CFP: Modern Language Association Annual Conference 2009 Panel Proposal

Panel Title: Memory Work and Southeast Asian American Narrative

This panel focuses its attention on Southeast Asian American narrative. Beginning with the concept of "memory work," which suggests labors of remembrance and debates over the forms such remembrance takes, this panel seeks presentations that examine the connections between history and memory in Southeast Asian American cultural production. For example, how does Lan Cao's Monkey Bridge use the memory of the Vietnam War in the articulation of a Vietnamese American identity? What is at stake in the work of Cambodian American writers like Loung Ung and Chanrithy Him who remember the "Killing Fields"? How does Monique Truong's Book of Salt use cultural memory? What is the role of political memory in Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart? Possible topics include but are not limited to representations of genocide, state-sanctioned mass violence, negotiations of U.S. empire, notions of justice, and questions of ethics. Please submit a 250-word abstract and! 1-page curriculum vitae via e-mail to cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu. The deadline for submission is March 25, 2009. Decisions will be made soon after the deadline.