EH.N: CfP: Circulations: Economies, Currencies, Movements in American Studies

[NY Metro American Studies Association]

The New York Metro American Studies Association (NYMASA) and the 
Columbia Journal of American Studies (CJAS) announce a call for 
papers for our 2008 annual one-day conference:

Circulations: Economies, Currencies, Movements in American Studies
Saturday, November 8, 2008
9:00am-5:30pm

Circulations: blood, ideas, books, money, people, contagions, 
politics, trade. All of these economies, both literal and figurative, 
operate within and across the porous boundaries of the United States. 
 From the virtual circulation of futures markets and viral video to 
the embodied circulation of migrants and goods, the economies of the 
United States ride any number of waves of circulation, some 
voluntarily, some much less so.

The goal of this conference is to investigate, interrogate, 
interrupt, and intervene in the various circulatory systems that run 
through both the United States of America and American Studies. How 
do ideas, people, and goods circulate? How do different kinds of 
economies and currencies - monetary and otherwise - shape us and the 
field of American Studies? To what extent are metaphors of 
circulation useful in imagining intellectual networks, such as those 
produced by the Internet, trans-disciplinary (and transnational) 
collaborations, or academic activism? How, too, are limits on 
movement like incarceration and immigration restriction connected to 
enforced movements like extraordinary rendition and deportation? How 
do we theorize the metastasizing meanings of circulation? How do we 
study moving targets? What challenges does the study of circulations 
pose to traditional forms of knowing and scholarship, and what 
opportunities does it make available? How might we reconfigure 
Marxist, post-structuralist, or other theoretical approaches in 
American Studies to account for these new global, economic, and 
political circuits? How do we construct archives for studying such 
mobile phenomena?

In imagining this conference, we invite participants to engage with 
any of the following issues (or any other this topic inspires):

Circulating people: migration, displacement, diaspora

Political movements, political economies

Distressed economies: panics, depressions, recessions

Psychic economies: panics, depressions, repressions

Aesthetic economies and art markets

Transnational economies: remittances, tourism, global circuits

Knowledge economies and intellectual exchange

Informal economies: mix-tapes, novelties, networks, survival crimes

Virtual circulations: viral video, memes, folksonomies, wiki wisdom

Bodily circuits, physical circulations

Circulating currents: electricity, excitement, change

Print circulation: underground, academic, institutional

Circulars: periodicals, publications, pamphlets

Circulating libraries, old and new

Libidinal circuits: kinship networks, love triangles, prostitution 
rings, circuit parties, sex tourism

Gender circuits and feminist waves

Congested circuits: traffic, density, crashes

Speculating in futures/speculating on the future

Fashions and fads: going into/coming out of circulation

Bad currency: loans, debts, IOUs

Recycling: biological and ecological recirculations (air, blood, 
power, water, waste)

Enforced movement and/or enforced stillness

Cornering the market

Corrupted circulation: fakes, frauds, plagiarists

Moving vehicles, moving violations

Legal tender: slavery, trafficking, exploitation

Contagion and epidemics, transmissions of affect

Ethical economies and circuits of responsibility

We welcome papers on any historical period in American Studies, as 
well as 21st century topics. We particularly encourage presentations 
that circulate across historical and disciplinary borders. Please 
note that we will accept abstracts for individual paper presentations 
only, not pre-constituted panels.

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words to nymasa08 at gmail.com by June 
1, 2008. Please write "NYMASA Conference" in the subject line.

The conference will take place in New York City; exact location will 
be announced at a later date. For more information, visit our website 
at http://www.nymasa.org/ or send an e-mail to 
sarah.chinn at hunter.cuny.edu