Date of publication: June 2015
Co-editors: Chingyen Mayer and Mohammad A. Quayum
The advent of globalization, voluntary and involuntary migration and displacement, technological innovations such as the internet, Skype, satellite TV, and YouTube, and the accelerated speed of modern means of transportation have given the concept of “home” a renewed significance. Stable concepts of home and belonging have become the exception rather than the norm. In Shame, for example, Salmon Rushdie writes, “We pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots… are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places” (84). For a myriad of reasons, a sizable segment of Asia’s population, wedged between different socio-political and cultural domains, between homes, and between different allegiances, are uprooted and residing in disaporic communities in America. The special issue seeks contributions that engage in the explorations of the “Unstable homes” in Asian American literature. Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):
• Homing and unstable home
• Home, real and imagined
• Place, displacement, exile, and homelessness
• Virtual home
• Transnational home
• Uprootedness and re-rooting
• Nostalgia and the reshaping of home/lands
• Longing for and belonging to a home
• The global impact of media and technology on “home”
• Diasporic spaces
• Inclusivity and exclusivity, visibility and invisibility
• Mobility and multiplicity
• Home-making, migrating, and home/unmade
• Dislocation, fragmentation, and disintegration
Please send a 300-word abstract to Dr. Chingyen Mayer (cmayer@siena.edu) or Dr. Mohammad A. Quayum (mquayum@gmail.com) by 15 September 2014. If a proposal is accepted, a full draft paper of 5000-7000 words should be submitted by 15 January 2015.
