Postcolonial Asian America
For a special issue of
_Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies_
Guest Editors: Tina Chen and Viet Thanh Nguyen
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"What is Asian American culture?" While that is a
question that has primarily been the business of
Asian American Studies, it is increasingly a concern
of postcolonial theory as well. Asian American
culture's diasporic nature and its developing
significance as a material object of study denote
transformations of Asian American identity that
problematize the foundation of Asian American Studies.
In other words, the importance of Asian American
culture no longer stems from its racial dimension. As
Sau-ling Wong announced in a recent issue of Amerasia
Journal, Asian American cultural criticism is
experiencing a paradigm shift that can be considered as
a process of denationalization. Denationalization,
which moves away from cultural nationalist notions of
Asian American identity to situate Asian Americans in
a diasporic context, represents one of the ways in
which Asian Americanists are beginning to rethink
Asian American studies.
Our special issue, "Postcolonial Asian America,"
contributes to the process of such a rethinking by
reapproaching Asian American cultural production from a
postcolonial perspective in order to reconceptualize
what constitutes "Asian Americanness." This collection
calls for a broad range of essays that will explore
the multiethnic and multidisciplinary nature of Asian
American Studies as well as re-interrogate the historical
nature of Asian American cultural formation. Contributors
will be asked to develop new ways of examining Asian
American culture that complement or offer alternatives
to the paradigm of racial formation. These alternatives
might include: the development of stronger arguments
for the diasporic basis of Asian American cultures; an
emphasis upon the material nature of Asian American
culture and its contradictions; the prioritization of
gender and sexuality as theoretical lenses in the
examination of Asian American culture; the use of
postcolonial theory to address inter-Asian histories
of colonialism and imperialism that problematize
cultural nationalist notions of Asian American identity;
the exploration of the dangers of what Eric Liu has termed
"diasporic chic"; and an interrogation of Asian American
Studies' own colonizing tendencies.
We are particularly interested in essays, reviews,
and interviews that take advantage of the journal's
multimedia capabilities.
Deadlines for submission: Completed papers by 10/1/99.
Publication scheduled for Spring, 2000. We also plan to
turn this special issue of _Jouvert_ into an edited
collection.
Please submit queries, abstracts, or papers
(email or snail mail) to:
Tina Y. Chen
Box 1654B
Department of English
Vanderbilt University
Nashville TN 37203
Tina Y. Chen: tina.y.chen@Vanderbilt.Edu
or
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Department of English
University of Southern California
Los Angeles CA 90089
Viet Thanh Nguyen: vnguyen@rcf.usc.edu
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Tina Y. Chen
Assistant Professor
Department of English 1654B
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235
Phone: (615) 322-2296
Email: tina.chen@vanderbilt.edu
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