This portal is a collaborative project inspired by the 2008 Southeast Asians in the Diaspora conference held at UIUC, and is designed to provide access to people and resources on the web. It is being designed in conjunction with the Southeast Asian / American Studies resource and research blog found at http://SEAsianDiaspora.blogspot.com.
About Southeast Asian/American Studies
Because of specific histories of colonialism and imperialism, Southeast Asian/American studies produces subjects and objects of inquiry that confound categories of diaspora, citizenship, and affiliation. Studies of the Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese diasporas investigate and trouble the structuring effects of Cold War geopolitics; while studies of Hmong, Mien, Cham, and other stateless ethnicities necessarily reconsider the bases for global and local practices of identification as well as strategic claims to rights and resources.The field of Southeast Asian/American studies foregrounds important shifts that disrupt the analytic conventions of area studies, American studies, ethnic studies, and Asian American studies. Southeast Asian/American studies as such fulfill the intellectual and political promise of what scholar Kandice Chuh imagines as "studies in comparative racialization and intersectional projects that deliberately unravel seemingly stable distinctions among identificatory categories and disciplinary divisions."
Work in Southeast Asian/American studies formulates new questions, frameworks, and methods for understanding how specific objects of inquiry (including nations, wars, and cultures) and specific modes of "being in the world" (as refugees, citizens, or someone in between) are created through linkages between knowledge and power.
Announcements
Call for Submissions Isabelle Pelaud and Mariam Lam are soliciting submissions for a collection called Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders in Literature and Art. From the call: "Because we envision this anthology will feature importantly in classroom curricula, we are looking for pieces that speak to broad themes and concerns relating but not limited to questions of youth, generational difference, nationality, identity, gender, sexuality, and class. We are soliciting submissions of various genres: short stories, poems, fiction, personal essays, and artwork." The deadline is December 19, 2008. Download the full CFP here.Publication Edited by Huping Ling, the collection Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans is being published by Rutgers University Press in 2008. This collection features many essays examining the post-emigration experiences of underrepresented groups in the existing Asian/American studies scholarship, including Burmese, Indonesian, Mong, Hmong Nepalese, Romani, Tibetan, and Thai Americans. For more information, please visit the press here.
