I hope you are all as excited as we are about the conference that is kicking off in a matter of hours.  Here is the schedule for this afternoon/evening (the full conference program is available under “Conference Info”):

3:00pm – 4:00pm Coffee Talk with Asian-American Poet, Eugene Gloria
“Can Poetry (Re)Construct Identity on the Hyphen?”
Indiana Memorial Union, Bryan Hall

4:00pm – 6:00pm Conference Registration
Ballantine Hall 004: The Hospitality Room

5:00pm – 6:00pm Keynote Address by Josephine Lee
“A Rough Guide to Asian American Studies”
Ballantine Hall 006

6:00pm – 7:00pm Opening Reception
Ballantine Hall 008

8:00pm Lotus Festival (Optional)
Downtown Bloomington

Sorry for the delay, but registration is finally up.  Even if you have already committed to the conference in some other way (email, personal communication, etc.) I urge you to use the following form to register so that we get an accurate count all gathered in one place.

Please click the link below to go to the registration form.  Registration for the conference is free and should take less than 5 minutes!  Furthermore, registering earlier ensures that you will get all conference-related materials!

Online Conference Registration

Thank you everyone!

Jason Nguyen
Site Admin

First, we have a block of rooms reserved at Days Inn for conference participants, mostly doubles but also a few singles. If you wish to stay at the hotel, you will need to make a reservation by August 25. This is the release date for any rooms not already reserved by conference participants. We apologize for the short notice, but to ensure that you will have a room at the hotel, we need you to make your reservations in the next two days. The other deadline is September 12, the last day for individual room cancellations. This means that should you reserve a room and later change your mind, you have until Sept12 to cancel without penalty.

Below are a few things that will facilitate your making a reservation:

The phone number for Days Inn is 812-336-0905. There is only one Days Inn in Bloomington, and the address is:

200 E. State Road 45/46 Bypass

Rt 45/46 Bypass & College Ave

Bloomington, IN 47408 US

You will need to reserve the room under the block name “Asian American Studies.”

Travel Grant recipients can be reimbursed up to $200 or $300 for their transportation fees, and we may be able to cover part of the lodging expenses.

It occurs to us that some of you may wish to share a room but do not have a  roommate. If that is the case, please email Joan Linton at jlinton@indiana.edu and INDICATE YOUR GENDER, and she will immediately help pair you with a roommate for the conference.

Days Inn has the most reasonable rates around Bloomington, so unless you are staying with a friend, or at a local residence by some other arrangement, you may want to make your reservations now.

Below are Rooming /Payment options:
You may take a single room at Days Inn is $109 per night.
Or share a double room at Days Inn at $119 per night
There are also several rooms available at residences within walking distance to campus.  These residential lodgings are about $45 per night, and they will be assigned on a first- come, first served basis..
If you would like residential room and none is available at the time, we can place you on a wait list, You can always make a reservation at Days Inn, and cancel by September 12 without penalty.

There’s still time left! The submission deadline has been extended to Friday, July 31, 2009. We invite all graduate students to submit short proposals (250-300 words) to the 2009 Asian American Studies conference entitled “Crossroads: Asian America/Asian Diaspora Across Disciplines.” Proposals may address research topics, papers, or pedagogical issues pertinent to the field of Asian American Studies.

Graduate students with accepted proposals will be eligible for travel grants. All proposals should be submitted online by July 31^th at http://aastudies.org/submissions.

Conference highlights include:

· Keynote address by Dr. Josephine Lee, President-Elect of the Association for Asian American Studies and the Director of the Asian American Studies Consortium of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation

· A featured workshop entitled “Professional Development and Mentoring” for graduate students who wish to pursue careers in Asian American Studies

· An interactive workshop focused on strengthening strategies for teaching Asian American Studies in the classroom, including the sharing of creative teaching activities and opportunities to discuss pedagogical issues

· Readings by creative writers in the field of Asian American Studies

· A banquet on Saturday night

· The annual Lotus Festival will be held in downtown Bloomington during the conference. Participants will be able to enjoy the flavors and music from all of the world.

· Opportunities to network with other graduate students, faculty, staff, and community leaders

Please encourage graduate students to participate in this special conference and send this message to others. If you have any questions, you can contact us atadmin@aastudies.org.

On an unrelated note, submissions are starting to come in, so please try to submit a proposal as soon as possible so the committee can start reviewing them.  Thank you so much for your enthusiasm thus far!

Also, continue to email us at admin@aastudies.org with your questions and comments (or feel free to leave comments here on this blog).

–Jason Nguyen

Update: Also added: Debra Kang Dean, Eugene Gloria, Purnima Bose

Update 2: Added Carwina Weng

Update 3: Added Fernando Ona

Jason Nguyen
Webmaster

(Minor Update 5/01/2009: I accidentally linked the secured forms rather than the public ones, so you were taken to a sign-in page.  Please try it again if you had trouble earlier.  Thanks!)

(Minor Update 5/06/2009: Added information about travel grant eligibility.)

Call for Papers

“Crossroads: Asian America/Asian Diaspora Across Disciplines”

Date: September 25-26, 2009

Location: Bloomington, Indiana

This fall, Indiana University and Purdue University will be co-hosting an Asian American Studies graduate conference, the first ever sponsored by the Asian American Studies Consortium of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The conference coincides with the annual Lotus Festival. Musicians from all over the world will be performing during the evenings in downtown Bloomington.

The conference theme, “Crossroads: Asian America/Asian Diaspora Across Disciplines” is intended to explore the impact of the Asian Diaspora across a broad spectrum of political, cultural, historical, educational, and economic systems in the Midwest, in the US, in the Americas, and beyond. CIC graduate students whose papers have been accepted will be eligible for a travel award.

Proposals may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Asian Diaspora
• Immigration, nationality, and citizenship
• Immigrants and language education in the context of globalization
• Cultural identities in the age of transnational, transcultural flux
• Processes of acculturation and enculturation
• Asian American Studies and research in Midwest
• Race, citizenship, and labor
• LBGT communities, sexualities, and Asian Americans
• Role of Asian medicines and health lifestyles
• Post-colonial education in Asia
• Portrayals of Asians in the media
• What’s in the terms?: “Asia”, “Orient”, and “East”
• Issues in teacher education programs in the US academic institutions
• Counseling and Asian American mental health
• Coalition building
• Generational studies
• Regional studies
• Residential enclaves
• Community building and empowerment
• Asian Americans and other people of color
• Whiteness, Blackness, and beyond
• Inter-racial/ethnic adoptions
• Asians in the Americas
• Asian/Asian American students in higher education
• Issues in cross-racial research agenda
• CRT, LatCrit, Indigenous Crit, and Asian American jurisprudence
• Diaspora communities in the Heartland
• Creative writing and the diaspora perspective
• Popular culture and commodification

* The Conference will also feature workshops on “Professional Development and Mentoring” and “Culture Centers: Outreach and Retention,” as well as one or more roundtables on teaching.

<Instructions for Submissions>

We will accept proposals for panels or for individual papers, and proposals for participation in the roundtables. Please indicate the type of proposal you are submitting.

Complete Panel Proposals

Panel sessions will be approximately 75 minutes long, with the last 15 minutes reserved for a Q & A session. Complete panel proposals should include three or four presenters, a chair (required), and a discussant (optional). The chair may be a presenter.

Please provide a one-page proposal that includes the (a) title and description of your panel’s presentations and (b) the names of panel members, the chair, and discussant (optional).

1. 1. The description of your panel should not exceed 250-300 words in length.

   2. Please include brief biographical information with full contact information for each presenter.

Individual Papers

Graduate students may submit individual paper proposals; accepted papers will be placed on panels by the conference programmers. Individual presentations should be no more than 15 minutes.

Please provide a one-page proposal that includes the (a) title and description of your paper and your name.

1. 1. The description of your paper should not exceed 250-300 words in length.

   2. Please include brief biographical information with your full contact information.

Roundtables on Teaching

The roundtables on teaching are designed primarily for discussion. We invite proposals for participation in these roundtables.

1. Proposals should include a description (250-300 words) of the perspectives, experience, or strategies you want to share.

2. Please include brief biographical information with your full contact information.

Prospective participants may submit both a panel/paper proposal and a roundtable proposal.

Please submit all proposals by July 20, 2009 at: http://aastudies.org/submissions/

For all other questions, send an email to: admin@aastudies.org

Also, look forward to submission guidelines, schedules, etc. in about one or two weeks.  Good times.

Jason Nguyen
Blog Admin