ASAIL Notes

Announcements of jobs and fellowships in the field of American Indian literatures
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Calls for papers
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Forthcoming conferences
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AMERICAN NATIVE PRESS ARCHIVES:  the American Native Press Archives' website carries a number of features of interest to students and scholars in American Indian studies. These include a bibliography, hard-to-find texts, indexes to Native newspapers, and other features.
        The bibliography of Native American writers, 1772 to the present, aims to be comprehensive. 13,000 plus citations are annotated, and the bibliography is searchable by author, title, subject, time period, and tribal affiliation. This fall, First Nation writers from Canada will be added as well. The bibliography is open, that is, new citations are being added all the time.
        Native Writers Digital Text Project is another feature on the website. Introduced in summer, 2000, the project's purpose is to publish hard-to-find texts by American Indian and Alaska Native writers. The first digital texts that are available online are the poems of John Rollin Ridge and selected works of Charles Gibson. Ridge is the nineteenth-century Cherokee novelist, journalist, and poet whose verse has been out of print for over a hundred years. Gibson is the Muscogee humorist, folklorist, and historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose works appeared in newspapers and magazines.
In another activity, the archives is preparing indices to important Native newspapers and other serial publications. Among the first to go on line is an index to the complete run of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first tribal newspaper, published at New Echota, Cherokee Nation, from 1828 to 1834.
        Other features have appeared on the website over the past few years and still accessible, including those on Indian-Black history and Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. Currently, a chronicle of Indian removal is being prepared, including texts of contemporary news and other accounts of what later became known as the Trail of Tears.
Please come to www.anpa.ualr.edu for these features and other information. Comments and suggestions are welcome: contact
                 Dan Littlefield or Jim Parins at anpa@ualr.edu or at
                 American Native Press Archives
                 UALR English Department
                 2801 S. University Ave.
                 Little Rock, AR 72204

The 8th Annual Sequoyah Research Center Symposium is set for October 16-18 this year in Little Rock. The Symposium is a gathering of Native writers, teachers, service providers, storytellers, and other thinkers who meet to discuss issues of importance in Native communities and to share their work and ideas. The setting is informal, and unlike at academic conferences, presentations are given rather than papers read. If you would like to present or attend, please contact Bob Sanderson at the SRC, resanderson@ualr.edu. Information on previous symposia is available at http://anpa.ualr.edu. Registration information is available at http://ualr.edu/sequoyahcenter/. If you have any questions, please drop me a line or two.

James W. Parins
Professor, Department of English
Associate Director, Sequoyah Research Center
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
301A Ottenheimer Library
2801 S. University Ave.
Little Rock, AR 72204
(501)569-8336

AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL: POETRY

The American Indian Culture and Research Journal is actively seeking submissions of original poetry for future journal issues. Payment in tear sheets and one copy of the journal. Please send two copies of each submission to: Poetry Editor, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Indian Studies Center, 3220 Campbell Hall, Box 951548, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1548

TWO-SPIRIT LITERATURES AND ART

Seeking poetry, fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction, essay, memoir, photography, performance texts, and art for a new anthology of Indigenous Two-Spirit/GLBTQ creative work. We envision this anthology as a collection of maps and stories for those who come after and for those who may already be on their journey, but without guides. This project is for those who--like so many of us--had no role models, no one to tell us that we were valuable human beings, just as we are. This project is by and for the People.

BACKGROUND
Two-Spirit people--identified by many different tribally specific names and community positions--have been living, loving, and creating art since time immemorial. As part of this vibrant history, contemporary Indigenous Two-Spirit/GLBTQ literature gained public notice in the U.S. in the late 1970s. In 1988, Living the Spirit, the first anthology of Two-Spirit literature, made a landmark debut. Though Indigenous Two-Spirit/GLBTQ people have continued to write, create, perform, and publish since Living the Spirit, there has not yet been another collection of writing and art for Indigenous Two-Spirit/GLBTQ people. Following the model of such important collections such as Living the Spirit, Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga's This Bridge Called My Back (1981), Beth Brant's A Gathering of Spirit (1988), and Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird's Reinventing the Enemy's Language (1997), this collection will continue the work that has come before us and help clear a path for present and future generations.

WHO CAN SUBMIT
Indigenous Two-Spirit/GLBTQ people from the Americas and the Pacific: First Nations, Aboriginal, Metis, Xican@, Mexican@, Hapa, Mestiz@, mixedblood, Inuit, Alaskan Native, Native Hawai'ian, Maori, Red-Black, Creole, African-Native American, American Indian, Pueblos Originarios, Amérindiennes--you know who you are-- who are also Two-Spirit, Queer, Trans, Bi, Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Gender Non-Conforming, Intersexed, Jota, Geenumu Gesallagee, Mahu, Del Otro Lado, Takataapui, Sister Girl, Winkte, Hwame, Alyha, Patlatche, Nadleehi, Lhamana, Asegi, Fa'afafine, Ninauposkitzipxpe, 'Aqi, Cu'ut, or otherwise traditionally identified writers, artists, and activists.

WHAT TO SUBMIT
Your stories, your songs, your poems, your art, your dreams for our collective futures. Tell us the stories that you want to hear, the stories that have been hidden, and the stories that need to be told. We will accept submissions in all creative genres.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please include name, email, phone, address, and a brief bio along with your submissions. While unpublished pieces are preferred, previously published material will be considered. If something has been previously published, please let us know where and when it was published, and whether you have permissions. Ground Mail: Please include a SASE for response. Do not send original pieces of art or photography. Poetry: 3-5 poems. Fiction and Non-Fiction (Including creative non-fiction, essays, and memoir): 5000 word limit, double spaced. Performance Texts: Short plays and solo performances, and scenes from performances that can stand alone. Visual Art: Photos and artwork must be reproducible in black and white. Do not send originals. Email hi-res digital files via email, or mail CD or high quality photocopies. DEADLINE: August 15, 2008.

HOW TO SUBMIT
Please send electronic submissions to twospiritcollection@gmail.com. Ground mail submissions can be sent with a SASE for response to:
Daniel Heath Justice
Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives
University of Toronto
563 Spadina, 2nd Floor
North Borden Building
Toronto, ON M5S 2J7, Canada

ALTERNATIVE CONTACT: INDIGENEITY, GLOBALISM, AND AMERICAN STUDIES
Special issue of American Quarterly / Paul Lai and Lindsey Claire Smith, Guest Editors

Within standard genealogies of US-based ethnic studies, Native studies and other racially-based studies arose from a similar moment of empowerment in the struggles for racial and ethnic rights in the 1960s and 1970s, often in solidarity with Third World decolonization movements. Increasingly, Native American studies highlights connections between Native America and indigenous communities around the world, reframing questions of sovereignty and indigenous rights in international terms while continuing to challenge political discourses of the nation-state. Such work decenters paradigms of first contact with European colonial powers and subsequent domination by the United States military and government that have overshadowed discussions of native contact with peoples of other origins. This special issue explores transnational and cross-ethnic flows between indigenous peoples of the Americas, including the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, and these other peoples in moments of alternative contact that complicate and enrich our understanding of the links between U.S. colonial and imperial projects, sovereignty, and racial formation. Ultimately, this project seeks to theorize a more dynamic indigeneity that articulates new or overlooked connections between peoples, histories, cultures, and critical discourses within a global context.
        We seek work that theorizes cosmopolitan indigeneities as the transnational movements of indigenous peoples and their governments, social and activist movements, arts, and critical discourse. We seek scholarship that identifies moments of contact between indigenous Americans and ethnic others in historically, geographically, and disciplinarily specific conjunctures and highlights productive dissonances as well as synergies in reconfiguring comparative ethnic studies work within the frameworks of transnational American studies and global indigenous movements. This work might offer new languages for discussing the global presence of indigeneity to counteract notions of unsophisticated or parochial Native communities and offer alternatives or rejoinders to the work of postcolonial studies in considering issues of continuing (neo)colonialism and the relation between indigenous peoples and state formations.
        Framing such scholarship within globalism might build upon a long tradition in Latino/a studies of examining indigenous encounters with others and mixed-race subjectivities; query long-standing tensions between Asian Americans and native Pacific Islanders; and continue exploring histories of Native and African American connections. Additionally, we encourage submissions of papers that theorize less-studied contact such as between Native American and Asian American bodies, communities, histories, literatures, visual arts, and politics. In these material and creative encounters, personal, political, collective, and global conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship point toward theoretical as well as practical implications for resisting empire.
        Email essays by September 1, 2009 to aquarter@usc.edu. Information about American Quarterly and submission guidelines can be found on our Web site: www.americanquarterly.org.

40th ALGONQUIAN CONFERENCE
24-26 October 2008 / University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in Minneapolis

This is an international meeting for researchers working in the area of Algonquian studies. We invite papers on all topics in Algonquian studies, including anthropology, archaeology, art, biography, education, ethnography, ethnobotany, folklore, geography, history, language education, linguistics, literature, music, politics, psychology, religion and sociology. Papers must not be longer than 20 minutes, with 10 minutes allowed for discussion. Papers may be given in English, French, or an Algonquian language. Presentations will begin Friday morning, October 24 and will finish Sunday noon, October 26. There will be a reception on Thursday night, October 23. Registration fees (payable by check to the 40th Algonquian Conference) are $75, received prior to the 15th of September; late registration fees after that date are $90. The student rate is $40 before September 15, and $50 thereafter. (All amounts are payable in US or Canadian funds. We do not accept credit card payments.) The conference will be held on the East Bank campus in Minneapolis at the Radisson University Hotel on Friday and in nearby university buildings on Saturday and Sunday. The conference is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, the departments of American Indian studies, American studies, anthropology, and history, and by the linguistics program.
        The due date for submissions is September 3, 2008. If you are interested in making a presentation, please send a title and abstract (maximum 1 page, 12 point font, 1 inch margin) to: <jdn@umn.edu>. The subject line of your email must read Algonquian Conference and the text of your email message must include your name, postal address, institution, telephone numbers and fax number and the electronic address of each speaker. Indicate your AV requirements. If email submission is not possible, you can fax the submission to the attention of John Nichols at 612-626-7904, or you may send a copy of the abstract to the organizing committee:
        Organizing Committee of the 40th Algonquian Conference
        c/o John D. Nichols
        Department of American Indian Studies
        University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
        19 Scott Hall, 72 Pleasant St. S.E.
        Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 USA
A limited number of rooms are being held at the Radisson University Hotel at an Algonquian Conference rate of $129 (plus13.15% taxes; there is an additional charge for parking), single or double, for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. You are urged to reserve a room early. Reservations can be made by contacting the hotel directly at 612-379-8888, or through its toll free hotel number at 1-800-822-6757 or through Radisson Worldwide at 1-800-333-3333. The hotel will honor reservations received by 9/25/08. Reservations received after this date are subject to space availability and at the prevailing room rates. All room reservations must be guaranteed for late arrival and secured with a deposit equal to the first night's room and tax or with a major credit card. Information on the hotel can be viewed at: http://www.radisson.com/minneapolismn_metrodome.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE
40th Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern language Association (NEMLA)
26 February - 1 March 2009 / Hyatt Regency, Boston MA

This panel calls for papers that explore the works of nineteenth-century Native writers such as William Apess, E. Pauline Johnson, John Rollin Ridge, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Sarah Winnemucca, George Copway and others. The nineteenth century saw the rise of an aggressive nationalist discourse that regarded the indigenous peoples of America as a "vanishing race." We will consider the many ways in which the above-mentioned authors actively sought to reinscribe Native presence into the literary and historical archive of the nineteenth century. Send abstracts of 250-500 words to Drew Lopenzina, Sam Houston State University, ajl011@shsu.edu. Deadline: Sept. 15, 2008.

TRIBAL FANTASIES: 'Native Americans' in the European Imagination 1900-present

This collection aims to investigate European re-imaginings of Indigenous American peoples and cultures in the last century.¹ We invite abstracts of 250-350 words on any such re-imagining, including (but by no means restricted to):
     · Depictions of tribal/indigenous culture and/or religion in European literature, art and film
     · "American Indian hobbyist" movements
     · Use of tribal/indigenous imagery in political movements
     · The influence of tribal/indigenous design on European fashion
     · Native American cartoons
     · Native Americans as symbol of American hegemony
     · Native Americans as symbol of resistance to American hegemony
     · Images of the Native in 20th century philosophy
     · The New Age industry
     · Tribal rhythms in popular music
     · The Ostern / Red Western
The history of European appropriation of Indigenous lands and cultures in the Americas is long and frequently bloody. In the twentieth century, however, as European countries ceased to have formal colonial interests in the Americas, so formal direct contact between Native and European largely ceased. But the image of the Native American, as much a product of the colonial imagination as any deep understanding of the disparate indigenous cultures of the Americas, has proved enduring.
        We welcome contributions from all European countries and would be particularly interested in transnational or trans-European articles. Essays will be 6,000-8,000 words, referenced MLA endnote style. Please send abstracts to both James Mackay at james.mackay@cytanet.com.cy and David Stirrup at D.F.Stirrup@kent.ac.uk, by Monday, September 29th, 2008.
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        ¹Including Native American, First Nations, Native Hawai'ian, Inuit, and South American tribal peoples.

AMERICAN TROPICS: TOWARDS A LITERARY GEOGRAPHY
University of Essex / 4-7 July 2009

By American Tropics we understand an extended Caribbean, or what Edouard Glissant calls "the estuary of the Americas," or what earlier scholars sometimes called "Plantation America": an area including the southern USA, the Caribbean littoral of Central America, the Caribbean islands, and northern South America.
        The American Tropics project at Essex seeks to understand the writing associated with this area through a study of particular places within it: cities, borders, regions, natural features. Each place is a zone of encounter, bringing together sets of writing in different languages and styles, from different literary and cultural backgrounds, all of which have in common that attention to the same place. The project therefore approaches literary history via literary geography. We call for papers which engage with this project in a number of different ways:
     * through attention to particular places and the writing associated within it;
     * through consideration of the cultural features of particular places or regions within the American Tropics;
     * through theoretical engagement with the ideas of literary geography or area studies as they pertain to this part of the American continent;
     * through consideration of significant circuits (personal, commercial, cultural) within and beyond the area.
Colleagues are encouraged to look at the developing project at http://www.essex.ac.uk/literature/American_Tropics/. Informal enquiries to Peter Hulme at phulme@essex.ac.uk; formal offers of papers (title plus 300 word synopsis) to Lesley Wylie at lwylie@essex.ac.uk. The deadline for the first call for papers in 1 October 2008.

BEGINNINGS AND RENEWALS: LOCATING AMERICAN STUDIES
Southern American Studies Association Biennial Meeting / George Mason University, Fairfax VA
February 12-14, 2009

The 2009 biennial meeting of the Southern American Studies Association will be held on the campus of George Mason University in the heart of northern Virginia, a longstanding yet ever-changing site of transatlantic, multiethnic, colonial, urban, and cosmopolitan American beginnings and renewals. About fifteen miles from downtown Washington, DC, and within a few miles of Arlington, Mount Vernon, the Pentagon, Old Town Alexandria, and much more, Fairfax is a place where the "old" and the "new" continue to meet and reinvent each other.
        The Washington, DC, metropolitan area is famous for its many iconic, monumental fashionings of U.S. national identity and cultural memory. But this is of course also a region of tremendous fluidity, a place full of surprises and crisscrossed by routes--of trade, labor, government, law, media, languages, cultures--that continue to be negotiated, constructed, mapped, traveled, toured, enforced, and contested. SASA 2009 offers us an opportunity to consider how these and other networks provoke both connections and disconnections among the local, the federal, the regional, the national, the hemispheric, and the global. We'll also investigate how routes and roots help us understand beginnings and renewals and help us undertake the work of locating American studies in place, space, and time.
        We invite our colleagues in American Studies, Southern Studies, and all related fields of study and areas of interest to join us as we investigate these and other ways of locating American Studies. While we welcome proposals addressing the conference theme and are always happy to consider proposals investigating the South, broadly defined, this conference is open to anyone interested in contributing to the interdisciplinary study of American cultures. Please send 2-3 page session proposals and/or one-page individual paper abstracts as MS Word attachments to Eric Gary Anderson at George Mason University: eandersd@gmu.edu. The deadline for proposals is October 15, 2008.
        Conference attendees may be listed in the conference program as participants in a maximum of two sessions. While we welcome a range of panel formats, we ask that panels be designed so that they fit within a 75-minute time frame with at least 15 minutes dedicated to discussion. As always, graduate students are especially encouraged to attend and present papers. SASA's Critoph Prize, an award for the best graduate student paper presented at the conference, includes a certificate and a check for $250 as well as recognition at the next SASA meeting. For more information: http://sasa.gmu.edu.

2009 SOUTHWEST/TEXAS POPULAR CULTURE/AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION
February 24-28, 2009 / Albuquerque NM

Proposals for both Panels and Individual Papers are now being accepted for the Native/Indigenous Studies Area. Listed below are some suggestions for possible presentations, but topics not included here are welcome and encouraged. DEADLINE November 15, 2008.
        * Indigenous Methodologies
        * Indians in Higher Education
        * Teaching Popular Culture in Native American Studies * Biography, autobiography, and nonfiction works by and/or about Indigenous people
        * Native Literature
        * Public Health and Indigenous Peoples
        * Popular culture and religion (or, religious popular culture)
        * Native peoples across borders: racial/physical/economic/political… etc
        * Native representations in popular culture (television, comic books, video/computer games, etc)
        * Politics and Native peoples
        * Indigenous Women in Social Work
        * Indigenous resistance, regional or global (whaling/fishing rights, incarceration issues, sports mascots, etc.)
        * More ideas encouraged!
Inquiries regarding this area and/or abstracts of 250 words may be sent to L. Rain Cranford-Gomez at the contact below.
         L. Rain Cranford-Gomez
         Area Co-Chair, Native/Indigenous Studies
         PCA/ACA Annual Regional Conferences
         ohoyocreole@gmail.com
Further details regarding the conference (listing of all areas, hotel, registration, tours, etc.) can be found at http://www.h-net.org/~swpca/ .

"Words of Bone, Songs of Blood: Poetry as Theoretical and Historical Dialogue"
Proposals for this Panel should engage poetry as a theoretical and historical tool for Indigenous memory, social change, critical dialogue and most specifically the critical engagement of Indigenous Activism on a global, hemispheric, and local level. The panel may present poets as scholars, performance poetry, or scholars as poets and we should expect to perform our poetry as well as critically engage poetry as activism, theory and historical memory. DEADLINE November 15, 2008. Inquiries regarding this area and/or abstracts of 250 words may be sent to L. Rain Cranford-Gomez, <ohoyocreole@gmail.com>.

"Indigenous 'Deep' Space: Indigenous Absence and Presence in Sci-Fi and Comics"
Paper proposals are now being accepted for a panel dedicated to the absence and presence of Indigenous Characters and Cultures in popular Sci-Fi genres. From Star Trek Voyager's Chakotay to the X-Men's Danielle Moonstar, the Sci-Fi and Comic genres have both capitalized and mined the Indigenous landscape for characters and culture. This panel asks presenters to examine and dialogue the presentation of Indigenous characters and culture in both their presence and absence of their actuality in the popular genres of Sci-Fi and Comics. The deadline for submitting proposals is December 15, 2008. Listed below are some suggestions for possible presentations, but topics not included here are welcome and encouraged:
     * Indigenous Writers of Sci-Fi genres.
     * Indigenous Cultures In Space (Issues of colonization that mirror Indigenous histories in Sci-Fi Deep Space Settings)
     * Blue Corn Comics
     * Indigenous/Native American descended characters in Sci-Fi
     * Indigenous/Native American descended characters in Comic and graphic novels
     * Specific Sci-fi T.V. Shows incorporating Indigenous Culture and Characters (episodes of Stargate, Angel, Buffy, Star Trek etc).
     * Online Comics
     * History of Indigenous Characters in Sci-fi or Comics
Inquiries regarding this area and/or abstracts of 250 words may be sent to L. Rain Cranford-Gomez, <ohoyocreole@gmail.com>

Contact: Robert Nelson
This page was last modified on: 15 July 2008