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CFP: “Migrations and Circulations” at Southern ASA Conference 2017
09 Feb 2016 by Robert Oppedisano

2017 Biennial Conference of the Southern American Studies Association / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / March 16-18, 2017

This interdisciplinary American Studies conference will explore interactive flows of ideas, discourses, bodies, and objects across cultures, populations, periods, and geographies. These movements span a gamut of involvement: some promoting generative transculturation and entrepreneurial innovation with others enforcing established powers in ways that produce exclusion and violence. Our collective inquiries will challenge the sufficiency of local, tribal, regional, and national frames by presenting new research in American Studies that charts dynamic interconnections and exchanges. We welcome critical and creative transgressions that refigure traditional scopes and -scapes in intersectional, comparative, transnational, and global ambits in ways that dramatize how every location embodies each of these registers.

Possible approaches are suggested but not limited by the following:

*adoptions and adaptations of stories, songs, motifs, and performances across varied communities
*mixed, hybrid, and blended practices, aesthetics, languages, genetics, identities, recipes
*interethnic and transcultural influences and appropriations
*pathways through different genealogies of belonging and inventions of memory
*translations of events, documents, and spaces into and through digital domains
*creative pedagogies and alternative performances for generating and transmitting learning
*transmutations of personal identities, historical reputations, and spatial stories across time
*migrations of refugees, emigres, defectors, asylum-seekers, contractees, adoptees, retirees
*circulations of tourists, deportees, absconders, wanderers, and personae non gratae
*forced migrations and restrictions on movement, such as slavery, removal, incarceration, detention, probation
*the pushes and pulls of corporate and labor relocations, including urbanization, outsourcing, franchising
*imports and exports and the transportation and consumption of these resources and products
*contending conceptualizations of freedom, equality, justice, patriotism, and citizenship

Submissions for sessions should include a panel title and 250-word abstract as well the 500-word paper proposals, two-page CVs, and requests for technology that are required for each individual presenter. Please send all proposals in either MS Word document of PDF to sasa2017@unc.edu. The deadline for submitting all proposals is Friday, September 30, 2016.

In the interest of involving as many people in our conference as possible, each conference attendee may be listed in the conference program as a participant in a maximum of two sessions. While we welcome a range of formats, we ask that panels be designed so that they fit within a 75-minute time frame with at least 15 minutes dedicated to discussion. As always, we especially encourage graduate students to attend and present research.

The Critoph Prize recognizes an award for the best graduate student paper presented at each SASA conference. It includes a certificate and a check for $250, as well as recognition at the next biennial gathering. Deadline for graduate students to submit the papers they are presenting at the 2017 conference as a PDF attachment to SASAcritophprize@gmail.com is noon on March 16, 2017.

 www.southernamericanstudiesassociation.org