USACLALS   

United States Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies

Second International Conference of the United States Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies

April 26-28, 2002

Santa Clara University, California

(40 miles south of San Francisco; one mile from San Jose airport)

“Rethinking Commonwealth/Postcolonial Literatures:  Cartographies and Topographies, Past and Present”

Guest Speakers and Writers Reading from their Work

Opal Palmer, Adisa, Pal Ahluwalia, Arif Dirlik, Chitra Divakaruni, Abdul JanMohamed, Ginu Kamani, Shirley Lim, Satendra Nandan, Joel Tan, Trinh Minh-ha.

Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Glass Palace, was recently named a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.  In asking that it be withdrawn from the competition Ghosh objected that “this phrase anchors an area of contemporary writing not within the realities of the present day, nor within the possibilities of the future, but rather within a disputed aspect of the past.  In this it is completely unlike any other literary term (would it not surprise us, for instance, if that familiar category ‘English literature’ were to be renamed ‘the literature of the Norman Conquest’?).”  This novelist’s objections demonstrate that the notion of “commonwealth” can be called into question and its implications should be explored as the world’s global geo-political economy further expands into the new century.  If by “commonwealth literature and language studies” we also include, as is sometimes done, not only materials in English from current members of the British Commonwealth (Canadian, Australian, Anglophone Africa, etc.) but also in French, Spanish, Portuguese (Chinese? Kikuyu?, etc.), what are the boundaries of this expanding field of research?  Papers dealing in some way with aspects of this topic are encouraged, but so too are others that may not seem immediately implicated in the question.  Thus:

u      Multifocal approaches to the study of language and literature: commonwealth, multiethnic, postcolonial, and transnational perspectives

u      Commonwealths: global-regional reconfigurations and transformations at the turn of the century

u      The impact of technology on postcolonial literatures (Santa Clara University is in the heart of Silicon Valley)

u      Questions of local or national languages in the creation of “new” literatures

u      “Maps” (personal, national, philosophical)

u      Close readings of individual works or sequences in one or several authors’ writings

u      Cross-cultural comparative analyses of texts; US culture and ethnic American literatures

u      Pedagogical issues, either undergraduate or graduate

u      Proposed panels and roundtables on topics of mutual interest

u      Film

u      Creative readings by authors

The conference has the support of San Jose State University, Stanford, UCB.

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