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.

FEMSPEC SPECIAL ISSUE ON PAULA GUNN ALLEN

FemSpec, an "interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and creative works in the realms of SF, fantasy, magical realism, myth, folklore, and other supernatural genres," is accepting submissions for a special issue to honor Paula Gunn Allen (PGA) tentatively scheduled for Fall 2009. Topics may be stimulated by, but are not limited to, concerns raised in her interview with John Purdy in 1997 ("And Then, Twenty Years Later . . .": A Conversation with Paula Gunn Allen, by John Purdy, Studies in American Indian Literatures 9.3 (Fall 1997): 5-16, retrieved 8/19/2008 from http://www.hanksville.org/st orytellers/paula/PGA-int.html). 20 years after the Flagstaff conference that resulted in the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, PGA identified continuing issues in Native American literary criticism in the context of a major shift:

1. "There was nothing then, and now there's everything." We welcome essays that detail or engage her contributions to that shift, and/or that identify, assess, and/or remedy problems in the field.
2. "Something was said today, something about answers. And I wanted to say, no, no, no. That's not the point. It's not about answers; it's about good questions." Building on any of the questions PGA's work asks us to consider, how can we develop continuing lines of inquiry? For example, in Sacred Hoop she demonstrates that we need not reinvent the wheel with imagined gynocracies. How does the paradigm she describes inform Native American women's literature?
3. "Very little of our literature is the literature of protest, of oppression … Most of it is the literature of the spirit or the literature of ritual. Almost all of it is, call it political voice and drama, is always informed by the presence of this knowledge that there is always this other world, with which we are always engaged. It isn't over "there" somewhere; it's in our presence and our midst and we are in its presence and its midst." Feminist speculative literature is predicated on "what ifs." If we were to continue as we are - what would future dystopias be like? If we were to dismantle oppressive cultural schemata (race, class, sexuality, ability, gender) and live according to an egalitarian paradigm - what could future utopias be like? PGA's work can push these queries further. For example: what are the implications of an equi-present spirit world for the dystopia/utopia binary?
4. "My own calling has always been of the spirit ..." What are the relationships between women's speculative literature, criticism, and spirit work?

We seek critical articles, artwork, poetry, and fiction. Articles and fiction can be up to 15 pages. All submissions should conform to MLA standards (see www.mla.org). For further information, please contact special issue guest editors, Menoukha Case, at menoukha@yahoo.com and Stephanie Sellers,  ssellers@gettysburg.edu. Submissions marked "PGA" should be emailed to the editors.
       Please submit the titled text in a file in which your name, address, and contact points do NOT appear, accompanied by a separate file that includes title, genre, your name, address, phone, and email. To submit, you must be a subscriber for calendar year 2009. Subscribe to FemSpec on line at http://www.femspec.org/ and send a copy of the e-receipt with your manuscript. Submissions without two separate files and a receipt will not be sent through the review process. Full price is $40, low income price is $25. Ask your library, public or institutional, to subscribe. Deadline: June 15, 2009.

THE BACKWATERS PRESS
Announces
Letters From Grass Country: Essays on the Contemporary Poets and Poetry of the Great Plains
Edited by Mary K Stillwell and Greg Kosmicki

… Deadline for submissions-- June 30, 2010
… Publication date Fall 2011, perfect bound
… Scholarly or familiar essays about the poets of the Great Plains, their lives and their work
… Focus on new poets as well as established
… Cultural diversity strongly encouraged
… Interest in neglected poets of the region
… Broader essays about the influence on poetry and poets of the region-culture, ethos, geography, history, etc. welcomed
… Submit Word 97 or newer attachment by e-mail to: Lettersfromgrasscountry@yahoo.com.
… For further info: www.thebackwaterspress.com.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING, CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES, AND CANADIAN APPROACHES?
5 October 2009 / Canadian High Commission, London UK

The British Association of Canadian Studies is pleased to announce a workshop to re-launch its Aboriginal Studies Circle. Many diverse indigenous populations around the globe have been the victims of marginalization as they confront the vast array of issues resulting from both historical injustices and contemporary global challenges. This workshop seeks to bring together academics and other professionals with an interest in indigenous studies to discuss the broad issues that affect indigenous peoples both in Canada and elsewhere. Through building an interdisciplinary network, it is hoped that discussions of the challenges facing indigenous peoples can be drawn from the periphery of contemporary political, social, cultural, and legal discourses and brought into the mainstream.
       While, to varying degrees, nation states are recognizing the specific challenges that face Indigenous populations, historical developments in Canada have forced Indigenous issues into the spotlight. This workshop, therefore, asks: What are the historical understandings of indigenous peoples? What are the contemporary challenges they face? And how can Canadian approaches be compared to others?
        Proposals for 20-minute papers, to be presented in either English or French, are invited from any single disciplinary or multidisciplinary perspective including those which offer an informed view of Canada in comparative contexts. Broader possible approaches might include papers on:
        * Indigenous peoples and a new history?
        * Indigenous literature, art and culture.
        * Self-determination and indigenous politics.
        * Environmental pressures on indigenous populations.
        * Indigenous economic self-sufficiency.
        * Indigenous law/ law and Indigenous peoples.
        * Indigenous languages.
        * Methodological and theoretical approaches.
        * Indigenous resource management.
        * Indigenous health.
        * Aboriginal peoples and visual culture/film
        * Land claims
This should not, however, be taken as an exhaustive list, and we welcome proposals for papers dealing with all varied interpretations of the theme.
        Enquiries and proposals to: c/o Tracie Scott, 31 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HA. Tel: 44 (0) 20 7862 8687 / 44 (0) 1289 387331 Email: t.scott@talktalk.net. Email abstract(s) of 200-300 words; and brief CV(s) (must include title(s), institutional affiliation(s) and address(es) by 15 July 2009. Submissions will be acknowledged by email.

SPECIAL ISSUE OF INTERTEXTS
on Gender, Culture, and Literature in Indigenous North America

We welcome papers that look at the intersection of gender(s) and culture(s) in the literatures of Indigenous North America and particularly welcome papers that problematize any or all of those terms. Questions to be explored might include:

• How have literary texts portrayed the destructive impact of colonialism on indigenous gender relations?* How do gender and genre relate? How do we critique gender in texts, knowing that cultures are forever changing?
• Are contemporary Indigenous films responsive to gender studies conversations? Why, why not? How, how not?
• How are presentations of the self, the body, the story en-gendered by and in the texts discussed? By and in the cultures from which the texts were created?
• What forms, presentations, and embodiments of genders are available in certain historical times or in certain Native spaces that are not available in non-Native societies?
• How have Indigenous authors used their writings to claim sovereignty, not just over land, language, and what might be more readily recognized as political issues, but also over the political issues of gender and sexuality?
• How do contemporary Two-Spirit people write about their cultural selves, their worlds (urban and rural), and their visions for the future?

Articles should be at least 25 manuscript pages long, double-spaced throughout, including endnotes, and should follow MLA style. Submissions due August 1, 2009 to Kathryn Shanley, University of Montana, at ShanleyKW@mso.umt.edu or to Laura Beard, Texas Tech University at laura.beard@ttu.edu.
     Intertexts, a journal of comparative and theoretical reflection, publishes articles that employ innovative approaches to explore relations between literary and other texts, be they literary, historical, theoretical, philosophical, or social. In particular, the editors are looking for work which engages issues on a sufficiently theoretical or comparative level to interest people in a variety of disciplines. Hybrid methodologies that combine elements from a range of disciplines are encouraged. Methodological reflections and argumentation are valued, especially when combined with detailed textual analysis. Intertexts is particularly interested in the use of theoretical perspectives to analyze texts other than those to which they are generally applied. In this way, we hope to provide not only new understandings of familiar texts but also to use those texts to examine the virtues and limitations of contemporary literary theory. In this spirit, the editors encourage comparative works from all historical periods. http://www.languages.ttu.edu/intertexts/

Contact: Robert Nelson
This page was last modified on: 21 May 2009