BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

In the past fifteen years, the influence of Filipino Studies in the humanities and social sciences has grown. A critical mass of scholars positioned in various disciplines, and located in the U.S., Australia, Europe, the Philippines, and the rest of Asia, has emerged in during the last decade as a vibrant presence in Asian Studies, American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Latino Studies conferences and international encounters. Various factors account for this new energy but perhaps none more important than the contemporary academic attention to post-colonialism, immigration, diaspora, transnationalism, and empire. All of these have provided new critical languages for articulating Filipino national and expatriate experiences, especially given the aforementioned legacy of U.S. colonial rule and the continuing cultural dominance of Filipinos in globalized migrant cultures and economies.

Under such new rubrics, Filipino scholars have invigorated studies of race, sexuality, gender, and nation hitherto limited by nation-centered approaches and raised new questions, comparative perspectives, and relational issues that reflect and anticipate present concerns about local/global paradigms, debates over culture and power, and interest in transnational, cosmopolitan intellectual life.

The study of Filipinos and Filipino Americans opens up new vistas in understanding the perils and possibilities of empire. In the present era of wars, security threats, and border fears, the study of Filipino national and diasporic experiences provide relevant vantage points for trenchant critiques of militarization, cultural imperialism, and immigration. It is in this spirit that we have organized Philippine Palimpsests.

The conference is envisioned to examine current and future research agendas by focusing on theoretical and methodological innovations around following topics and questions:

How do we understand the global dispersal of Filipino migrant labor without recourse to ready-made economic and political rationales?
What kinds of theoretical frameworks can we establish in the understanding of Filipino and Filipino American public culture including but not limited to literature, film, television, music, and painting.
What kinds of theoretical vantage can we set up in transforming Filipino historiography?
What kinds of political activisms and policy implications can be derived from current and ongoing research? How can we facilitate the application of these research findings into action plans?
What kinds of intellectual and social support networks can we forge as scholars and activists to push Filipino Studies into the future?

In light of these questions, we have structured "Philippine Palimpsests" into several roundtables, each of which will tackle a particular subject related to the overall theme. These include the History of the Field, Cultures of the Filipino Diaspora, Labor and the Economy, and The Future of the Field.

Philippine Palimpsests is a conference formed on the basis of the constellation of contexts and issues discussed above. This will be the first conference of this magnitude and the biggest gathering of Filipino and Filipino American scholars outside the annual conferences of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS).

The following are the main objectives of the conference:

To create a national and transnational network of Filipino Studies scholars to enable a systematic dissemination and discussion of ideas
To assess the state of research in Filipino Studies
To chart future paths for research and identify subject areas and young scholars in the field
To create a mentorship network for young scholars in the field
To come up with publications in book and journal forms that will focus on the interdisciplinary studies of the Philippines and the global Filipino diaspora

The conference will enable emerging and established scholars in the field of Filipino Studies to come together and map out the research activities and plot future collaborations. Therefore, the conference is not only designed to produce information networks but also to forge new collaborative relationships.