The 1998 ASA Program Committee invites colleagues in American Studies and all related disciplines to submit proposals for individual papers, presentations, performances, films, round-tables, workshops, conversations, or entire sessions on any topic dealing with American cultures, including topics in disciplines that have been under-represented in American Studies research and teaching. All topics--the more imaginative, the better--will be given careful consideration. The greater multi- and interdisciplinarity reflected in a proposal, the greater its chances of acceptance. The ASA Annual Meeting is open to anyone having an interdisciplinary interest in the study of American culture and civilization.
The theme of the 1998 meetings, "American Studies and the Question of Empire: Histories, Cultures, and Practices," embraces the full range of scholarship conducted by researchers in American Studies. Questions about the place of America in the world animated the work of Henry Nash Smith and Perry Miller in the 1950s, influenced the revisionist work of Richard Slotkin and Annette Kolodny in the 1970s and 1980s, and still serve as stimuli for agreement and argument among contemporary scholars of westward and overseas expansion. Questions about collective memory and history in American culture animated the imagination of F.O. Matthiessen and Leo Marx in the post-World War II period, but these issues remain vitally important today in the work of scholars including Mary Helen Washington, Giles Gunn, Lawrence Levine, and Alan Trachtenberg. Contemporary scholarship in feminist studies, queer theory, postcoloniality, and cultural studies produce new objects and methods of study, but they also address the kinds of concerns about culture, power, social structure, and knowledge that informed the work of Kenneth Burke, Constance Rourke, Americo Paredes, C.L.R. James, D'arcy McNickle and others half a century ago. Using the centennial of 1898 as starting point, we hope to engage the Association at the Seattle meetings in spirited and productive conversations about issues of enormous epistemological, cultural, pedagogical and social significance.
At the 1997 meetings in Washington D.C., the co-chairs and program committee for the 1998 meetings were delighted by diverse responses to the initial theme statement. We would like to share some of the ideas for papers and panels that we heard from amongst this year's conference participants, in order to reiterate the breadth of the invitation to engage with the 1998 theme "American Studies and the Question of Empire: Histories, Cultures, and Practices."
The centennial of U.S. expansion into the Pacific and the Caribbean provides us with an opportunity to examine national historical narratives as forms that actively produce particular understandings about the American past, about its peoples and its practices. Yet the theme must not be read as soliciting work for discussion of 1898 only; the national history of "empire" extends to social, cultural, and economic processes that extend before and beyond explicit "imperial" moments, like 1898. While the centennial of 1898 offers us many ways to engage with the question of the history of U.S. empire with respect to the Pacific and the Caribbean, we explicitly invite participants to address the longer history that precedes and follows 1898 - from the conquest and colonization of Native peoples and the introduction of slavery by competing European empires before and through the founding and expansion of the United States, to the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia and beyond. Our call invites submissions that address historical narratives about empire and expansion, about commerce and combat, about patriotism and politics, and about culture and conquest, both before, during, and after 1898. Yet we are asking for something more as well; we encourage proposals that examine the ways in which national historical frameworks can obscure other identities, temporalities, and stories, for presentations that explore the ways in which displacements and immigration establish linkages across regions and territories that are not coterminous with the boundaries of the nation state, and for panels that excavate the hidden histories that link the nation with the imagination, patriotism with patriarchy, and the rise of scientific racism with the race for empire. This has important ramifications not only for how we read and receive history, but for how we teach it as well.
Indeed, a broad set of fields, topics, approaches, and objects of study fall within the scope of this call: from the French, British, and Spanish imperial conquests that preceded the founding of the nation to the U.S. and Canadian expansions that dispossessed and displaced Native peoples; from the U.S. military appropriation of lands formerly Mexican that led to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the ongoing policing of Mexican immigration along the Californian, New Mexican, and Texan borders; from the military, political, economic, and cultural involvements of the U.S. in the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, Cuba and Puerto Rico to the emergence of transnational industry and the role of U.S. capital in the economic development of S. Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and other Asian states and regions. Considerations of cultural imperialism extend from the construction and deployment of heterosexual marriage and domesticity, to schooling and educational curricula, to the mass media of film, journalism, television, and photography. But moreover, the 1998 theme targets discussions of history and historiography: How does the question of empire entail a different narration of the United States? How might the concept of empire be rethought and redefined from multiple perspectives and in different historical contexts? Not merely a question for American diplomatic history or for literary studies of national narratives from the seventeenth century to the present, we believe these issues also raise important questions for historians of culture, society, and economics, as well as for students of art, religion, folklore, politics, music, and virtually every other area of research within American Studies.
We were happy to learn that many conference participants this year were already imagining ways that different kinds of American Studies scholarship might play a productive role in next year's discussions. Scholars in African American Studies, for example, could find many relevant connections to the discussion of historical narratives of empire. Scholars from religious studies and art history imagined their contributions. Researchers doing ethnographic work in contemporary small towns in the midwest also found ways to speak to the theme of empire. We encourage members of the Association to continue to think about both the direct and indirect relevance of their work to the conference theme. To address the examples listed above, for instance: African Americans participated directly in the events of 1898 through service in the armed forces, debates in African American newspapers, and political responses to the intensely racialized discourse about expansion that permeated U.S. society at the time. But scholars from African American Studies might also address the ways in which U.S. expansion in the Pacific and Caribbean bore a direct relation to racial issues at home - to the betrayal of Reconstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow laws, to warfare against Native Americans, to the racialized appeals made in popular culture forms like the Minstrel Show and Wild West Show, to the creation of "whiteness" in the wake of immigration from Europe and Asia in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Scholars of other racial and ethnic groups might also draw connections between the processes of racialization, immigration, diaspora, and empire.
Religious Studies scholars might find research on missionaries overseas or the stance of religious groups at home on expansion relevant to the themes of next year's conference, but religion also played a role in debates within nineteenth century racism about the monogenic or polygenic origins of the world's population and the possibility of assimilation for colonized populations. Religion figured prominently in discussions of manifest destiny as well. But religion is also a crucial site for the construction of alternative histories, of narratives that question historical time as well as the centrality of the nation state to individual and group identity. Similarly, art historians might want to connect the signfiicance of representations of the U.S. landscape to issues of overseas expansion and concomitant conceptualizations of time and space. But art historians also could productively explore the links connecting visual imagery, collective memory, and national identity across historical periods. Ethnographers of contemporary small town life might want to explore specific memories and monuments that relate directly to 1898, but they also could provide valuable insight by presenting research on questions of how narratives of nation function as nodes in a network that includes many other temporalities, geographies, and beliefs.
This theme embraces the full range of scholarship conducted by scholars within American Studies. No social group exists outside of national narratives; no cultural practice emerges in isolation from tensions between the past and the present, the local and the global, the particular and the universal. Historical narratives and alternative histories complement and compete with one another in a variety of sites; the conflicts between different versions of the past often shape the ideologies, experiences, and understandings of people about power. We hope to continue the increasing awareness within the ASA of the importance of ethnic studies - African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano/a-Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies among others as dynamic and generative fields of research. At the same time, we believe that all objects of study, all paradigms for research, and teachers involved in all levels of schooling and education can make productive contributions to discussions on this theme.
Bakhtin says that the "word" is always half someone else's; our discussions about histories, cultures, and practices can make us aware of the words we share and the worlds we share under conditions of unequal power and injustice. At the same time, honest exploration of past and present divisions may lead eventually to unity and mutuality. We welcome diverse disciplinary approaches including (but not restricted to) diplomatic history, myth-image-symbol, social science, cultural studies, feminist studies, critical race studies, queer theory, and transnational critique. Explorations of law and labor, of schooling and sexuality, of religion and race, of communion and conflict all contain relevance for the re-examination of history, culture, and identities that we hope to promote through this theme. We encourage dialogue across positions and perspectives, work that is interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and international. We hope to use the occasion of next year's conference to illuminate our understanding of both the past and the present, to promote conversations appropriate to the complex and crucially important problems we face. We hope to draw productively on the best of the old and the best of the new scholarship in our field, to explore the relationship between dominant national histories and emergent subjects, practices, and collectivities.
The Program Committee will look favorably at proposals that challenge the traditional format of Annual Meetings, such as sessions at which a topic is addressed from radically diverse disciplinary or historical perspectives as well as pedagogically oriented and performance-oriented proposals, multimedia presentations, and sessions that solicit audience involvement. We solicit comparativist proposals, especially interhemispheric topics and proposals that compare America's cultures with similar/different cultures elsewhere. Finally, we wish to take advantage of the location of the meeting to encourage sessions that make use of Seattle, Washington's, cultural and historical offerings. Proposals may be submitted for entire sessions, presentations, performances, films, round-tables, workshops, conversations, or individual papers on any topic dealing with American Studies. Proposed presentations should represent work-in-progress, rather than published work. Individuals should include a title and one-page abstract of the paper or presentation and a short vitae (maximum 2 pages in length) of the presenter.
Proposals for entire sessions should include: (1) a proposal cover sheet (see sample, Figure 1), (2) the session title and a one-page description of the issues and questions the session will address; (3) "key words" identifying the discipline(s), historical period(s), and subject matter(s) of the session; (4) the paper or presentation title, name of presenter, and one-page abstract of each paper or presentation in the session; (5) the name of a single individual designated as the session organizer and principal contact; (6) the names of the chair and the commentator(s), each of whom has confirmed his or her willingness to serve on the proposed panel if it is accepted; (7) a contact data sheet listing home and office telephone numbers and preferred mailing and e-mail addresses (especially if different from institutional addresses), and (8) short vitae (maximum 2 pages in length) of each participant, including chairs and commentators. Proposals for workshops, round-tables, and conversations should suggest the issues to be discussed and indicate the proposed format as well as provide all relevant information requested above. Those proposing experimental sessions should indicate how the audience might be integrated into the event while proposals for performance-oriented sessions might include tapes, videos, or other documentation (including reviews of past performances). Please note that each person is allowed to make only one submission; the Program Committee reserves the right to eliminate from consideration altogether those who submit more than one proposal.
Proposals for individual papers should include: (1) the paper or presentation title, name of presenter, and one-page abstract of the paper or presentation (2) a contact data sheet listing home and office telephone numbers and preferred mailing and e-mail addresses (especially if different from institutional addresses), (3) short vitae (maximum 2 pages in length), and (4) "key words" identifying the discipline(s), historical period(s), and subject matter(s) of the paper.
The Program Committee will organize sessions from individual paper proposals and, on occasion, will combine individual papers with proposed full sessions. The Committee also will draw chairs and commentators from the pool of individuals who have submitted proposals for the Annual Meeting. If your paper or panel is not accepted, you may well be called upon to play an alternative role at the meeting. To facilitate the Program Committee's work, please indicate on your proposal whether you will be willing to be considered as chair or commentator on another session. The Committee invites self-nominations from ASA members to serve as chairs and commentators on sessions constructed from individual submissions.
Approximately six weeks after the 23 January 1998 deadline for submission of proposals, the Program Committee will meet to review all valid 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 attempt to include sessions on a wide variety of subjects and approaches and to distribute its selections among traditional and non-traditional subjects, as well as among scholarly, pedagogical, and professional subjects. It will consciously support the inclusion of panels focused on topics of concern to different minority groups. The Committee will strive to balance its selections between topics of continuing interest and new topics to which little or no attention has been paid. The Committee will look for sessions in which scholars in different fields engage one another on common topics. Likewise, it will look to span different time periods and subject matters in individual sessions. There will be room for specialized sessions on particular subjects.
Once the Committee has met, all persons who have submitted proposals, e.g., the individual paper proposer or the session organizer, 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 by April 30th, please contact the Office of the Executive Director, 1120 19th Street, NW, Suite #301, Washington, D.C. 20036 or <pp001366@mindspring.com> and we will investigate the circumstances and let you know the results of our inquiry posthaste.
In order 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 another session. Nor may a person serve as chair and/or commentator on more than one session at the same annual meeting.
The chair and commentator should usually be different people in case one cannot make it to the meeting. The commentator should not be the dissertation adviser of any member of the panel. Panels submitted without a chair or commentator will not be considered.
To avoid the appearance of favoritism, care will be taken not to overload the sessions with faculty and graduate students from institutions represented by members of the Program Committee. This does not disallow members of the Committee from presenting papers.
Sessions should usually reflect a regional range of institutions and a mix of panelists' current and doctoral institutions. It is also desirable to seek out a mix of junior and senior panelists. Care will be taken not to overload sessions with faculty and graduate students from the same institution. Every effort will be made to assure diverse representation through the inclusion of minorities, women, graduate students, and international colleagues. The Program Committee will incorporate minority scholars, perspectives, and subjects in the annual meeting program. The Program Committee also will seek to reflect in the final program the regional and disciplinary diversity of the Association's membership.
The Annual Meeting program is routinely blocked out for 13-15 time-slots, including two or three on Thursday, five each on Friday and Saturday, and one or two on Sunday. The number of concurrent sessions now possible varies from 10 on Thursday to 15 or 16 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This reflects the Council's sense that we now have about the right number of sessions (175 minimum) and program participants (circa 850 minimum) to sustain the optimum balance between full and equitable participation and selectivity and focus. That approximate number may change in the future, if ASA continues to grow, but for now it seems to embody effectively the Council's goal of inclusiveness. The Program Committee determines the schedule including the time to be allotted each session. Most panels now run 105 minutes in length; some run 90 minutes, a few run 120 minutes. Occasionally, deviations from these time-slots, (i.e., the addition of evening sessions, experimental formats, or special plenary sessions) may be arranged but only after consultation with the President, the Executive Director, and Executive Committee. The Executive Committee's approval is required before any deviations from these time-slots may occur. It is not possible to expand the number of longer sessions except by running sessions in the evenings. Yet longer sessions may be necessary to accommodate longer presentations or more panelists and vice versa. Some people argue that 18 minutes per paper on average is too short, but others think that 35 minutes per paper on average leads to boredom. The Program Committee will have to try accommodating a variety of formats and time frames.
The Program Committee will determine the length of each session. And papers should be adapted precisely to the time. The length of time for presentations and comments should be divided proportionately among the panelists. There should be adequate time for audience response. Individual presentations should be planned accordingly. The chair has the final word regarding the allocation of time within a session, so contact him/her directly if you have questions about the length of your presentation. The session chair also will coordinate contact among the participants to ensure maximum integration of the sessions. Participants should send the session chair a brief biographical statement and vita to be used in introductions. Finally, you must send copies of your completed paper to the session commentator by October 1, 1998. It is not possible to guarantee any session or panelist a day or time on the program.
All participants on the convention program must be listed on the ASA membership rolls by April 30, 1998. All members of overseas affiliated societies may participate in the convention as full members. Membership in the ASA may be obtained by calling Natalie Garrity at the Johns Hopkins University Press at 1-800-548-1784 or (410) 516-6945; the Press does accept Mastercard and Visa payments. The Press will process ASA memberships; it will not process convention registrations, however. Ms. Garrity can also verify your current membership status.
On occasion, non-academic participants, or specially invited distinguished academic speakers (who are not practicing Americanists) may, with written permission of the Chairs of the Program Committee, be exempted from the membership requirement. Public practitioners of American Studies may not be exempted from the membership requirement. Applications for exemption must be submitted in writing to the Executive Director of ASA by April 30, 1998. The American Studies Association now has more than 5,200 members. They come from many fields: history, literature, religion, art, Women's Studies, philosophy, music, science, folklore, ethnic studies, anthropology, material culture, museum studies, sociology, government, communications, law, education, library science, secondary education, popular culture, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, African-American Studies, Asian-American Studies, Native American Studies, Latino/a Studies. Americanists, working in one of these allied or constituent fields of American Studies, may not be exempted from the membership requirement.
If a program participant does not join the ASA or CAAS by April 30, 1998, he or she must replaced.
All participants on the convention program must register for the convention by June 30, 1998. All members of overseas affiliated societies participating in the program may pay member registration fees. Non-members must register at the non-member rate.
Participant Registration Fee (postmarked on or before June 30, 1998)
Participant Registration Fee (postmarked on or before June 30, 1998)
ASA Member $60.00* ASA Member - Household Income under $15,000/year $40.00* ASA Member - Student $20.00* Non-Member $80.00 Non-Member - Household Income under $15,000/year $60.00 Non-Member - Student $30.00
*Members of affiliated overseas societies may register at the ASA member's rate.
If a program participant does not register for the convention by June 30, 1998, he or she will not be listed in the printed program book and should be replaced immediately.
The Program Committee advises each participant of his/her professional and ethical obligation to appear, and also to locate suitable re-placements in the event of an unavoidable withdrawal. The Committee intends to publicize and implement in a more serious way the ASA's official policy concerning program "no-shows" (persons who accept invitations to appear on the program, but who fail to appear, or else withdraw for various reasons). The reasons being given by "no-shows" on the ASA program are often inappropriate. For example, a person's failure to meet a publication deadline or raise institutional travel funds is not an adequate reason for failing to appear. The ASA will pass on the names of "no-shows" at recent meetings to the Program Committees planning future meetings.
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; or professional or individual video or tape recording of any session.
The Program Committee, in cooperation with the Association's President and Executive Director, may explore the possibility of obtaining extramural institutional or foundation support for international scholars or specially invited speakers who will participate formally in the Annual Meeting. Care will be taken to showcase sessions involving international scholars, but the Program Committee should not approve any session that depends upon extramural funding without having obtained a firm commitment of institutional or foundation support beforehand.
The Program Committee may specially invite non-academic speakers, presenters, or performers who may be offered membership or registration fee waivers. These waivers will be charged to the program committee's budget. But the ASA does not pay honoraria or speakers' fees.
Standard audio-visual equipment, which includes slide and overhead projectors, VCR and CD players, audio-cassette players, and 16mm film projectors, essential to the presentation will be ordered from a supplier at the hotel-- if participants are unable to furnish their own. Rental equipment is extremely costly, and the ASA will not pay for costly non-standard equipment, for any equipment requested after April 30, 1998, or for equipment ordered at the time of the convention. The specific equipment requested for your presentation should be listed on your proposal. It is your responsibility to confirm the accuracy of the listing now. The deadline for making changes in requests, in writing, is April 30th.
Send one original and six copies of all materials- the proposal, the accompanying information, and the proposal cover sheet--by Friday, January 23, 1998 to: 1998 ASA Program Committee, c/o American Studies Association, 1120 19th Street, NW, Suite 301, Washington, DC 20036; 202/467-4783. Do not submit proposals directly to members of the Program Committee. No fax or e-mail submissions can be accepted. Those wishing to confirm receipt of their proposal must include a self-addressed, stamped postcard with their submission.
Figure 1. Sample Proposal Cover Sheet Please provide the following data in the format presented here. This format is designed to ease the collection and entry of this data and to decrease greatly the errors that can arise between a proposer's intentions and a typist's reading of them. This format is based on the actual presentation of session information as given in the annual meeting's Program Book. For other models and examples, consult a previous Book.
Session Title: The Social Power of the "Natural" CHAIR: Donald Worster, Department of History, University of Kansas PAPERS: Jennifer Price, Department of History, Yale University
The Natural World of Television
Mark Seltzer, Department of English, Cornell University
Techno-Primitivism
Andrew Ross, American Studies Program, New York University
A Brief History of ScarcityCOMMENT: Ann Fabian, Department of History, Columbia University
Please list standard audio-visual equipment that may be provided at ASA's expense. You may select from slide projector, overhead projector, VCR player, CD player, audio cassette player, 16-mm projector.