the 21st century. The global, transient and circular flows of people for work and study are, for instance, part of our quotidian encounters and accepted practice in contemporary societies. In the Asia-Pacific, the movement of both skilled and unskilled labour and the growing number of students from within and outside the region has become commonplace. These migrant flows and the cultures of mobility pose interesting questions about the maintenance and formation of the identities and social networks of transients especially in the age of global media and communication. What kinds of identities and social networks are maintained, created and/or renewed while in transience? How does consumption and engagement with the media (including communication and social media) affect these processes? How important are home-based and host-based identities, social networks and media to transient migrants? How significant are identities and social networks formed by individuals in transience? Finally, in what ways do identities, social networks and media facilitate, hinder or further return to the homeland and future mobility?

Individual papers and panels may include but are not restricted to case studies, theoretical developments and historical studies on the following themes:

  • Adapting to everyday life in transience
  • Cultures of transience
  • Connections/Disconnections made
  • Community(s) formed
  • Language(s) and discourse(s) of transience
  • Future aspirations and mobilities
  • Use and value of media and communication technologies

 

Selected papers will be included in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal.

 

Confirmed Speakers:Prof. Kirpal Singh (Singapore Management University)

Prof. Supriya Singh (RMIT University)

A/Prof. Shanton Chang (University of Melbourne)

A/Prof. Fran Martin (University of Melbourne)

Please submit abstracts and panels for review to: transmigrant2015@gmail.com

By: 5 March 2015 

 

Conference Convenor:

Dr Catherine Gomes (RMIT University)

 

Secretariat:

Dr Dora Constantinidis (RMIT University)

Read more or reply

CFP ‘Governing Migrant Transnationalism’ (IMISCOE 2015)

by Marta Bivand Erdal

*Apologies for Cross-Posting*

CFP: ‘Governing Migrant Transnationalism’ for panel at the 12th IMISCOE conference, 25-27 June 2015 in Geneva

Organizers: Godfried Engbersen (EUR), Özge Bilgili (MSGoG/UNU-MERIT), Marta Bivand Erdal (PRIO)

This proposed panel for the 12th IMISCOE conference will focus on ‘Governing Migrant Transnationalism’ with an open approach to exploring the different scales and sites, as well as different actors, and forms of organization and structure involved in governing (and resisting governance) in connection to migrant transnationalism.

Interest in issues of ‘governing migrant transnationalism’ relate to the local and urban levels of both migrant origin and settlement countries, but also to the state-level, for instance with regard to the transferability of welfare related rights, citizenship laws and diaspora engagement policies. Access to equal rights and opportunities in employment and education, dual-citizenship rights, transfer of pensions or transnational health care services are some issues we would like to tackle from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. Moreover, the issue of ‘governing transnationalism’ may also be approached in terms of individual migrants and non-migrants experiences of governance in relation to their transnational identifications and practices, at different scales and in different geographic locations. We invite abstracts for papers that in different ways engage with the theme of ‘Governing Migrant Transnationalism’, based on empirical or theoretical work, quantitative or qualitative methods, from the perspectives of those governed or those governing and we welcome comparative contributions.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

  • Links between citizenship legislation, discourse and transnational involvement
    · Governance of circular migration and short term employment schemes
    · Local and urban engagement initiatives for migrant transnationalism
    · Diaspora engagement policies of emigration countries
    · International cooperation between local authorities of emigration and immigration countries
    · City-to-city partnerships between migration corridors
    · Inclusion of non-governmental actors and the private sector in transnational practices
    · Transfer of economic and welfare related rights between emigration and immigration countries

Please send an abstract of 300 words, specifying the main research question, methods and findings, to Özge Biligili (ozge.bilgili@maastrichtuniversity.nl) and Marta Bivand Erdal (marta@prio.org), no later than Monday 5 January 2015.

Please include your full name, position, affiliation, and discipline in the submission of your abstract.

 

Read more or reply

CFP – Race, Mobility and Imperial Networks: Charting the Transnational Asia-Pacific World, 1800-2015

by Catherine Gomes

CALL FOR PAPERS

Race, Mobility and Imperial Networks:  Charting the Transnational Asia-Pacific World, 1800-2015

Melbourne, 9-11 November, 2015.

‘Race, Mobility and Imperial Networks’ will be a multi-disciplinary conference co-hosted by RMIT University and La Trobe University. In the wake of the transnational turn, we have begun to appreciate the global networks that produced and continue to produce imperial spaces. The world of the Pacific Rim, encompassing the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand and British Columbia; the Americas and Asia was partly defined by mobility, ocean-crossings and forced migration.  It is also a space that has been configured by European, American and Asian imperial powers with attending notions of racial or ethnic taxonomies. Abstracts are invited for papers or panels that explore the histories, laws and cultures of mobility, identity and variegated colonial and postcolonial spaces. We hope these will enhance understandings of how space and mobility have been mutually constitutive, as well as the ways mobility and stillness have played a role in the accommodation and resistance of imperial pressures. While concepts of race have hardened into fixed categories in the last two centuries, peoples’ mobility has also propelled them through numerous impositions of racial identity. How did cross-cultural and co-ethnic connections and networks, made by mobile subjects, reconfigure ideas of race? More recently, have new inroads in media and communication changed the ways in which race is constructed and experienced? Individual papers and panels may include but are not restricted to the following themes:

  • Interactive histories of race, place and mobility;
  • Historical and contemporary makings of the transnational Pacific and Asian Worlds;
  • The role of media and communication in connecting and shaping diasporas;
  • Indigenous and subaltern peoples’ mobility and formations of space;
  • Interrogating ideas of ‘de-racialisation’ in a ‘post-racial’ world.

Select papers will be published in a special edition of Australian Historical Studies.

 

Keynote Speakers: 

Prof Tony Ballantyne, University of Otago

Prof Keith Comacho, University of California Los Angeles

Prof Lynette Russell, Monash University

A/Prof Amanda Wise, Macquarie University

 

 

Convenors: 

A/Prof Tracey Banivanua Mar, La Trobe University

Dr Catherine Gomes, RMIT University

With postgraduate convenors

Nadia Rhook, La Trobe University

Andonis Piperoglou, La Trobe University

 

 

 

Please submit abstracts for papers, panels and roundtables to:

rminconference2015@gmail.com

The final date for submission of abstracts will be 27 February 2015.

 

Read more or reply

Massachusetts Historical Society Jan 15 Fellowship Deadline

by Kate Viens

Reminder: The deadline for MHS-NEH support is January 15, 2015!

The Massachusetts Historical Society will offer more than three dozen research fellowships for the academic year 2015-2016, including two MHS-NEH Long-term Fellowships made possible by an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Their stipend, governed by an NEH formula, will be $4,200 per month for a minimum of four months and a maximum of twelve months. For more information, please visitwww.masshist.org/fellowships, email fellowships@masshist.org or phone 617-646-0568.  MHS-NEH application deadline: January 15, 2015. New England Regional Fellowship Consortium deadline: February 1, 2015. Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship deadline: February 15, 2015. MHS Short-term Fellowship deadline: March 1, 2015.

Read more or reply

seminar: The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands

by Marlou Schrover

2015 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers: The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands

Seminar director: Roger Waldinger, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, UCLA

“The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands” is a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers, to be held at the University of California, Los Angeles from June 13 through July 15, 2011. The seminar is open to 16 NEH summer scholars from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds. Principally oriented to teachers of American undergraduate students, the seminar is open to qualified independent scholars, and will include two full-time graduate students.

The seminar is designed to focus on the explicitly cross-border aspects of international migration, looking at the relationships between emigrants, communities of emigration, and emigration states in global and historical perspective. The seminar moves beyond U.S. borders to connect with the literatures on transnationalism and diasporas, relatively new subfields characterized by great ferment and innovation. That excitement is well justified, as these newer approaches take the study of migration past the U.S.-centrism that has long prevailed, highlighting a phenomenon that recurs across immigration societies internationally and that can only be understood by attending to feedbacks occurring in the societies of emigration. Moreover, following the connections between places of immigration and places of emigration has had salutary methodological results, leading scholars to engage in multi-sited research, a challenging but highly fruitful endeavor.

The seminar will engage in sustained discussion of texts, hear lectures, and venture into the field to make the most of the opportunities presented by studying immigration in the U.S.’s premier immigrant metropolis. For more information about the program, the themes we plan to discuss, and readings, click here:http://www.international.ucla.edu/migration/summerseminars/home

 

Roger Waldinger

Distinguished Professor

Department of Sociology

UCLA

Haines Hall 264

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551

310-206-9233/fax 310-206-9838

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/waldinger/

available now: The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674736733

 

Read more or reply

cfp: Postcolonial Studies Association Convention, 7-9 September 2015

by Marlou Schrover

Postcolonial Studies Association Convention, 7-9 September 2015

Location: United Kingdom
Call for Papers Date: 2015-02-28
Date Submitted: 2014-12-17
Announcement ID: 218851

The first PSA convention will be held at the University of Leicester (UK), from
7 to 9 September 2015. Contributions from academics and postgraduates investigating any area of postcolonialism from any disciplinary, cross- or interdisciplinary perspective are warmly invited.

Confirmed keynote speakers
Professor Paul Gilroy (King’s College London)

Professor John McLeod (University of Leeds)
(Other keynotes to be confirmed)

The 2015 PSA Convention Special Topic is Diasporas

 

Proposals for panels and papers on the theme of diasporas will be particularly welcome. Movement —be it of culture, capital or the human movement involved in colonialism, slavery, indentured labour, or postcolonialmigration to former colonial metropoli— has always been central to postcolonial studies.

 

Diaspora has been one of the key concepts of postcolonial studies within this context of individual and collective journeys.  Within contemporary analysis, diasporas have tended to be explored in terms of ethnicity, race, nationality, and even religion. However, diaspora has sometimes been accused of perpetuating histories of colonial inequality by failing to differentiate between precarious migration motivated by exploitation and the more economically privileged transnational movements of the global bourgeoisie. The study of human movement during colonial and postcolonial times has taken a number of shapes across the humanities and social sciences through the study of diaspora, migration, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and globalisation.

 

It is this theme of movement that the conference special topic will address. What social, historical and linguistic configurations does the study of diasporas privilege? Which ones does it ignore? How has diaspora come to include different motivations of migration beyond the more familiar ones of ethnic discrimination and economic hardship? How has the diasporic experience been represented and studied?

Format: Individual 20-min. academic papers, panels, performances or poster presentations.

Please send abstracts of individual presentations (250 words) or panels of 3 (500 words) with a brief biographicalnote of participants (2-3 sentences) to psa2015convention@gmail.com.

Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2015. Decisions communicated by the end of March 2015.

PSA Conference Committee
psa2015convention@gmail.com
Email: psa2015convention@gmail.com

Read more or reply

cfp: Austria and America: Cross-Cultural Encounters 1955-2015 (extended call for papers)

by Marlou Schrover

Austria and America: Cross-Cultural Encounters 1955-2015 (extended call for papers)

Location: Austria
Call for Papers Date: 2015-02-01
Date Submitted: 2014-12-17
Announcement ID: 218850

Austria and America: Cross-Cultural Encounters 1955-2015 (extended call for papers)

May 7-8, 2015

Salzburg, Austria

The University of Salzburg’s American Studies Department invites scholars from various disciplines including literature, cultural studies, transatlantic studies, theater studies, musicology and art history to a two-day conference reflecting on America’s relationship with Austria. This third in a series of conferences on Austrian-American relations focuses on the years following the end of U.S. occupation to the present.

Panels, papers and presentations might treat the following themes:

Ties between literary and political transatlantic relations involving Austria and the U.S.;

Images of Austria in the American imagination/ Images of America in the Austrian imagination;

Comparative imagology and representations of the American/Austrian Other in literature, film, song and other media;

American fiction, film, or nonfictional texts set in Austria;

Austrian influences on American music, literature or popular culture;

Literary presentations of Austrian culture, politics or literature in the U.S.;

Austrian authors on the American stage or in American film;

Issues of immigration and emigration;

English-language translations of Austrian literature.

Proposals for panels, individual 20-minute papers or presentations should include a title, abstract (300 words maximum) and a brief personal biography, sent as a single Word document in English or German, to the conference organizers by February 1, 2015.

Joshua Parker
University of Salzburg
joshua.parker@sbg.ac.at
Email: joshua.parker@sbg.ac.at

Read more or reply

cfp: Critically Mediterranean: Aesthetics, Theory, Hermeneutics, Culture

by Marlou Schrover

EXTENDED DEADLINE Critically Mediterranean: Aesthetics, Theory, Hermeneutics, Culture

Call for Papers Date: 2015-01-15 (in 25 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-12-16
Announcement ID: 218833

Call for Papers for Peer-Reviewed Edited Volume

 

Critically Mediterranean: Aesthetics, Theory, Hermeneutics, Culture

co-edited by Yasser Elhariry (Dartmouth College)

& Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (Tulane University)

 

We are seeking further contributions to extend the coverage of the volume. Detailed abstracts (500 words) are due by January 15, 2015 to Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (etamalet@tulane.edu) and Yasser Elhariry (yasser.elhariry@dartmouth.edu). Contributors will be notified of acceptance by February 1, 2015. Completed manuscripts (6,000 words) are due by June 1, 2015. Manuscripts will be rigorously edited prior to submission to the press. Although final placement of the volume will be contingent on the outcome of the press’ peer-review process, Brian Catlos and Sharon Kinoshita, the editors of Palgrave Macmillan’s new Mediterranean Studies series, have expressed interest in the volume.

 

Pointing to the crux of much debate and scholarship in Mediterranean Studies, W. V. Harris has defined Mediterraneanism as “the doctrine that there are distinctive characteristics which the cultures of the Mediterranean have, or have had, in common” (1).  A pervasive approach to the region in the disciplines of history and anthropology, the concept has fruitfully brought to light the presence of “common denominators” underlying the region’s past that warrant a comparative reading of local history across broad spans of time and space. Based on excavating millennia-old histories of ever-shifting interactions at the micro-level (Horden and Purcell’s “connectivity”), this approach has striven to move the focus away from the myriad local histories unfolding across the Mediterranean’s coastlands to bring the space of the sea as a principle of integration into relief. Highlighting wide-ranging forms of mobility, interconnectedness, and analytical fluidity in their adjustable Mediterranean model, these conceptions have emphasized the material flows running across the sea and its shore-lands, and the human activities that they have supported. As Peregrine Horden observes in his and Sharon Kinoshita’s Companion to Mediterranean History, “There seems to be no limit to the ways in which the Mediterranean region may be reimagined, as a sea, as an area involving physical movements, maritime spaces, territorial arrangements, and political processes that seek to transcend national boundaries and enmities” (5).

 

Moving the chronology and critical purviews of the field forward, this volume seeks to interrogate how theories and methodologies of Mediterranean Studies may bear on the modern period. Beyond the dominant mapping of the region in ancient, medieval and early modern contexts, there are important questions to be answered about our critical understandings of the modern Mediterranean and its arts and cultures that have a direct bearing on our understanding of the modern/contemporary world. This volume probes the critical cut of the Mediterranean as a theoretical entity, as an aesthetic, theoretical, and hermeneutic category for the interpretation and analysis of culture, and as a space of artistic and linguistic density and coterminous symbolic geographies. We propose to examine its critical potential in the age of nationalistic projects, global capitalism, colonial modernity, and postmodernism.

 

With these guiding principles in mind, we encourage contributions that explore material, visual, literary and linguistic cultures of “the Mediterranean as a spatial constellation undergoing recurring formation and dissolution,” in order to “make the notion of a modern Mediterranean plausible and reveal its structural similarities and connections with the sea’s previous lives” (Ben-Yehoyada 107). Teetering between the unenviable status of romantic delusion and the nefarious influence of residual (self)orientalizing dynamics, the Mediterranean as a conceptual tool first needs to liquidate its fraught exoticist heritage. With the advent of European imperialism in the Mediterranean in the 19th century, dealing with the legacy of globalization also requires attending to the fractures, inequalities, and forms of disenfranchisement that the new world order has engendered (what Ian Morris has dubbed “winners and losers” in relation to Mediterraneization). Alongside Iain Chamber’s “interrupted” paradigm, concepts of critical/ alternative modernities anchored in the sea are relevant to scrutinizing the fruitfulness of the Mediterranean construct to these theorizations.

 

We are thus seeking contributions that (1) present readings of an original, modern Mediterranean archive or corpus, and (2) rigorously, even polemically, argue what constitutes the archive/corpus’ Mediterraneanism.

 

We especially encourage proposals that address a combination of the following possible lines of inquiry:

 

Origins and genealogies. Sharon Kinoshita has aptly suggested that “Mediterranean studies is less a way of defining or delimiting a geographic space (as in the famous formulation of the Mediterranean as the region of the olive and the vine) than a heuristic device for remapping traditional disciplinary divides” (602). What are the material, visual, literary and linguistic limits to our grasping of the Mediterranean? What are the needs and natures of disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary work? What is the role of competing genealogies within field formation? In turn, how may the births and beginnings of disciplines inform our critical understandings of the modern Mediterranean and its arts and cultures?
Mediterranean representations. How do cultural formations, historical processes, and elements of style develop? How do considerations of genre and intertextuality inform their emergence? What artistic and intellectual tropes and turns (for example: nostalgia, cosmopolitanism, religion and mysticism) inflect the Mediterranean as a rhetorical tool or figure within their respective genealogies?
Mediterranean translations. What roles does language perform in the modern Mediterranean? What and where are the untreatable, untranslatable dimensions of Mediterranean expression? How do linguistic codes intersect with the visual, the sonic, and the (inter)medial? What are the specificities of—or relationships between—literature, visual culture, cinema, music, media and intermediality?
Philosophy, phenomenology and the poetics of space and time. Edgar Morin reports that it is in the 16thcentury that the Mediterranean was given its name, which meant sea-at-the-center-of-the-lands (33), but what if the Mediterranean in fact decenters and disorients? How do modern representations of the Mediterranean treat the nature of the sea? Beyond dialectics of change and permanence, how does the incursion of the Mediterranean into time evoke discrepant temporalities (plural, unpredictable, ephemeral, internally experienced, immanent or dormant)?
(Bio)politics. Chakrabarty has pointed how the Mediterranean “environment […] had an agentive presence in Braudel’s pages” (205). Does the modern Mediterranean still play “an agentive presence” in contemporary politics? In an era where “the Marxist critique of capitalism” and “Marxist internationalism undermined the idea of the nation” (Morin 38-39), what is the Mediterranean’s relationship to la raison d’état, or the nation-state as a heuristic core of critical practice? What becomes of the relationship between nation-states and languages, between identities and affiliations? How does it call into question national literary languages? How would (bio)political questions concerning revolution, democracy, migration, transnationalism, and minority and second-generation human rights be articulated and addressed within these discourses?
Mediterranean identities and self-identification. How do we key in the elaboration of local identity and community formation? What are the attendant regional politics and polemics? What are the dialectical relations to forms of being in the world ensconced in the discreteness of micro-localities? How may identity markers be uniquely declined beyond the dominant rhetoric of the right to difference? How may this entail the emergence of a transnational consciousness or of a specific ethos? How may we think beyond subjective experiences of the Mediterranean?
The Mediterranean/Mediterraneans. How do we balance the focus on the micro with the need for the macro (Abulafia, 2006) and the relation to other sea-centered logics? What are the geographical limits of the modern Mediterranean? What is the place of the critical Mediterranean within reflections on “new thalassology” (Horden and Purcell, 2006) and “thalassocracies” (Abulafia, 2014)? Should the model be applied beyond the region? What is its intellectual currency across geographical divides?

References

Abulafia, David. “Mediterraneans.” Rethinking the Mediterranean. Ed. W. V. Harris. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 64-93.

———. “Thalassocracies.” A Companion to Mediterranean History. Ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 139-153.

Ben-Yehoyada, Naor “Mediterranean Modernity?” A Companion to Mediterranean History. Ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 107-121.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 197-222.

Chambers, Iain. Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity. Durham: Duke UP, 2008.

Harris, W. V., ed. Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.

Horden, Peregrine. “Introduction.” A Companion to Mediterranean History. Ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 1-7.

Horden, Peregrine and Nicholas Purcell. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2000.

———. “The Mediterranean and ‘the New Thalassology.’” The American Historical Review 111.3 (2006): 722-740.

Kinoshita, Sharon. “Medieval Mediterranean Literature.” PMLA 124.2 (2009): 600-608.

Morin, Edgar. “Penser la Méditerranée et méditerranéiser la pensée.” Confluences Méditerranée 28 (2009): 33-47.

Morris, Ian. “Mediterraneanization.” Mediterranean Historical Review 18.2 (2003): 30-55.

Edwige Tamalet Talbayev
Department of French and Italian
Tulane University
311 Newcomb Hall
1229 Broadway
New Orleans, LA 70118
Email: etamalet@tulane.edu
Visit the website at http://https://www.academia.edu/8185570/CFP_for_peer-reviewed_edited_volume-_Critically_Me…

Read more or reply

cfp: Colonization, Emigration and the Back to Africa Movement

by Marlou Schrover

Call for papers – Panel “Colonization, Emigration and the Back to Africa Movement”

Location: France
Call for Papers Date: 2015-01-20 (in 30 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-12-16
Announcement ID: 218825

Dear Colleagues,

For the upcoming annual conference of the French Association for American Studies, which will be held in La Rochelle, France, from May 27 to May 30 2015, we are seeking additional proposals for a panel we are organizing on “Colonization, Emigration and the Back to Africa Movement” (see CFP below for more information).

Prospective panelists should please send a 300 word abstract and a brief C.V. before January 20th 2015 to the following addresses:

lawrence.aje@univ-montp3.fr&claire.bourhis-mariotti@univ-paris8.fr

 

Call for papers

Colonization, Emigration and the Back to Africa Movement: The Migratory Flows, the Historical Narratives, and the Circulation of the African-American Diasporic Experience

 

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the widespread emancipation of slaves and the resulting significant growth of the free colored population, led many observers to believe that racial cohabitation was impossible. The removal and geographic separation of manumitted slaves, whether voluntary or not, gradually became the prerequisite for their emancipation. Owing to the indefatigable efforts of the American Colonization Society, which was founded in 1816, the colonization scheme soon came to offer a durable solution to the black problem – from a white American point of view. Interestingly enough, although some prominent and vocal African-American leaders were then firmly opposed to colonization, in the face of continuing discrimination and dehumanization within the United States, increasing numbers of African-Americans were prepared to consider emigration as a “solution” – be it temporary or not – to escape oppression. And indeed, the idea of gathering the free black community around the project of a “black nationality” beyond the borders of the United-States became increasingly appealing to a segment of the free black community, who had grown tired of being relegated to second-class citizenship and of fighting against racial discrimination. In the early nineteenth century, these free Blacks identified themselves more and more as belonging to a black diaspora born out of slavery. Although Pan-Africanism developed towards the end of the nineteenth century, as an expression of the solidarity which united exploited people of color in response to European as well as American imperialism and colonialism, a diasporic consciousness emerged among the free African-American community – and other black communities all around the world – in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This panel seeks to explore the different aspects of the African-American diasporic experience, by analyzing how, from Prince Saunders’s Haitian project to Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement, and up to the present day, some African-Americans have striven to unite the black diaspora in places beyond the reach of U.S government control – in Canada, in Africa, in Central America, in the Western Territories, in Haiti, or more recently in South Africa. Another aim of this panel is to examine how some abolitionists and politicians, such as Abraham Lincoln, sought to deport free Blacks out of the United States, a phenomenon which has received little scholarly attention and that is fairly unknown to the general public. This panel will naturally interrogate the sensitive issue of what it means to live together, which is still a topical question today. Panelists are thus encouraged to reflect on the driving forces behind nationalisms and on the tendency for members of racial, religious, or other minority groups to voluntarily isolate themselves as a result of social exclusion.

Keywords: African-Americans, Colonization, Emigration, Pan-Africanism, Diaspora, Agency, historical narratives, historical sources, circulation.

Historical period: From the American Revolution to the present

Panel organizers:

Lawrence Aje, Associate Professor in American history, University of Montpellier

Claire Bourhis-Mariotti,Associate Professor in American history, University Paris 8

Lawrence Aje

Associate Professor in American History
University of Montpellier – Paul Valéry
5, Route de Mende
34199 Montpellier Cedex 5
France

Email: lawrence.aje@univ-montp3.fr
Visit the website at http://www.afea.fr/Conference-2015-List-of-Workshops.html

Read more or reply

cfp: Migration to Japan conference at Waseda

by Marlou Schrover

CFP for Migration to Japan conference at Waseda

Location: Japan
Call for Papers Date: 2014-12-19
Date Submitted: 2014-12-16
Announcement ID: 218821

CALL FOR PAPERS (DEADLINE: 19 December 2014)

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON

JAPAN’S NEW IMMIGRANTS:
CAPTURING THE CHANGING ETHNO-SCAPE IN A GLOBALIZING SOCIETY

 

Date: 13-14 February, 2015

Venue: Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo

Website: http://web.waseda.jp/gsaps/en/wiaps/outline/

 

 

People’s cross-border mobility has been an integral part of Japan’s history. Despite a decline in the speed and frequency of international migration in Japan’s post-war era, the migration to Japan has become a significant force since the 1980s, stimulating Japanese society and helping shape the new social and cultural landscapes of Japan. The presence of immigrants challenges the myth of a homogeneous nation many Japanese people and scholars of Japan once entertained. In more recent years, the increase of visibly foreign faces and the unfamiliar languages spoken has also added a sense of excitement and anxiety to the Japanese public.

 

Existing scholarship on new immigrants in Japan has given substantial attention to the life of Filipino and Chinese marriage migrants, Chinese students and migrant workers of various skill levels, and migrants from Latin America with Japanese ancestry (Nikkei). However, the shifting terrain of immigration policy and economic reforms in Japan, alongside recent crises, means that the dynamics of immigration to Japan are changing rapidly. More importantly, thirty years have passed since the onset of Japan’s ‘internationalisation’ policies shifted towards increasing migration. Those seen as ‘new’ migrant groups are no longer merely new arrivals, with a large number of 1.5 and 2ndgeneration immigrants having grown up in Japan and calling Japan home. Their education, work and social life tells a story of both Japan’s present and its future.

 

This workshop aims to capture emerging phenomena related to immigration in Japan. It is particularly interested in showcasing the work of young scholars who are currently researching these important developments. Acknowledging the unique contribution they make as scholars currently engaged in fieldwork, this workshop will provide an opportunity to better understand the changing landscape and possible future of immigration in contemporary Japan.

 

We seek contributors whose research addresses the following aspects of immigrant life in Japan:

l   The organizational life of new immigrants, including schools, workplaces;

l   The building of social relations and communities (not limited to co-ethnic);

l   Citizenship consciousness and various forms of belonging;

l   Issues related to acculturation, identity and well-being;

l   1.5 and second generation immigrants, including those of mixed descents (e.g. children of Filipino-Japanese parents and Chinese-Japanese parents)

 

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Presentation proposals should include a title, an abstract of 250 words maximum and a brief personal biography for submission by 19 December 2014. Please send all proposals to Dr. Jamie Coates at jamie.coates@gmail.com. Successful applicants will be notified by 10 January 2015.
Based on the quality of proposals and the availability of funds, partial or full funding will be granted to successful applicants. Because of the limited funding, participants are therefore encouraged to seek funding for travel from their home institutions.

 

CONTACTS:

 

Prof Gracia LIU-FARRER

glfarer@waseda.jp

Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University

 

Dr. Jamie COATES

Jamie.coates@gmail.com

Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University

 

Dr. Jamie Coates
Waseda University

Email: jamie.coates@gmail.com

Read more or reply

cfp: South Asian Canadian Literature and Culture for the journal South Asian Review 36.3 (2015)

by Marlou Schrover

CFP: South Asian Canadian Literature and Culture for the journal South Asian Review 36.3 (2015)

Publication Date: 2015-01-15 (in 25 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-12-14
Announcement ID: 218767

South Asian Review, the refereed journal of the South Asian Literary Association, invites submissions for its 2015 Special Topic Issue, 36.3, devoted to South Asian Canadian Literature. The recent centennial of the Komagata Maru incident underscores the storied history of South Asians arriving, struggling, and putting down their roots in Canada. Canonical and emerging South Asian Canadian writers  and artists have raised some fraught issues about the nation’s reception of South Asians and the efficacy of Canadian multiculturalism.

This special issue of SAR aims to represent all literary and filmic genres with a Canadian connection; to identify critical trends; and to evaluate the works of new as well as established South Asian Canadian authors. All critical approaches to texts (literary or filmic) are welcome. Topics of interest include the following:

* The portrayal of Canada by South Asian writers and artists (living in Canada or abroad)

* The South Asian Canadian writers and artists’ portrayal of their homelands

* Becoming Canadian? South Asians and the Canadian mosaic: hybridity, heterogeneity, homogeneity, immigration policies

* Comparative work on the South Asian Canadian diaspora

* Critical assessments of under-represented or emerging creative artists

* Fresh assessments of the critically acclaimed works of Balachandra Rajan, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, M.G. Vassanji, Anita Rau Badami, Cyril Dabydeen, Shyam Selvadurai and others

* Writings of double or triple-displaced South Asian Canadians such as M.G. Vassanji, Shani Mootoo, Samuel Selvon, and others

* Gender performativity, women’s voices, bodies, struggles

* Creating a self: power, sex, queerness, otherness

* Indigeneity and the South Asian diaspora

* Political trauma, terror, and tragedy: 1947 Partition, Air India 182 bombing, Komagata Maru, 9/11, and beyond.

* Transgenerational and transnational memories, experiences, activism

* Navigating Canadian languages beyond English or French: South Asian poetry and drama

* CanLit and minority voices: canons, representations, critical pedagogy

* South Asian writers and artists’ contribution to Canadian national literature and culture

Abstracts of 100 words invited by 15 January 2015. Finished articles of 15-25 pages, prepared in accordance with the MLA Handbook (7th ed.), along with abstracts of approximately 100 words and a 50-word bio-note, should be sent as Word documents by 20 April 2015.

The Special Issue will be guest-edited by Dr. Robin E. Field, King’s College, PA (USA)— email:robinfield@kings.edu; and Dr. Chandrima Chakraborty, McMaster U, Hamilton, Ontario (Canada)—email:chandri@mcmaster.ca. Please address your inquiries to the guest editors.

Dr. Chandrima Chakraborty, McMaster U, Hamilton, Ontario (Canada)—email: chandri@mcmaster
Or,
Dr. Robin E. Field, King’s College, PA (USA)— email: robinfield@kings.edu; and

Read more or reply

cfp: Local and regional impact of the Great Irish Famine

by Marlou Schrover

CFP: Local and regional impact of the Great Irish Famine

Location: Ireland
Call for Papers Date: 2015-02-15
Date Submitted: 2014-12-12
Announcement ID: 218747

Call for papers

2015 marks the 170th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine. To coincide with this, on 20-21 June 2015, the Irish National Famine Museum at Strokestown Park House will host an international, interdisciplinary conference to examine the Famine experience at a local and regional level. Bringing together a network of Famine experts, local, national and international, the conference will approach the above theme from the broadest possible historical perspective. The conference is part of the inaugural Irish Famine Summer School which will be held in Strokestown from 17-19 June 2015.

 

Proposals for papers (20 minutes duration), exploring how the Great Famine impacted on a locality or region in any location are now welcome. We particularly invite proposals for papers from postgraduate students and local historians. Proposals for papers may include, but are not limited to:

–          how the Famine played itself out at a local level i.e. causes, reaction and consequence;

–          landlord tenant relations;

–          the management of estates;

–          regional variations;

–          women and the Famine;

–          charity and private relief;

–          the operation of local relief committees;

–          crime and outrage;

–          the workhouse system;

–          accounts of the Famine at local and regional level;

–          folklore and oral history;

–          emigration;

–          historiography, commemoration and memory.

 

Enquires and proposals of no more than 250 words, accompanied by a brief biographical sketch, should be sent to Dr Ciarán Reilly- ciaran.j.reilly@nuim.ie by 15 February 2015. Decisions on proposals as decided by the organising committee will be communicated by the end of February.

 

 

Dr Ciaran Reilly
ciaran.j.reilly@nuim.ie
Email: ciaran.j.reilly@nuim.ie

Read more or reply

cfp: Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific: Identities, Social Networks and Media

by Marlou Schrover

 

Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific: Identities, Social Networks and Media

Location: Australia
Call for Papers Date: 2015-03-05
Date Submitted: 2014-12-12
Announcement ID: 218719

Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific; Identities, Social Networks and Media

12 November 2015

RMIT University, Melbourne

 

Call for Papers

‘Transient Migration in the Asia-Pacific’ is a symposium supported by the Australian Research Council and hosted by RMIT University. Temporary migration is increasingly part of everyday life in the 21st century. The global, transient and circular flows of people for work and study are, for instance, part of our quotidian encounters and accepted practice in contemporary societies. In the Asia-Pacific, the movement of both skilled and unskilled labour and the growing number of students from within and outside the region has become commonplace. These migrant flows and the cultures of mobility pose interesting questions about the maintenance and formation of the identities and social networks of transients especially in the age of global media and communication. What kinds of identities and social networks are maintained, created and/or renewed while in transience? How does consumption and engagement with the media (including communication and social media) affect these processes? How important are home-based and host-based identities, social networks and media to transient migrants? How significant are identities and social networks formed by individuals in transience? Finally, in what ways do identities, social networks and media facilitate, hinder or further return to the homeland and future mobility?

Individual papers and panels may include but are not restricted to case studies, theoretical developments and historical studies on the following themes:

Adapting to everyday life in transience
Cultures of transience
Connections/Disconnections made
Community(s) formed
Language(s) and discourse(s) of transience
Future aspirations and mobilities
Use and value of media and communication technologies

 

Selected papers will be included in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal.

 

Confirmed Speakers:

Prof. Kirpal Singh (Singapore Management University)

Prof. Supriya Singh (RMIT University)

A/Prof. Shanton Chang (University of Melbourne)

A/Prof. Fran Martin (University of Melbourne)

Please submit abstracts and panels for review to:

transmigrant2015@gmail.com

By: 5 March 2015

 

Conference Convenor:

Dr Catherine Gomes (RMIT University)

Secretariat:

Dr Dora Constantinidis (RMIT University)

Catherine Gomes
School of Media and Communication
RMIT University
Melbourne
Email: catherine.gomes@rmit.edu.au

Read more or reply

cfp: Journal of Pan African Studies Special Issue on Afro-Latinos/Afro-Latin-Americans: An Ongoing Dialogue

by Marlou Schrover

Journal of Pan African Studies Special Issue on Afro-Latinos/Afro-Latin-Americans: An Ongoing Dialogue

Date Submitted: 2014-12-11
Announcement ID: 218713

This special issue of the Journal of Pan-African Studies seeks to expand the discussion on the Afro-Latin/o experience in Latin America and in the United States. Issues related with migration, transnationalism, gender and sexuality, identity, music, literature, plastic arts, political activism, and inter-ethnic coalitions, are many of the topics that will be addressed in this special issue. Overall, it will contribute to and expand the understanding of another aspect of the African Diaspora.

 

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

Afro-Latino Identity and cultural consciousness

Afro-Latino Religion and Spirituality

Afro-Latino Intellectual Tradition

Afro-Latino Music

Afro-Latinos and the Plastic Arts

Afro-Latino and African American Collaboration

African Centered Education & Pedagogies

Africana Studies

Bilingual Education

Caribbean Studies

Civil Rights Activism

Community Building

Cultural blends

Human Rights

Language

Latin American Studies

Latino Studies

Literary Criticism

Politics of Representation

Spanglish and Afro-Latinos

Urbanity

Each paper should not exceed 25 pages. Notification of acceptance will be provided within 30 days of receiving an abstract and/or a paper.

Please send your submissions in the Subject area as “JPAS Afro-Latinos” to:

Guest Editor, Dr. Milagros Denis-Rosario, Assistant Professor, Hunter College
Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies
HW 1709
695 Park Avenue
Ny, NY 10065
mdenis@hunter.cuny.edu; and/or

Associate Editor of JPAS, Dr. Karanja Keita Carroll, Associate Professor, State University of New York at New Paltz: carrollk@newpaltz.edu.

Email: mdenis@hunter.cuny.edu

Read more or reply

cfp: “North of Misery: Migration, Affect, and Action” (ASA 2015)

by Marlou Schrover

CFP: “North of Misery: Migration, Affect, and Action” (ASA 2015)

Location: Canada
Call for Papers Date: 2015-01-05 (in 15 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-12-10
Announcement ID: 218659

American Studies Association Annual Meeting. (October 8-11, 2015. Toronto, Canada.)

Panel: “North of Misery: Migration, Affect, and Action”

The large number of Central American refugees who crossed the Rio Grande in 2014 arrived with harrowing stories about current conditions in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, as well as the dangerous journey through Mexico. Their arrival in the U.S. also generated a range of emotional responses and demands for action, from anti-immigrant protests to calls for humanitarian aid and economic development to the swift militarization of the border. Building from this moment, this panel will explore the relation between affect and action within the longer history of immigration in North America. How have those in the Global North imagined suffering in the Americas and their relation to it? What do their responses to migrants (and to migrant narratives) reveal about the political efficacy of emotion?

Proposals from all disciplines are welcome. Potential papers might consider: affect in the debate over immigration; representations of migrants in literature, visual art, performance and film; activism and theatricality; expressions of empathy, sentimentality, and/or moral outrage; structures of feeling in the “North”; the evolving symbolic role of the North/El Norte; the historic and contemporary role of Canada as refuge.

Please send abstracts (200-300 words) and brief CV by Jan. 5 to Stephen Park (stephen.park@utb.edu). Inquiries before that are welcome.

Stephen Park
Email: stephen.park@utb.edu

Read more or reply

cfp: Decolonial Futures in South Asia and Beyond

by Marlou Schrover

 

**UHM CSAS Symposium** Deadline: Jan. 16 — ‘Decolonial Futures in South Asia and Beyond,’ April 15-17, 2015 (Honolulu, HI)

Location: Hawaii, United States
Symposium Date: 2015-04-15
Date Submitted: 2014-12-08
Announcement ID: 218609

Deadline: Jan. 16 — ‘Decolonial Futures in South Asia and Beyond,’ April 15-17, 2015 (Honolulu, HI)

CALL FOR PAPERS

2015 UHM CSAS Spring Symposium

DECOLONIAL FUTURES IN SOUTH ASIA AND BEYOND

** Please Circulate Widely **

The Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mânoa invites paper and panel proposals for its 32nd Annual Spring Symposium

View the flyer here.

April 15-17, 2015, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi

Deadline to submit proposals: January 16 (Friday), 2015

The material and existential conditions in contemporary South Asia and its diasporas necessitate a reckoning with forms of power which suppress or marginalize different manifestations of knowledge, subjectivity and social relations.  What sorts of political struggles, epistemological shifts and aesthetic sensibilities could help envision and realize decolonial futures in South Asia and its diasporas?  A new generation of scholars has begun to engage with political projects and intellectual traditions that have been subjugated or silenced within dominant national narratives. We invite papers which engage with the challenges decoloniality poses for postcolonial studies, research on South Asian migration, and/or scholarship on imperial formations, old or new. We welcome new forms of writing and storytelling that excavate silenced histories, lived experiences, and resistance politics and practices. Given our location in Hawai’i and the Pacific, topics of particular interest include oceanic connections, decolonial politics, environmental struggles and rights, and transnational networks.

Please send a 200-word abstract for an individual paper by email to csas@hawaii.edu. If proposing an entire panel, please also include a paragraph-length rationale and a proposed title for the panel along with paper titles and abstracts.

For further questions, contact csas@hawaii.edu.

A limited amount of free lodging will be available to participants.

Our panels will be anchored by keynotes by:

Himadeep Muppidi, Political Science and International Studies at Vassar College, New York. He is the author ofThe Colonial Signs of International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2012) and, most recently, of Politics in Emotion: The Song of Telangana (Routledge, 2014).

Vivek Bald, Comparative Media Studies and Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A scholar, writer, activist and documentary filmmaker, he is the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America(Harvard University Press, 2013), and co-editor, with Miabi Chatterji, Sujani Reddy, and Manu Vimalassery ofThe Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power (NYU Press, 2013).

Gaiutra Bahadur, writer and journalist.  She is the author of Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture(University of Chicago Press, 2013).  In this work of creative non-fiction, she reconstructs the lives of indentured women, including of her own family, in early twentieth century Guyana, breathing life into lost and neglected stories that stretch across continents. As a journalist, she has covered the politics of global migration.

Ned Bertz, History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mânoa.  An Indian Ocean historian, Dr. Bertz examines mobility, place, and claims of belonging amidst emerging notions of nationhood in Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean: Transnational Histories of Race and Urban Space in Tanzania (forthcoming from University of Hawaiʻi Press).

http://www.hawaii.edu/csas/2015-uhm-csas-symposium-call-for-papers-decolonial-futures-in-s…

Center for South Asian Studies
University of Hawai’i, Manoa
1890 East-West Road
Moore Hall 416
Honolulu, Hawai’i 96822
Email: csas@hawaii.edu
Visit the website at http://www.hawaii.edu/csas/2015-uhm-csas-symposium-call-for-papers-decolonial-futures-in-s…

Read more or reply

cfp: Food Culture Studies

by Marlou Schrover

2015 ASA Food Culture Studies Caucus call for panel proposals

Location: Canada
Call for Papers Date: 2015-01-09 (in 19 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-12-04
Announcement ID: 218515

ASA Food Culture Studies Caucus Call for Panel Proposals 2015

 

The ASA Food Culture Studies Caucus is actively seeking submissions for panel proposals to sponsor for the upcoming 2015 American Studies Association Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada.

 

The Food Culture Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association serves as a network for scholars working on projects that engage the production, consumption, and representation of food across the many disciplines that cohere in American studies. This caucus views the study of food and eating culture as offering the possibility of a radically cross-disciplinary and transnational re-engagement of key topics in studies of the Americas.

 

While intersecting with other Food Studies communities, this caucus differs in that it offers a space for those that see food and eating culture as central to the themes that are at the forefront of American studies, including race, class, gender and identity, immigration, community and diaspora, social and labor history, empire, globalization and state formation. While members of this caucus work in the diverse fields of literature, geography, history, cultural studies, urban studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, identity studies, gender studies, visual culture, affect theory, bodily theory, and agriculture studies, among numerous others, this caucus actively encourages collaboration across subfields and historical periods in order to develop new directions for teaching and researching food in all of its contexts.

 

For the 2015 Annual Meeting, we are seeking to sponsor two panel proposals that explore the culture of food and eating in its many contexts related to the conference theme, “The (Re)Production of Misery and the Ways of Resistance,” including but certainly not limited to:

 

Food, Hunger and Misery
Food, the Archive, and “Adjacent Sites of Knowledge Creation”
Empire, Immigration, Diaspora and the Globalization of Food Cultures
Food and Identity – Sexuality, Gender, Race, Ability, Class, etc.
Eating, Digestion, and Food through Affective, Sensory and Bodily Theories
Food and the Study of Race
Food and Space
Food, Power, and Resistance
Food/Eating and the Historical Reproduction of Misery
Food, Representations, and Visual Culture
Food and Material Culture Studies
Reading Food, Food in Literature and Literary Theory
Food and Performance
Food and social justice, urban agriculture, alternative food movements, and other forms of activism

Fitting with the conference theme, we especially encourage proposals that explore the category of misery as it challenges the distinctions and interpenetrations between subjective, individual experiences and social divisions.  According to the ASA call for proposals, approaches that fit the theme especially well include work on trauma theory, precarity, critical ethnic studies, states of exception, queer studies (including those of failure and especially those rooted in queer-of-color critique), political economy and especially crisis theory, feminist research on the personal and the political, disability studies, war and empire in and out of the age of the drone, the miseries of higher education, investigations of spirituality, religion, misery, solace and solidarity, as well as carceral studies.

Panel proposals must include 3-4 presenters/participants with abstracts (500 word maximum) accompanying each as well as an abstract for the panel as a whole (400 word maximum) and a moderator/commentator. As a reminder, all proposal submitters, including chairs and commentators, must be current individual members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) at the time of submission.

If you need help organizing a panel or finding one to join, use the ASA Food Culture Studies Caucus Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/FoodCaucus) or the Food Culture Studies Community Blog on the ASA website (http://www.theasa.net/caucus_food_studies/)

The Food Culture Studies Caucus will formally sponsor two panels for the Annual Meeting. We hope that panels not selected for sponsorship will still submit their proposals as general ASA session submissions.

Panel Abstracts are due by January 9, 2015 for sponsorship consideration.

Please submit all abstracts to FoodCaucus@gmail.com

Lily Kelting
Interart Studies
Grunewaldstr. 34
12165 Berlin
Email: foodcaucus@gmail.com

Read more or reply

job: Assistant Professor, Political Science and Global Studies, Governors State University

by Marlou Schrover

Governors State University

Assistant Professor, Political Science and Global Studies

 

Institution Type:   College / University
Location:   Illinois, United States
Position:   Assistant Professor

 

Assistant Professor, Political Science and Global Studies

Position Summary
The Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Governors State University invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in Political Science. The successful candidate will have broad training in International Relations with the ability to teach courses in cross-cultural relations, comparative politics, and global studies, as well as the ability to teach effectively in the undergraduate and graduate programs, demonstrated scholarly achievement, and the ability to work with faculty in the social sciences program. Research interests may include areas such as human rights, social justice, migration, development, peace, and conflict resolution. Candidates that can contribute to the Gender and Sexuality Studies program; the Environmental Studies program; and area studies minors in East Asia; Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina Studies, Middle Eastern/North African Studies, or Africana Studies are especially welcome to apply. A terminal degree in Political Science or a closely related field is required. The degree must be completed by August 2015.

Minimum Qualifications
In order to be a leading candidate in this search, in addition to the aforementioned requirements, the candidate minimally must be fluent in the English language, be able to communicate well, demonstrate outstanding potential for excellence in teaching through a successful interview and classroom demonstration and be experienced in the use of innovative curricular approaches that are student-centered, inquiry-based and hands-on oriented. Successful applicants should also be prepared to advise students, maintain a program of scholarship, and provide meaningful service to the university, the community, and the profession. Candidates may be required to teach at night, on weekends, online, or at off campus locations. The teaching load is four courses in both Fall and Spring semester, with opportunities of course release for scholarship.

Special Instructions to Applicants
To apply, please visit http://employment.govst.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=53310 Candidates should submit a cover letter detailing teaching experience and research interests in Political Science. Candidates should also include a curriculum vita; and a list of three professional references. Review of applications will begin January 20, 2015, and will continue until the position is filled. Initial interviews will be conducted by telephone. Those candidates who are invited for a telephone interview will be asked to provide the Search Committee three letters of reference to the following email: amarak@govst.edu, teaching evaluations, and syllabi of courses relevant to the position.
Posting Number: 0201639

apply

https://employment.govst.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/frameset/Frameset.jsp?time=1419144679359

 

 

Read more or reply

job: Director, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

by Marlou Schrover

National University of Singapore

Director, Asia Research Institute

 

Institution Type:   College / University
Location:   Singapore
Position:   Administrator, Director, Full Professor, Tenure Track Faculty

 

Background

In 2001, the National University of Singapore (NUS) established the Asia Research Institute (ARI) to spearhead interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences, focusing on Asia. The Institute aims to draw together researchers from across the University, including the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the School of Business, the School of Design and Environment, the Faculty of Law, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

With substantial University and external funding, ARI employs over 40 research and administrative staff. The Institute actively hosts short- and long-term visiting scholars and supports conferences, workshops, seminars, and study groups.

The research direction of ARI continues to evolve in line with the interests of NUS’s faculty members. Current research thrusts include migration, urbanization, family, cultural studies, religion and globalisation, and science, technology and society. Please refer to the Institute’s website for more details: http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/.

 

Director

NUS seeks to hire an outstanding scholar in any area of the humanities and social sciences for appointment as director of ARI, starting in January 2016 or as soon as the candidate is available, for an initial term of three years.

The director is appointed by the Deputy President (Research and Technology) and will work in consultation with the Institute’s advisory and management boards to:

Develop new areas of research excellence spanning the various faculties and schools in NUS,
Establish policies and procedures, and
Administer the Institute.

The director should be an internationally-recognized leader in his or her academic field and qualify for a professorship in a faculty or school within NUS. The appointment of director is a full-time position with generous support for research.

 

Submissions

Please send nominations or applications (with a full CV) to:

Professor Ivan Png

Chair

Search Committee for Director of ARI

National University of Singapore

Tel: (+65) 6516 6807

Fax: (+65) 6872 0830

E-mail: arisearch@nus.edu.sg

All nominations and applications will be kept in the strictest confidence.

 

Contact:

Professor Ivan Png
Chair
Search Committee for Director of ARI
National University of Singapore
Tel: (+65) 6516 6807
Fax: (+65) 6872 0830
E-mail: arisearch@nus.edu.sg

Website: http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/
Read more or reply

job: Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South Postdoctoral Fellowship, Duke

by Marlou Schrover

Duke University, Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South

Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South Postdoctoral Fellowship

 

Institution Type:   College / University
Location:   North Carolina, United States
Position:   Post-Doctoral Fellow

 

The Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South at Duke University (LSGS) invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to begin in August 2015.

LSGS seeks interdisciplinary scholars with a comparative, innovative, and transnational approach to any––or a combination––of the following areas: history, ethnoracial formations, gender and sexuality, citizenship, empire, migration, hemispheric studies, and related topics.

The successful candidate will receive a salary of $45,000, plus benefits; teach two courses per year; pursue research; and participate in Duke’s academic life as well as the development of Latino/a Studies at the University.

To receive full consideration, please submit the required application materials detailed in this link by 15 February 2015:
https://duke.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9MgKcQpZ6F0X0lD

Two confidential letters of recommendation should be mailed separately, also by the same deadline, to: Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, Duke University, Box 90441, Durham, NC  27708.

Applicants must have completed their doctorates by the Fellowship start date.

 

Contact:

Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South
Duke University
Box 90441
Durham, NC  27708

Website: http://latinostudies.duke.edu/

Read more or reply

review: Rebecca Shumway. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora Series

by Marlou Schrover

Rebecca Shumway. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora Series. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014. 244 pp. $34.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-58046-478-9.

Reviewed by Ty Reese (Department of History, University of North Dakota)
Published on H-Atlantic (December, 2014)
Commissioned by W. Douglas Catterall

A Gulf of Guinea Thread in the African Diaspora

During the past decade plus, we have experienced an increase in historical interest in the Gold Coast during the period of Atlantic trade, yet within this resurgent research effort, few have attempted to deal with long periods or whole regions. Rebecca Shumway addresses this problem in her study of the Fante, who were the dominant Gold Coast traders of the eighteenth century. In her revision of the rather Asante-centric history of the eighteenth-century Gold Coast, Shumway seeks to understand both how the Fante became the dominant Gold Coast traders and how they maintained this position throughout the 1700s. Her argument focuses on two developments, one political and the other cultural, within Fante. The first concerns the creation of the Fante confederacy, which Shumway terms the “Coastal Coalition,” and the second involves the development of a unified Fante culture that held the coalition together (p. 11).

Shumway explores the eighteenth-century history of Fante through four focused chapters. From the start, she correctly portrays the Fante as a group who did not play second fiddle to either the better-known Asante or the British, but who rather intelligently, nay cunningly, took advantage of the changes being wrought upon the Gold Coast through internal and external stimuli. Internally, the traditional catalyst of the eighteenth-century Gold Coast, according to the received historiography, was Asante, and while Shumway explores Fante’s relationship with Asante, she makes it clear that Asante did not control Fante. This is an important aspect of Shumway’s work in that she effectively addresses and revises the traditional Asante-focused history of the Gold Coast. Complementing the rise of Fante and Asante was the external factor of developing Atlantic trade, especially the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century transition from gold to slaves as the main export commodity. Throughout the work, it becomes clear not only that the Fante were reacting to these changes, but that they also played an important role in the changes themselves as they established their intermediary position between European and Asante traders while developing a political, economic, social, cultural, and religious system that brought some unity and focus to a rather decentralized and independent group. These developments allowed Fante to avoid Asante conquest for over a century and to dominate the coastal trade.

Shumway’s opening chapter introduces the reader to the Gold Coast, the Borbor Fante, and the arrival of Europeans. It explores the rise of the gold trade and the transition to the slave trade, brings up the issue of Atlantic creoles, and explores the adaptations that occurred because of these internal and external changes. From there, Shumway transitions to exploring the opportunities that developed as the Gold Coast became increasingly involved in Atlantic trade, especially through trafficking in human “commodities.” An important aspect of this involved how the coastal ports, such as Anomabu, Cape Coast, Elmina, and others, became Atlantic, and thus somewhat creolized, as they connected the interior, both near and far, to the Atlantic economy. This chapter thoroughly explores the economic consequences of these activities; the ramifications of the slave trade’s development; the growing European competition that Atlantic trade caused along the Gold Coast, especially between the Dutch and English; and the importance of coastal enclaves, most especially Anomabu, within all of this. Shumway’s focus on Anomabu is important in that while Elmina and Cape Coast are better known, Anomabu provides important insight into Fante-European relations and the development of Fante’s intermediary position. Throughout, Shumway works to develop an understanding of the relationship between these ports and the interior despite the nature of the surviving records, the majority of which are from European companies and place more stress on the coastal enclaves, as they were inhabited and known to Europeans, rather than the interior which was unknown to them. This, in itself, is a clear example of coastal relations and of Fante control over their European trading partners in that European knowledge of the interior was almost nonexistent.

The next two chapters are the center of Shumway’s reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century Gold Coast as she works to bring a new understanding to the political changes that were occurring, through the use of sources written by observers who did not always understand what was happening, and the development of a Fante identity. The chapter on politics explores the rise of the Coastal Coalition that allowed Fante to unite politically, thereby not only protecting but also expanding its coastal positions. Of importance here are the connections that Shumway makes between the rise of the well-documented new coastal elite, who either shared power with the traditional elite or often replaced them, especially in coastal enclaves, and their relationship with the development of coastal Asafo companies. These new big men, who gained power and prestige through trade, thereby allowing them to develop as a new class of patrons with access to a global assortment of goods, became a new political force whose goal was to protect and expand their economic and political position. The Coastal Coalition clearly served this purpose. An important tool within the coalition involved the rise of the Asafo companies that provided Fante with a military force without its having to maintain a standing army. These militias were local organizations that also played roles beyond war as they organized towns and ports that experienced a continued migration of outsiders to them. The success of the coalition related first to Fante’s ability to protect its intermediary position and effectively court European trading partners and also to its ability to convince Asante that attacking them was not wise, which it was able to do until 1807.

The final, short, chapter deals with the creation of a Fante culture over the course of the eighteenth century with a focus on religion, language, and the Asafo companies. Religion along the Gold Coast was a complex affair of individual, local, and regional deities, and within the European records of the time was usually labeled under the title of “fetishes.” What Shumway argues is that as the Coastal Coalition was constructed, and as Fante power became centralized at Mankessim to some extent, the main shrine at Mankessim, that of Nananom Mpow, grew in importance. Nananom Mpow was the original sacred grove of the first Borbor Fante settlers at Mankessim, and Shumway explores how, starting in mid-century, the shrine became ever more connected to Fante and was oftentimes referred to as the God of Fante. The political centralization of Fante also caused a religious centralization that brought order and identity to Fante. Coupled with religion’s emerging role was the development of the Fante language, which also served to unite Fante. Both of these factors were important as Fante was part of the Akan cultural group, which possessed a long tradition of incorporating outsiders into it. Thus, with the rise of Atlantic trade, more outsiders moved into Fante territory, attracted by the opportunities that Atlantic trade and Fante’s economic clout provided. The development of a national deity and national language became a way to incorporate outsiders while downplaying the differences that existed within Fante, such as those between the people of Anomabu and Cape Coast. Important within this process, as Shumway shows, was the role of the Asafo companies in integrating people into Fante’s burgeoning coastal communities and providing them with defined roles. Beyond their military roles, Asafo companies were associated with particular parts of towns as well and thus with the people who lived within them; there could be an Asafo for the original inhabitants for the town, for laborers, for outsiders, for company slaves, for Eurafricans, and still others. Since the Fante utilized matrilineal relations in their own networks that presented obstacles for outsiders wanting to integrate, the agnatic organization of the Asafo provided an easier way for them to do so. The points that Shumway makes in this chapter are good ones, even if the evidence is limited although not from lack of effort on the part of Shumway. Nananom Mpow does appear more in the records during the second half of the eighteenth century and British officials do connect it to the Fante state, yet these officials do not have first-hand knowledge of the shrine nor of Mankessim or even any information regarding Fante beyond the coast. The same can be said of the Asafo companies, which are never really directly named within the records, although the records do make clear that coastal towns had various wards and organizations within them.

Shumway’s work is important in that it expands our understanding of Fante’s evolution over the eighteenth century and thereby develops a more thorough understanding of the causes and consequences of the rise of Atlantic trade along the Gold Coast. The chapter on the Coastal Coalition expands the political history of the Fante confederacy, especially through addition of the Asafo companies, while that on Fante culture provides insight into how the Fante adapted to the internal and external changes occurring.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.

Citation: Ty Reese. Review of Shumway, Rebecca, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. H-Atlantic, H-Net Reviews. December, 2014.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=41408

 

To unsubscribe from the MIGCITIZENSHIP-L list, click the following link:
&*TICKET_URL(MIGCITIZENSHIP-L,SIGNOFF);