美國研究學會 2007 年年會心得報告 黃心雅
今年美國研究學會（American Studies Association, ASA）年會在美國最老、最具 歷史意義的城市費城舉辦，和往年相同，這不僅是美國研究學術圈裡的年度大
事，更廣邀來自世界各地相關領域學者共襄盛會。10 月 10 日踏入「費利」（Philly）
城區，迫不及待展開古都市街之旅，為這人稱「友愛之城」（City of Brotherly Love）
深深吸引，在 10 月 10 日中華民國國慶日當天，來到美國之誕生、自由之起源的
古城，告訴外國友人「我們來自台灣」，心中十分歡喜。
ASA 年會的確是學界歡樂的重聚重大場合，當日黃昏，台灣代表團一行和史丹 佛大學 Shelly Fisher Fishkin 教授、密西根大學 Philip Deloria 教授和《希斯美國 文學選集》(Heath Anthology of American Literature)主編 Paul Lauter 教授，共聚話 舊，Fishkin 和 Lauter 兩位教授對 ASA「國際交流計畫」（International Initiatives, 創始於 2004 年 Fishkin 會長任內）貢獻良多，Lauter 目前是 ASA 國際委員會 （International Committee）召集人，兩位都是台灣學界的長期友人；Philip Deloria 教授年中卸下密西根大學美國研究所所長行政職務，即獲選下任（2008 年）ASA 會長，是達科達蘇族名門之後，去年和筆者結識後，互通書信，商討美國原住民 文學論文共同出版計畫，並於今年六月應邀來訪，在中山大學參加「離散與族裔 研究國際研討會」(International Symposium on Diaspora and Ethnic Studies)，發表 論文，當時與會學者包括亞歷桑那州立大學（Arizona State University）Joni Adamson 教授和賓州大學(University of Pennsylvania)伍德堯（David Eng）教授等 人，都在費城重逢，在伍教授邀請下，前往賓大校園參加 Heatha Love 新書發表 會，結識許多年輕傑出、熱情洋溢的賓大學者，舊雨新知齊聚一堂，正是 ASA 學術網絡令人驚艷之處。
今年是開創邊界論述先河的墨美（Chicana）作家 Gloria Anzaldúa（1942-2004） 自傳巨著 Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 出版二十週年紀念，年會主題 「 美 洲 此 地 」 (América Aquí: Transhemispheric Visions and Community
Connections)， 將美國研究論述場域由 2006 年之「跨國主義」（2006 年年會主題
為「跨國美國研究」The United States from Inside and Out：Transnational American
Studies）拉回「美洲此地」，去「美國」而就「美洲」，質詰美國帝國殖民主義之
國家畫界，開展越界視野和強化（墨美）邊界族裔社群連繫，可說是來自美國研 究反身內省的良知與正義，本屆會長 Vicki L. Ruiz 為墨美族裔研究專家，女性主 義邊界研究學者 AnaLouise Keating 和 Sonia Saldíva-Hull 等人也都應邀與會發表 鏗鏘有力之邊界論述，會長專題演說則由種族、記憶、社群和階級交錯處，反思 美國認同（American Identities），又引述 Gloria Anzaldúa 的話，說明「論述缺乏 行動，文字充其量只是吵雜的噪音」，二十一世紀的美國研究有賴社會正義的實
踐賦予能量，這也是我在奧克蘭年會中的深切體認，種族議題不單是論述，更是 活生生的社會現實，在學術殿堂之外的社會運動和社區經營，才是支撐學術議題 的真正動力，只可惜本次年會在議程安排上，缺乏當地社群的投入，大會並未整 體規劃文史參訪行程，是美中不足之處，也是 2006 年奧克蘭年會勝過本屆年會 的地方。 具體而言，參與今年 ASA 年會，成果有三： （一）論文發表：由筆者與中興大學阮秀莉教授籌組論文發表小組，邀請德國學 者 Birgit Däwes 與加拿大作家 Ashok Mathur（後因時間衝突不克與會）共同參與， 以 Transhemispheric Dialogues: Contemporary Native North American Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts 為題，展開越界/跨國之原住民視覺、文學、表演藝 術對話，並由當代著名 Annishinabae 族原住民詩人 Kimberly Blaeser 主持評論， 討論會後大夥意猶未盡，相約與 Joni Adamson 籌組之原住民與環境正義多個小 組成員共聚，對日後原住民研究跨國團隊之成形，深具信心。今年台灣代表團提 組三個論文發表小組皆獲大會接受，在亞洲代表團間，表現可謂亮眼，也為日後 參與國際會議/組織立下不錯的典範，更是台灣學界與 ASA 交流以來，成果相當 豐碩的一年。 （二）原住民研究之拓展：利用年會之便，筆者亦以多項原住民研究相關議題， 含原住民與離散/移徙(diaspora)、邊界原住民認同(border Natives)、原住民與環境 正義(environmental justice)、原住民與邊界軍事化(militanization)等，訪談 Lipan and Jumano Apache 族原住民詩人 Margo Tamez，並經 Tamez 介紹，認識多位往 返墨美邊界原住民作家/詩人，為筆者即將提出之 2008-2011 年國科會研究計畫
「原住民性與離散論述」（Indigeneity and Diaspora）預作準備，並確立探討議題
與批判架構、國際交流合作的可行性等，企盼能為筆者近年投入之原住民研究， 建立跨國學術社群與創作作家之聯繫，也為台灣原住民研究與創作開展跨國對話 平台。另 2005-2008 執行國科會研究計畫之部分成果，也與 2008 年 ASA 會長 Philip Deloria 達成共識，由他與本人共同具名，向 Journal of American Studies 提 出原住民研究專刊申請，共同出版論文。
（三）應 Philip Deloria 的邀請，筆者擔任 2008 年 ASA Program Committee 成員，與其他十位美國本地跨領域美國研究學者，共同規劃將於 2008 年 10 月 16-19 日新墨西哥 Albuquerque 市舉辦之 2008 年年會，除 Philip Deloria 與筆者之 外，委員會尚有 Robert Warrior、Julie Ellison、Nikhil Singh、Joni Adamson、Alex Lubin (Site Committee 召集人)、Sharon Holland、Bruce Burgett（American Quarterly 編輯顧問）、Adria Imada、Jennifer Denetdale、Sylvia Aquino、Raul Rubio 等多位 頗具學術聲望之原住民、亞裔、非裔、墨裔、歐裔、性別、生態、倫理等相關美
國研究學者，委員會第一次會議已於今年年會期間 10 月 13 日召開，前置作業包 含 2008 年徵文定稿（ “Back Down to the Crossroads: Integrative American Studies in Theory and Practice”）與作業手冊（Guide to the Work of the 2008 Program Committee）在年會前即透過 email 往來溝通完成，第一次會議則確立會議重要 分組議題與主會場內外會議規劃，如美國研究系譜(Geneology of American Studies)、美國研究理論、倫理、與實踐、美國研究教育前景、族裔研究與後殖 民、文化論述、越界論述與田野、原住民邊界論述與敘事、環境正義與邊界軍事 化、城市及地域與跨國越界研究等議題的延伸，會中並決議邀請邊界與原住民作 家與會（Gerald Vizenor、Joy Harjo、Simon Ortiz、Scott Momaday 等）、強化會議 地域與大會主題聯繫（Albuquerque as transnational site and the crossroads）、規劃 文化中心（The National Hispanic Cultural Center、The Pueblo Cultural Center）與 博物館展出與會議論文發表結合之社群聯繫、邊界族裔社群與部落田野調查等活 動，由繁複的學術思維中拉出大會主軸，並論及國際交流計畫之加強與募款事 宜，馬拉松式五小時的討論中，也做成論文審查分工以及至 2008 年會前時程安 排等共識。ASA 組織結構堅實，具完整的經驗傳承，從主辦城市的擇取、主題 的設定、論文的徵求與審查、議程的排定、宣傳及註冊，全程上網，有嚴謹的專 業標準作業程序，學會運作由專業團隊持續規劃，並透過國際交流計劃廣邀國際 學者參與，建立美國研究的國際學術社群，並致力產官學結合，引領風騷，實堪 做為國內學會組織及大型國際會議舉辦的參照典範。 展望未來，台灣應以團體規劃和作為，在國際學術場域持續發聲。亞洲（太）區 域關係的連結，是參與跨國學術的重要路徑，與 ASA 密切的交流和合作，更提 供日後國內人文研究延展學術網路的重要窗口，由區域結盟出發，與全球學術社 群接軌，當是我們持續努力的目標。
附錄一
2007ASA 年會論文小組摘要
Transhemispheric Dialogues:
Contemporary Native North American Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts In the context of an increasingly transnational and transhemispheric globe, the master narratives of time and place ("Aqui") are shifting. Especially in indigenous American cultures, which have at all times placed great emphasis on transnational orientations, notions of homeland, territory, migrancy, diaspora, and mythical time are central to the construction of identity, both individual and collective.
Examining a wide range of contemporary art forms by indigenous people, this panel will seek to transnationalize Native North American Studies and encourage dialogue among those dedicated to this study. Bringing together scholars from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, it will provide a forum for globally/locally diverse approaches. Contextualizing these approaches in different historical and cultural backgrounds, the panel will thus explore a wide range of Native North American literary and cultural issues, both thematically and methodologically.
The panel will specifically examine the ways in which contemporary Native American visual, literary, and performing arts address the formation of cultural identity/ies within shifting geographical, political, cultural, artistic, disciplinary frameworks. Questions that the panelists' approaches will address include, but are not limited to, the following: How do Native North American artistic expressions
contribute to / reshape / challenge /complement the formation of communities and cultural units? How, in these processes, do traditional notions of homeland and nation interact with new (or equally traditional) modes of community formation across social/political/cultural borderlines? How are cultural differences negotiated within and across those boundaries? How can Native North American representations of these processes of identity formation counter and subvert ongoing colonial circumstances? How is the range between resistance and assimilation employed within these representations (or, as Gerald Vizenor calls them, within technologies of "survivance")? Also, how do Native mediations of individual and collective identity constitute cultural memory, and how do they feed into or transform the larger context of mainstream American history? How do Native American arts challenge and transform conventional disciplinary boundaries, a process which may also contribute impulses for the changing methodologies of Native American studies?
American Arts, Literature, and Performance; Place and Space; Race and Ethnicity; Communication and Film and Media Studies
Special Requests: Digital Equipment Package, session NOT to be scheduled on Thursday.
Chair: Kimberly Blaeser, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Papers:
Hsinya Huang (National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan), "Tribal Memory, Community, and America's Histories in the Work of Joseph Bruchac and Diane Glancy”
Ashok Mathur (Thompson Rivers University , Kamloops, BC, Canada), "Carriers of Possibility: Indigeneities Expanding across Media"
Rose Hsiu-Li Juan (National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan),
“Discovering Native American Literature in a (Dis-)enchanted World: The Native and Scientific America's Moon Encounter” OR “(Re-)enchanting the Cosmos: Simon Ortiz, Susan Powers, and Countering Dominant Scientific Narratives
Birgit Däwes (University of Würzburg, Germany), "Web/Sites: Space, Time, and Community in Contemporary Native American Performance"
Comment: Kimberly Blaeser, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ABSTRACTS:
Chair: Kimberly Blaeser, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Hsinya Huang (National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan), "Tribal Memory, Community, and America's Histories in the Work of Joseph Bruchac and Diane Glancy”
This paper seeks to study the complex dialectics between memory and
using the transhemisperic red body as a bellwether of contemporary Native American representation of tribal histories. On the one hand, the body as a genetic category addresses the question of how racial/indigenous identity is fixed on the body and how bodies are classified and rated according to a set of pseudo-scientific knowledge and legal regulation integral to the Euramerican imperial project. While the indigenous body bears the inscriptions of colonial power, I also interpret this body as a cultural category, which is transformed into an agent to take up a powerful challenge to the peril of the imperial genocidal project. The body is the memory that contains what is forgotten but never lost; or, to use Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday’s lexicon, it is then the memory in the blood that keeps alive what would have been erased. Blood memory writes back, harnessing the body and decoding it into genes of survivance, to borrow Gerald Vizenor’s words. Ultimately, the indigenous body is understood in its capacity to represent the hidden history and repressed memory, as this study invokes the body as the site of vibrant connection to native community, historical memory, and tribal knowledge.
I will draw on Joseph Bruchac’s The Journal of Jesse Smoke: A Cherokee Boy (2001) and Diane Glancy’s Pushing the Bear: A Novel of The Trail of Tears (1996) to investigate Native American genocidal experience throughout their removal and migrancy from their original home-base. The route they traversed, known as "The Trail of Tears," function as what Peter Nabokov has called a “topographic mnemonic” to be re-inscribed into genetic codes that are carried through and passed down from generation to generation. In evoking the joint body of the individual, the tribe, and America, the continent, this project provides a touchstone for exploring the changing concepts of Native community, identity, place, and America’s histories. “Blood memory” holds tight on Native American bloodlines and by naming the genetic ties to illustrious ancestry, Native American authors recuperate an integrated Native self, which transcends the hegemonic borders of the U.S. to embrace the broader scope of the Americas. They count on memory to sustain their community and to amend American History to be America’s histories. In delineating Native American migrant experience across the continent, I will also touch on the issues of forced removal, diaspora (meaning both “off root” and “scattering the seeds”), community connection, tribal memory, and national history in Taiwan aboriginal context as a referential framework to open up introspective spaces for trans-Pacific indigenous studies.
Ashok Mathur (Thompson Rivers University , Kamloops, BC, Canada), "Carriers of Possibility: Indigeneities Expanding Across Media"
Reflecting on the landmark Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en land claim trial, one of the lawyers for the First Nations team, Leslie Hall Pinder notes that when white “justice” meets First Nations history, there is an ultimate impasse. “As lawyers we don’t have to take any responsibility to construct a world. We only have to destroy another’s construction. We say no. We are the civilized, well-heeled, carriers of no. We thrive on it. Other races die” (Carriers of No: After the Land Claims Trial). But various acts of resistance, often developed through and around new media art and networking projects, illustrate that there are alternatives to such nay-saying. Through the use of new and expanded media – including film, video, web-art, podcasts, and
portable/performative art projects – First Nations and other indigenous artists are creating new modes of seeing art, education, and activism. This presentation will trace the use of expanded media as used by indigenous artists in collaboration with other artist groups and institutions. The focus will be on the notion of the “carriers of
possibility,” that particular space where roadblocks (to education, resources, practices) are removed by innovative projects that employ new media to address historic
inequities and discrepancies.
Artists whose work demonstrates this practice include Lakota artist Dana Claxton, Dogrib writer Richard van Camp, Métis/Tlinget curator Candice Hopkins, and Métis performer Cheryl L’Hirondelle. Claxton’s film/video and installation projects disrupt normative viewings of First Nations history and insist on alternate readings. Van Camp’s work around digital storytelling brings aboriginal works into the classroom and to remote areas through the use of web-based pedagogies. Hopkins curatorial work within artist centres and institutions facilitates the work of indigenous artists and juxtaposes them within a variety of venues. And L’Hirondelle’s
performance/media practice works through language and image to distribute a politics of intervention and education through the web and through expanded media.
By looking at these artists and discussing the possibilities they bring forward, this presentation will also look at The Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada, a project afforded by a Canada Research Chair in Cultural and Artistic Inquiry, to illustrate how such a centre can work in tandem with artist practices to develop new forms of communication through indigenous knowledge networks. Rose Hsiu-Li Juan (National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan),
(Re-enchanting the Cosmos: Simon Ortiz, Susan Power, and Countering Dominant Scientific Narratives
most recognized quotes in history, heard by a global television audience of 500
million while a quarter of a million miles away, the first man pressed his boot onto the lunar surface in 1969. The people of Taiwan, too, watched in amazement while, at the same time, experiencing a disenchantment with their own ancient moon myths.
Revisiting the moment that highlighted the zenith of space technology for scientific America, this paper will launch an inquiry into the contradiction of enchantment and disenchantment, and explore a narrative counter to Western Science’s narrative of astronautical triumph illustrated in two Native American literary works. In “Men on the Moon,” Simon Ortiz invokes a kind of knowledge other than that provided by Western Science. In Grass Dancer ("Moon Walk"), Susan Power highlights a mythopoetic vision of the cosmos. Both texts represent a radically different way of looking at and being in the world, one that is deeply embedded in the indigenous cultures of Native North America. Each text works to turn the sense of wonder from a human-centered celebration of a sterile conquest to the appreciation of humans as part of the cosmos, which has always been nourishing to, and nourished by, human imagination.
Ortiz’s and Power’s stories about the moon landing suggest that Native authors are working towards a “reenchantment” of the world and writing themselves into mainstream culture, while encoding their works with alternative notions of what it means to inhabit the earth as human beings. Being imaginatively immersed in the world provides a way to reassess a Weberian disenchanted world as a result of intellectualization and the development of scientific rationality. Weber argued that the world was tamed by scientific calculation, and, in the process, deprived of its preexistent meanings and aura. Recent scholars like Morris Berman argue that modern science, far from being a means to the ultimate truth, is part of a cultural gestalt that evolved with capitalist social condition and ideology. The
“reenchantment of the world, then, is a notion that marks the beginning of an attempt to create an epistemology of participating consciousness in living in the world,
something that is not usually cultivated in the dominant scientific, industrial culture, since it infuses life with meaning and a deep sense of belonging.
This study of Ortiz and Power will seek to catalyze a dialogue between culture and nature, technology and spirituality, rationality and magic, and aim at a
transhemispheric, trans-cultural understanding of Native American belief systems which position humans in the universe. This paper is not an argument for mysticism
or "naive animism", but for a more mature, holistic worldview that promotes a counter narrative to Western notions of “progress.” To re-enchant the cosmos is to integrate humans into the world again and contribute to the re-awakening of the cosmos as a community.
Birgit Däwes (University of Würzburg, Germany), "Web/Sites: Space, Time, and Community in Contemporary Native American Performance"
"The village must teach us to make the globe a world." (Gayatri Spivak) Our time, as Homi Bhabha has argued, is a "moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion." Especially in this context of an
increasingly transnational globe (an orientation which has always been part and parcel of indigenous North American cultures), notions of geographical, political, cultural, and spiritual space figure centrally in the constitution of cultural identity, both individual and collective. Land, landscape, home, and nation, as well as the temporal axis of historical heritage no longer constitute static entities but are continuously reshaped by acts of contact, border-crossing, intercultural dialogue and exchange.
Contemporary Native North American performance particularly negotiates space and time on stages, in museums, and in outdoor settings as metamorphic cultural coordinates of community formation. With the examples of Tomson Highway, a Cree playwright from Canada, and James Luna, a Luiseño / Diegueño performance artist from California, this paper will examine the ways in which indigenous theater transhemispherically maps diverse dimensions of "global cultural flow" (Arjun Appadurai). While Highway's final part of a trilogy, Rose (1999), foregrounds the struggles over political sites and personal traumata to explore the dynamics of ethnic or gendered Self/Other dichotomies, Luna's contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale, Emendatio, challenges stereotypical indian simulacra to illuminate the past and present, local and global layers of Native American identity. With settings on a fictional reserve in Ontario and in the Southern Californian hills, respectively; outlining liminal, circular, and transcendent spaces, and with a culturescape ranging from a nineteenth-century missionary to Elvis Presley, both works contest linear and hierarchical notions of place (as a centrifugal fabric of core and periphery) and time (or History as progress). In their shared emphasis on different languages and the processes of translation, Rose and Emendatio offer exemplary alternatives to mainstream globalization and replace hegemonic topographies by dynamic,
transversal, and web-like structures of conjunction. As they connect different sites of production (a university theater in Toronto, the National Museum of the American
Indian, and a Renaissance palazzo in Venice), they bridge boundaries between specific communities, nations, and continents. Moreover, in their merging of music, songs, dance, photography, pastiche, ritual, video projections, dialogue and written text into transdisciplinary, globally accessible forms of art, both Rose and Emendatio challenge and transcend conventional boundaries of genre. In line with the critical process of what Karen Halttunen calls "groundwork, an active engagement in the making and remaking of place," these performances thus provide significant impulses for the changing methodologies of (Native) American Studies at large.
附錄二： ASA 2008 CFP
Call for Proposals: ASA Convention
“Back Down to the Crossroads: Integrative American Studies in
Theory and Practice”
October 16-19, 2008, Albuquerque, NM
The 2008 ASA Program Committee invites colleagues in American Studies and all related disciplines to submit proposals for individual papers, entire sessions, presentations, performances, films, roundtables, workshops, conversations, or alternative formats described below on any topic dealing with American cultures, including topics in disciplines that have been under-represented in American Studies research and teaching. The ASA Annual Meeting is open to anyone having an
interdisciplinary interest in the study of American cultures.
Proposals must be submitted through the the ASA's online submission system, which can be found at http://www.theasa.net. The online submission site will open on December 1, 2007. Deadline for submission of proposals is January 25, 2008.
Meeting Theme
The theme for the 2008 ASA Convention is “Back Down to the Crossroads: Integrative American Studies in Theory and Practice.”
The idea of “the crossroads” has long served as an important structuring metaphor in American Studies. The ASA Crossroads website, a prominent university press publications series, and our 2004 meeting have all keyed on the word, embracing its evocation of intersections and possibilities. Bluesman Robert Johnson, according to legend, cut his deal with the devil “down at the crossroads,” which should also remind us that the site is a place not only of possibility, but of seduction and danger. Has the frequent use of the metaphor led us to see the crossroads as a destination—of cultures crossing, disciplines in dialogue, human geographies in motion—rather than a journey of chance meetings and productive uncertainties? Has American Studies focused on certain kinds of travels along certain kinds of roads, forgetting sometimes to pause, stand apart, and look around? The 2008 Program Committee proposes another deal with the devil, returning back down to the crossroads to risk the old metaphor against the possibility of a new and integrative vision of American Studies. Our use of crossroads is meant to reflect a place of simultaneity, an open space for taking stock and cultivating a capacious vision of a broad terrain.
The Program Committee for the 2008 Annual Meeting seeks proposals that will situate the work of American Studies at a new figuration of the crossroads, one that encapsulates, surveys, and establishes dialogues among the programmatic and intellectual initiatives of the last decade. We see one important road running between two apparent destinations: multicultural ethnic studies, on the one hand, and, on the other, the trans- and inter-national initiatives of recent years. Over the last decade or so, American and Ethnic Studies scholars have engaged in a variety of discussions about the relation between these two areas. One powerful structuring question, for instance, has been whether American Studies can serve as a “home” for various ethnic studies practices, and if so, how such rapprochements might restructure both fields. This dialogue remains in the category of unfinished business.
Over roughly the same period of time, the American Studies Association has also sought to de-center both “America” and the United States in relation to the rest of the world, with important efforts to open up dialogues with international scholars, both at our annual meetings and through meetings and exchanges around the world. Under the keyword “transnational,” we have explored diasporas, migrations, militarism, locality and localism, the global commons, the vexed place of the nation-state, borders and borderlands, among other topics and ideas. We have tried to create the occasions for understanding the U.S. in other contexts, as seen from a range of locations. This effort, too, must be considered unfinished. And yet, both of these movements have matured to the point at which they demand a broader field of discussion and more focused intellectual and institutional exchange. Just as
intra-national dynamics of race and citizenship, colonization and ethnic formation are imbricated in global histories, supra-national processes of empire, migration and diaspora are anchored in national and regional contexts of belonging and exclusion, politics and power.
We also see a second road crossing the first, with its own distinct pair of destinations. It runs between explorations of the local, project-based, community production of knowledge and our obligation and desire to participate meaningfully as intellectuals in the public, civic life of the world. Even as initiatives in ethnic studies and
international scholarship have moved forward, so too has the recognition that many American Studies interests exist most vitally in public institutions and community organizations outside college and university contexts. Collaboration within and across institutional lines offers us one of our most important paths toward the future. Independent scholars, K-16 educators, artists, and scholars based in museums, arts
organizations, historical societies, and governmental agencies have all been important participants in recent American Studies work that crosses a range of institutional settings. Programmatic initiatives and active Site Resource Committees have made community-based collaboration a key theme in our recent meetings. Here too, much work remains to be done. At the same time, many American Studies scholars have continued the long-standing practice of demanding a role in civic life, in the broadest and most activist sense. If we reach out to students, publics, and communities, we also want—and need—to influence the leaders, officials, opinion-shapers, and constituents that make up civil society. How do we function as scholars, educators, and citizens, and how can we make our activities count in ways that seem to make a difference? Many have found the last decade disheartening in this respect, even while some of our own members have been powerfully creative in exploring the practices of citizenship, public spaces, and responsive scholarship.
We seek panels and individual papers situated at three distinct levels of engagement with these crossroads. First, we seek proposals that advance these discrete areas of inquiry—multicultural, transnational, public and civic scholarship—by presenting excellent and innovative work from all disciplines and approaches. Second, we look for proposals that explore “single” roads, placing “multicultural-transnational” or “community-civic” in productive dialogue. And finally, we will particularly value proposals that are integrative across these domains, and that encourage participants to consider the relations and tensions existing among these—and other—critical
concepts. We encourage proposals for panels and papers that will allow our intellectual community to take stock of the diverse initiatives of the last decade through scholarship that is connective, dialogic, and reflective. We welcome the special lenses that might be brought to such crossroads scholarship through queer studies, sexuality studies, performance studies, Pacific and Atlantic Studies, cultural geography, and a wide range of other disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and
multi-disciplinary approaches.
While emphasizing the broadest possible canvas of excellent work in American Studies and its interdisciplinary partner fields, we call special attention to two focused fields of interest, both of which offer new opportunities for integrative American Studies. In recognition of our meeting in Albuquerque, one of the heartlands of Native North America, we encourage proposals that exemplify the possibilities and the centrality of the category of the indigenous in the practice of American Studies. And in recognition of the long history of American Studies engagement with critical social and political movements, we suggest that the time is long past for a
consideration of ecological issues, movements, and strategies. We thus encourage proposals that open new ground in the culture-based study of the environment and environmental movements.
Albuquerque, the site of our 2008 annual meeting, is itself an important crossroads location, uniting the central east-west route across the southern part of the continent with a north-south highway active at least as far back as the ancestral Pueblo people. We invite meeting participants to join us in exploring the meetings of cultures and peoples in this region—at once the American Southwest and Mexican North, the West of the deep South, and the East and Southeast of the Pacific Rim. Albuquerque is a crossroads not only in terms of its borderlands geography, its location between indigenous nations, and its situating of multiple human migrations. It crosses the temporal as well, with a “colonial present” that seems to saturate every space, with the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and monuments and memorials to Spanish colonizers and the atomic age all reflecting efforts to build a modernity atop an insistent colonial past.
The committee encourages proposals that investigate a full range of cultural and social expression, including performance, material culture, foodways, sports, media, music, technology, medicine and public health, literature, dance and public arts. We particularly welcome sessions that include participants from outside the United States, and we strongly encourage proposals that mix together participants’ disciplines, domains, institutional locations, geographies, and backgrounds.
Modest travel, lodging and per diem funds may be available for non-academic participants but are limited by the Program Committee's "discretionary" budget. Those participants may request funds during April 2008, and the Program Committee may honor a limited number of such requests. Although the Program Committee may accept proposals that include non-academic participants, it does not thereby obligate itself to provide them with grants. Indicate alternative actions should the program committee not be able to grant your request. Please mail formal, written requests for funding, post-marked in April, to: Convention Director, American Studies Association, 1120 19th St. NW Suite 301, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Proposal Submissions
We encourage you to consult Getting on the ASA Meeting Program: A Practical Guide
_practical_guide/ before you submit a proposal.
Please carefully read the proposal submission requirements and guidelines below before proceeding to use the online submission site. Follow the directions precisely and start the application process early. The ASA staff is eager to help people submit their sessions and papers, but it is much easier to do that work when the staff is not pushed up against the deadline. If you encounter any problems please contact us at annualmeeting@theasa.net.
We accept proposals only through our online submission site. Emailed or posted proposals will NOT be accepted. To submit a proposal for a complete session or for an individual paper click here http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/theasa/theasa08 Deadline for submissions is January 25, 2008.
There are a number of ways that our membership could help both themselves and the program committee when using the on-line system. First, ASA guidelines clearly state that a member may appear only once on the program. When members do not heed this advice, they create more work for the program committee as well as jeopardize both of the panels for which they have committed themselves. Second, we encourage members who have agreed to participate in a panel or have submitted a paper not to then double register as commentator and chair. Third, ASA guidelines state that sessions should reflect institutional and disciplinary diversity. One of the benefits of attending a national conference is to interact with scholars from institutions and fields other than our own. So, when proposals arrived with presenters from only one
institution or field they are less attractive to a program committee regardless of content. Finally, it is important to remember that the competition for these slots is extremely competitive.
Proposal Types
Proposals on any topic dealing with American Studies may be submitted for traditional paper sessions. Proposals may be submitted for sessions with alterative formats including sessions with papers and sessions without papers (see below). Proposals may also be submitted for individual papers.
Proposals for sessions with papers, including traditional paper sessions, as well as those in talk, online, or exhibit formats, should indicate in a one-page description the session subject/s and the proposed format. Such proposals should also include all relevant information requested below, and must include abstracts for each individual presenter.
Proposals for sessions without papers, such as workshops, dialogues, and
performances, should indicate in a one-page description the session subject/s and the proposed format. Such proposals should also include all relevant information
requested below, though they need not include individual presenter abstracts.
Proposed presentations should represent work in progress, rather than published work. Presentations should offer unique, original work not presented elsewhere.
Standing Committee, Caucus, Taskforce, and Program Committee members are authorized and encouraged to submit session proposals. Proposals from organizations affiliated with the ASA are also welcome.
All Standing Committee, Caucus, Taskforce, Affiliated Society, and Program Committee member proposals must adhere to the same conditions, deadlines and restrictions as other session proposals, and are subject to review by the Program Committee.
Alternative Proposal Formats for Albuquerque 2008
The Program Committee supports innovative formats that disrupt the conventional "three people reading papers" format.
The Program Committee believes that we cannot think about new, powerful connections between the academy and the world if we use only conventional academic forms. The Committee is proposing, therefore, several formats different from conventional paper-reading sessions. The Committee urges you to consider them if they seem appropriate and useful.
In order to broaden the modes of presentation and discussion in the Annual Meeting program, we invite proposals in two broad categories of untraditional formats: A. Sessions with Papers.
Although these resemble conventional sessions in having a chair, presentation of papers to an audience, and commentary, papers in these sessions will not be read aloud, allowing more time for informed, informal, and engaged discussion. These sessions require an abstract.
"Talk" format. Presenters will write papers, as usual, and distribute them to the chair, commentator, and other panelists by the deadline. But in the session they will "talk"
their paper from notes, speaking directly to the audience rather than reading line-by-line.
On-line format. Presenters will post their papers on the Internet, via Crossroads, one month before the meeting. These sessions will be prominently marked in the program as intended primarily for an audience that has read the papers in advance and followed whatever on-line discussion they may have generated. The session will be devoted to formal commentary and group discussion.
Exhibit format. Presenters will post their materials on a large bulletin board that can accommodate text pages in large type, graphics, primary source extracts, etc. Video and audio clips can also be used. These sessions will feature three or four such
presentations grouped around a common theme. The first half of the session gives the audience time to read and discuss each exhibit with the presenters. The second half encourages group discussion, facilitated by a chair and commentators.
B. Sessions without Papers.
In past meetings, the ASA has already sponsored many kinds of alternative sessions: roundtables, conversations, performances, multi-media presentations, readings of creative work, workshops involving audience participation, and presentations linked to the community outside the hotel (community centers, museums, secondary schools, prisons, etc.). These formats will experiment with creative forms of expression, performance and dialogue that represent a significant departure to conventional presentations of papers.
Performative format. Presenters will perform their work. This could include the range of artistic performing arts (dance, music, drama, spoken word, performance art) to multi-media presentations (video, film, audio, digital media) and readings of creative fiction and non-fiction.
Dialogue format (Roundtables). Presenters will engage in dialogues with each other and the audience. Possible formats could include roundtables of academics; forums with scholars, community activists, mass or alternative media-makers and public officials; conversations between performing and/or visual artists, curators, and educators about aesthetic and expressive innovations or the challenges of developing public cultures in diverse communities. This format might be particularly well suited to creating linkages with the communities outside the hotel (community centers, performing arts centers, museums, secondary schools, prisons, libraries, and other public sites).
Workshop format. Presenters will create venues to verbally and physically interact with the audience. Educators, artists, and curators, for example, could lead these workshops to emphasize the interactive challenges and possibilities of
interdisciplinarity and American Studies.
We are excited about the possibilities for Albuquerque 2008. We hope you will join us in making this a stimulating, conversational, and useful conference for the American Studies Association and its members.
ASA Individual Paper Submission Instructions
All individual paper submitters will need the following:• Individual Paper Title (maximum of 15 words per title)
• Paper Abstract (maximum of 500 words per abstract)
• Session Keywords
• Special Requests (including audio-visual equipment)
• Individual Author information including: first name, last name, affiliation, e-mail address.
Those submitting individual paper proposals will receive a confirmation e-mail that the paper has been submitted. The Program Committee will organize as many
individual papers as possible into sessions. Individual paper submitters will each have a user account at the convention submission site
http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/theasa/theasa08 and can edit their personal information, paper titles, and abstracts. Proposals may be edited after submission only until January 25, 2008, but personal information may be updated at any time.
ASA Session Submission Instructions:
Session submitters will need the following from each session participant:
• Session Title (maximum of 15 words)
• Session Abstract (maximum of 500 words)
• Session Keywords
• Special Requests (including audio-visual equipment)
• Individual Paper or Presentation Titles (maximum of 15 words per title) except for sessions without papers
• Paper or Presentation Abstract (maximum of 500 words per abstract) except for sessions without papers
• Individual Author information including: first name, last name, affiliation, e-mail address.
The session submitter will receive a confirmation e-mail upon submission and will serve as the primary contact with panelists and the ASA. Session participants will each have an individual user account at the convention submission site
http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/theasa/theasa08 and can edit their personal information. The session submitter will be responsible for editing paper titles and abstracts. The submitter may edit the session proposal until January 25, 2008. Individuals may update their personal information through their own user account at any time.
Submission Restrictions and Guidelines
• Please note that each person is allowed to make and/or be listed as a participant on only one submission. The Program Committee reserves the right to eliminate from consideration those who submit and/or are listed as a participant on more than one proposal.
• So that as many members as possible will have the opportunity to be actively involved in the Annual Meeting, participants will be strictly limited to one formal appearance in one session on the program. A person may not
present a paper in one session and serve as a chair or commentator in the same session with papers or another session (with or without papers). Nor may a person serve as chair and/or commentator on more than one session at the same annual meeting. A session organizer may chair and present on the same session without papers. Those who otherwise have more than one appearance on a proposal or appear on two or more proposals will render those proposals ineligible for consideration by the Program Committee.
• Sessions submitted without a chair will not be considered. A person may chair and comment on the same session.
• If a panel has a commentator, he or she should not be the dissertation advisor of any member of the panel.
• Session organizers should seek out a mix of junior and senior panelists, as well as a mix of institutions represented by faculty and graduate student panelists.
• A major headache at all Annual Meetings is papers that go on for too long, wearying the audience and disrupting the schedule. Session organizers should make sure that their session begins on time, and that participants do not abuse the time limits. All sessions are 105 minutes in length. This includes the reading of papers, responses by the commentators and comments from the
audience. When an audience has sat through a typical session of three papers and one response by a commentator, they quite rightly feel cheated and frustrated if no time is left for audience participation. The following chart can be used by the session chair as a guide to allocating time during the session, assuming that one takes five minutes for introductions.
Session Length
Number of Papers or Presentations
Time Allowed per Paper or Presentation Time Allowed for a Single Commentator Time Allowed for Audience Comments 105 minutes 3 20 20 20 105 minutes 4 16 16 20 105 minutes 5 13 15 20
Participation Requirements
All participants on the convention program must be listed on the ASA membership roll by April 30, 2008. If a program participant does not join the ASA by April 30, 2008, he or she will not be listed in the printed program book and should be replaced immediately.
All members of overseas affiliated societies may participate in the convention as full members, i.e., may pay member registration fees.
On occasion, non-academic participants or specially invited distinguished academic speakers may, with written permission of the Executive Director, be exempted from the membership requirement. Applications for exemption shall be submitted in writing to the Executive Director of ASA by April 30, 2008.
All participants on the Convention program must pre-register for the
Convention by May 31, 2008. If a program participant does not pre-register for the convention by May 31, 2008, he or she will not be listed in the printed program book and should be replaced immediately.
Non-members must register at the non-member rate.
obligation to appear, and also to locate suitable replacements in the event of an unavoidable withdrawal.
Fees and Funding
Participant Registration Fee (postmarked on or before May 31, 2008): ASA Member or International Affiliate $70.00
ASA Member or International Affiliate-Income under $15,000 $50.00 ASA Member-Student/K-12 Educator $25.00
Non-Member $90.00
Non-Member-Income under $15,000/year $70.00 Non-Member-Student/K-12 Educator $40.00
All participants are responsible for obtaining the funding they need to attend the Annual Meeting. Neither the ASA nor the Program Committee can underwrite: travel funds, honoraria, per diem, or other subsidies for any participant, including
international scholars, non-academic participants, and specially invited speakers; breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, cocktail parties, receptions, and the like for
participants and others; professional or individual video tape recording of sessions or events.
Membership and registration fees are neither refundable nor transferable.
Forfeited registration fees will automatically transfer to the Baxter Travel Grant Fund. The Baxter Grants provide partial travel reimbursement to advanced graduate students who are members of the ASA and will travel to the convention in order to appear on the Annual Meeting program.
Program Decisions
The Program Committee will organize sessions from individual paper proposals and, on occasion, will combine individual papers with proposed full sessions. If your paper or panel is not accepted, the Committee may call upon you to play an alternative role at the meeting as a chair or commentator. To facilitate the Committee's work, please indicate on the online submission form whether you are willing to act as chair or commentator on another session. The Committee also invites self-nominations from ASA members to serve as chairs and commentators exclusively on sessions
After the January 25, 2008, deadline for submission of proposals, the Program Committee will meet to review the proposals and select the sessions to be held at the upcoming Annual Meeting. The Committee will approve proposals on the basis of their quality in relation to the others submitted. The Committee will also: attempt to include sessions on a wide variety of subjects and approaches, including scholarly, pedagogical, and professional subjects; consciously support the inclusion of panels focused on topics of concern to different minority groups; strive to balance its selections between topics of continuing interest and new topics to which little or no attention has been paid; look for sessions in which scholars in different fields engage one another on a common topic; and try to span different time periods and subject matters in sessions constructed from individual papers. There will be room for specialized sessions on particular subjects.
To avoid favoritism, the Committee will take care not to overload the sessions with faculty and graduate students from institutions represented by members of the
Committee. This does not disallow members of the Committee from presenting papers. The Committee will make every effort to assure diverse representation through the inclusion of minorities, women, graduate students, and international colleagues, and will seek to reflect the regional and disciplinary diversity of the Association's membership.
Notification and Participation
Once the Committee has finalized the program, all persons who have submitted proposals will be notified in writing of the Committee's decisions. Session organizers are responsible for notifying the members of the proposed panel of the Program Committee's decision. If you do not receive an official letter or e-mail by April 30, please contact the Office of the Executive Director, 1120 19th St. NW, Suite 301, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 467-4783. E-mail: annualmeeting@theasa.net The session chair will coordinate contact among the session participants to ensure maximum integration of presentations. Participants should send the session chair a brief biographical statement to be used in introductions.
If a session has a commentator, that session's participants must send copies of their completed papers to him or her by September 15, 2008.
It is not possible to guarantee any session or panelist a day or time on the program. If notified by April 30, the Program Committee will try to honor requests not to
No-Shows
The ASA reminds participants of their professional and ethical obligation to appear in person at their session at the annual meeting. No-shows are conspicuous in their absence. They inconvenience the chair and fellow presenters, as well as those attending their session. The American Studies Association defines a no-show as someone on the program who is not physically present at her/his session at the annual meeting and either (1) has not notified ASA in advance that s/he cannot attend the meeting by September 1, 2008, or (2) has not submitted a presentation to be read by the chair or another person at the meeting by September 1, 2008. No-shows will not be considered for the following year's program. If you notify ASA in advance or submit a presentation to be made by someone else at their session, you will not be penalized. You are responsible for finding your own alternative presenter.
For further information about the Call for Proposals, you may contact the Convention Coordinator at annualmeeting@theasa.net, the President-elect Phil Deloria
(pdeloria@umich.edu) or the Program Committee Co-chairs: Julie Ellison
(jeson@umich.edu), Nikhil P. Singh (nsingh@u.washington.edu), and Robert Warrior (warrior@ou.edu)
附錄三：
Guide to the Work of the 2008 Program Committee (PDF 另檔傳送)
