56th Annual Comparative Literature Symposium

Transnational American Studies Revisited

April 12-13, 2024 (Central Standard Time)

Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Humanities Building

The symposium is generously supported by the TTU Office of Research and Innovation, The Dean's Office of College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of International Affairs, the Department of English, the Department of CMLL, and the Department of History.

Download Symposium Program

Download CFP

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, Professor of English, and Director of American Studies Program, Stanford University, USA

Dr. Alfred Hornung, Professor and Chair of American Studies, Editor-in-chief of Journal Of Transnational American Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany

Dr. King-Kok Cheung, Research Professor of English (2023-) and Professor Emeritus of English and Asian American Studies (2022-), University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Dr. Rob Wilson, Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Call for Proposals

What would American Studies look like if the transnational rather than the national were at its center? It has been twenty years since Shelley Fisher Fishkin first challenged us with the provocative question and articulated the transnational turn in American Studies in her 2004 presidential address to the American Studies Association in Atlanta, Georgia. What has transnational American Studies achieved as an interdisciplinary field in the past twenty years? How has it transformed American Studies in terms of methodology, periodization, and geographical location? How do we employ its critical framework to investigate literary/cultural productions/phenomena on a global scale? What does transnational American Studies mean today when isolationist ideologies are gaining ascendance in the US and China? In what ways has globalization been synonymous with Americanization? Why will transnational American Studies continue to matter in the eras of Covid 19, climate change, and Cold War 2.0?

This symposium welcomes papers and presentations that would address but are not limited to the following topics, themes, and questions:

• • Globalization, Americanization, and transnational American Studies
  • The geopolitics of the transpacific: why and how has the Asia Pacific been retooled as the Indo-Pacific?
  • Anglo-American literature on the South Pacific and the Asia Pacific as the new frontier in the American national imaginary in the nineteenth century
  • Transatlantic literatures and cultures
  • The Black Atlantic and African American experiences
  • The Black Pacific and African American revolutionaries
  • Asian American literature, culture, and the transpacific movement
  • Literature and War: the Pacific Theater, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror
  • Cold War literatures and cultures
  • The Cold War, the Bandung Conference, and the Asian-African alliance
  • The Cold War, Pacific ascendancy, and the military industrial complex
  • Cold War 2:0, AI technology, and the New Global Order
  • Eco-poetics and climate change
  • Bollywood and Hollywood Cinemas
  • Border Studies and Refugee Crises
  • Hip-pop, K-pop, and global popular culture
  • Manga, Anime, and the Monster of the Transpacific
  • Gangster, Violence, and the Kung Fu Cinema
  • Cyberpunk and transpacific speculative fiction
  • Social media and transnational communities
  • How has the growth in the digitization of archives shaped transnational American Studies?
  • What role might translation studies play in transnational American Studies in the future?
  • What is the importance of collaboration in transnational American Studies?
  • How can tactics and an ethos of “worlding” be activated to oppose the dominant telos of neo-capitalist globalization?
  • How can American Studies alter its national or transnational frameworks to deal with “planetary” concerns befitting the devastating environmental consequences and extinctions of the Anthropocene?

Please send your 100-word abstract and 1-paragraph bio info and direct your questions to Dr. Yuan Shu (eng.complit@ttu.edu). The deadline for submission is December 31, 2023.