“Sustaining ‘Home’ Across Diasporas,” 2014 SAMLA Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, November 7-9, 2014
Megan Feifer/ South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Contact email:
mfeife1@lsu.edu

In keeping with the theme of this year’s conference, the MELUS (Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the United States) is seeking papers that explore contemporary literatures that examine they way in which postcolonial immigrant literatures of North America sustain ‘home’ across diasporic dislocations. More specifically, this panel seeks papers that explore the ways in which diasporic literatures demonstrate the development and maintenance of immigrant communities across multiple diasporic locations in the United States and in doing so complicate prior postcolonial understandings of diasporic movement, i.e., notions of: ‘home’ and ‘homelessness;’ the ‘host’ nation and the transnation, etc. This panel invites proposals for 15- minute papers that which seek to address, but are not limited to the following topics:

*The transnational exilic and migratory experience
*Geographies and Politics of U.S. diasporic spaces
*Migration and Transnational Feminisms
*Migrations, Diasporic Movements and Trauma
*U.S. immigration policies and Diasporic communities
*Diasporic Communities and Activism
*Performance Arts and U.S. Diasporic Communities

By May 15, 2014, please submit a biography, 300 word abstract, and A/V equipment needs to Megan Feifer, Louisiana State University, at mfeife1@lsu.edu.