Open Access Publications from the University of California

Advisory Board

CHADWICK ALLEN
University of Washington (USA)

KARIM BEJJIT
Université Abdelmalek Essaadi (Tetouan, Moroccco)

THOMAS BENDER
New York University (USA)

CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY
University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK)

RYAN BISHOP
University of Southampton (Southampton, UK)

DAVID BRADLEY
University of Oregon (Eugene, Oregon, USA)

GORDON H. CHANG
Stanford University (Stanford, California, USA)

MARLENE L. DAUT
Yale University (USA)

EMORY ELLIOTT (1942 - 2009)

PIN-CHIA FENG
National Chiao Tung University (Hsin-chu, Taiwan)

DOMINIKA FERENS
University of Wroclaw (Wroclaw, Poland)

WINFRIED FLUCK
John F. Kennedy-Institut, Freie Universität (Berlin, Germany)

JOHN B. GAMBER
University of California, Irvine (USA)

BISHNUPRIYA GHOSH
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA, USA)

MACARENA GÓMEZ-BARRIS
Brown University (USA)

GILES GUNN
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA, USA)

CARL GUTIĖRREZ-JONES
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA, USA)

HSINYA HUANG
National Sun Yat-sen University (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

EVELYN HU-DEHART
Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island, USA)

TSUYOSHI ISHIHARA
Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan)

RONALD JENN
Université de Lille (France)

JOHANNA C. KARDUX
Leiden University (Leiden, The Netherlands)

LIAM KENNEDY
University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland)

PAUL LAUTER
Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut, USA)

KUN JONG LEE (email link)
Korea University (Seoul, Korea)

GONGZHAO LI (email link)
Hangzhou Normal University (China)

LÁZARO LIMA
Hunter College, CUNY (New York, USA)

GEORGE LIPSITZ
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA, USA)

SARAH MEER
Selwyn College, University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK)

ANA MINIAN
Stanford University (Stanford, California, USA)

HYUNGJI PARK (email link)
Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea)

JANE PARK
University of Sydney (Sydney, Australia)

JAHAN RAMAZANI
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA)

RAMÓN SALDĺVAR
Stanford University (Stanford, California, USA)

RICARDO D. SALVATORE
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

KRISHNA SEN
University of Calcutta (Calcutta, India)

TE-HSING SHAN
Institute of European and American Studies, Academica Sinica (Taipei, Taiwan)

SOOKWON SHIN (email link)
Sogang University (Seoul, Korea)

STEPHEN HONG SOHN
University of California, Riverside (USA)

WERNER SOLLORS
Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)

JERRINE TAN
City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

YURI TRETYAKOV (email link)
European University at St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia)

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA)

DAVID J. VÁZQUEZ
American University (Washington DC, USA)

JENNIE WANG (email link)
Providence University (Taiwan)

HANNA WIRTH-NESHAR
Tel Aviv University (Ramat Aviv, Israel)

SAU-LING C. WONG
Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, California, USA)

XIAO-HUANG YIN
Occidental College (Los Angeles, CA, USA)

New from University of Chicago Press

Find out more here

UChicago

Call for Papers: JTAS Special Forum on Transnational Circuits of Asian Religio-Philosophy: Reception and Racialization in the US

How and under what circumstances do Asian ideas and bodies travel to and in the Americas? How are ideas and bodies abstracted from one another and reified into American ideals of non/conformism, and what are the political stakes of restoring their relations?

Special Forum editors Bowen Du and Varun Rangaswamy invite proposals by June 1st, 2024 for articles exploring the transpacific and transimperial contexts in which Asian thought circulates. Download the call for papers with full details here.

Our newest issue

We’re honored to present an excerpt from Refugee Lifeworlds by the late Y-Dang Troeung, who won this year’s Fishkin Prize for her book that places Cambodia in narratives of the Cold War in Asia, mapping the entanglement via archives of institutional and familial memory. Forward editor Jennifer Reimer presents Y-Dang Troeung’s and other new work in the field by Markus Heide, Yu Tokunaga, Harilaos Stecopoulos, Brian K. Goodman, and Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Exploring the relevance of Bob Dylan for our times, Reprise editor Brian Russell Roberts commissioned English translations of previously published essays by Yoshiaki Sato, Heinrich Detering, and Ana C. Cara, alongside two essays by Goenawan Mohamad. In our Special Forum on Diagnosing Migrant Experience, guest editors Mita Banerjee and Davina Höll present a collection of essays that look at how a medical humanities approach can surface new perspectives on migrant lives and vice versa how listening with care to stories of migration can deepen an intersectional understanding of health and illness. New essays by Wilfried Raussert, Alfred Hornung, Davina Höll, Mita Banerjee, and Hannah Zaves-Greene. The issue opens with an introduction by editor in chief Alfred Hornung followed by three individual essays by Frank Kelderman, Cassio de Olivera, and Alexandra Glavanakova.

Newly published in JTAS

Molecular Intimacies of Empire
Edited by Hsuan L. Hsu and David J. Vázquez

This special forum on The Molecular Intimacies of Empire seeks to deepen intellectual connections between New Materialist scholarship (including in environmental humanities, Science and Technology Studies, and material feminism) and Transnational American Studies by attending to US neo/imperialism's reliance on racialized and uneven molecular intimacies. Essays by Suzanne Bost, Marcel Brousseau, Athia N. Choudhury, Amber Hickey, Rachel Lee, Zaynab Quadri, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Theresa Ventura, plus "The Materials of Art and the Legacies of Colonization: A Conversation with Beatrice Glow and Sandy Rodriguez," by Hsuan L. Hsu and David J. Vázquez

Table of Contents to download: here Jump to issue: here

Happy New Reading

Dear Readers, we present a new issue for the New Year, with an introduction by Alfred Hornung (editor in chief) and featuring Global Huck: Mapping the Cultural Work of Translations of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, a JTAS special forum edited by founding editor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Tsuyoshi Ishihara, Ronald Jenn, Holger Kersten, and Selina Lai-Henderson, with contributions by Behnam M. Fomeshi, Ronald Jenn and Véronique Channaut, Hamada Kassam, Winston Kelley, Selina Lai-Henderson, Margarita Marinova, Vera Lúcia Ramos, Miguel Sanz Jim é nez, Seema Sharma, and An-chi Wang. Forward Editor Jennifer A. Reimer and Reprise Editor Brian Russell Roberts bring you new work and selected important previously published work in Transational American Studies, in both cases framed to highlight the relevance for the contemporary moment, with essays, graphic short fiction, and poetry by Timothy James (TJ) Dimacali and John Raymond (JohnRay) Bumanglag, Annie Isabel Fukushima, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Mark McGurl, Timo Müller, Brian Russell Roberts, Silvia Schulteramandl, and Toyo Suyemoto.

Reflections on the 2020 Global Uprisings

New work in JTAS
We are proud to publish a new essay by Kevin K. Gaines, "Reflections on Ben Okri, Goenawan Mohamad, and the 2020 Global Uprisings," in a special section responding to the year of uprisings sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Gaines's essay is accompanied by commentary by Nigerian novelist and poet Ben Okri and Jakarta-based editor and writer Goenawan Mohamad. We are also pleased to present an excerpt courtesy of Rutgers University Press from the Shelley Fisher Fishkin 2020 Prize, this year awarded to Christopher B. Patterson of the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. Finally, as always, the journal is publishing original research by new and established scholars under the editorship of Alfred Hornung:

Jonathan van Harmelen, "Lessons from a Different Shore: The Japanese American Incarceration and Redress Movement Portrayed in Western European Newspapers"
Suzanne Enzerink, "Black Atlantic Currents: Mati Diop's Atlantique and the Field of Transnational American Studies"
Gavin Wilk, "Hasty Departures: The Evacuation of European Citizens at the Outbreak of World War II"

Fishkin Prize for Transnational American Studies 2022

Congratulations to Mahshid Mayar, who was awarded the Fishkin Prize for her monograph published by The University of North Carolina Press, Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire. The International Committee of the ASA praised Mayar's work as “A thoroughgoing and creative critical analysis of childhood, empire, and space [that] not only offers insights into how childhood was figured in relation to U.S. imperial culture, and how children took up the 'cartographies in progress' surrounding them, but also bears more widely on conceptual and methodological questions of space, culture, archive, and subjectivity. Informative, insightful, and beautifully written.” Honorable Mention goes to Dario Fazzi for “Imperial Constraints: Labor and U.S. Military Bases in Italy, 1954-1979,” which was published in Diplomatic History, Volume 45, Issue 3, 2021, and which “offers a rich micro-history of San Vito base, illuminating how diplomatic, military, and labor activity shaped the rise and decline of U.S. military presence. The article properly traces the winding routes of the Italian local labor-U.S. military bases negotiational relationships, historicizing the impact of the economic and the diplomatic on the representation of the 'Yankee' in the local mind, particularly in San Vito dei Normanni and Martina Franca. Fazzi draws on a mix of evidence, including digital documents, to paint an enlivening portrait, the analysis of which has wider implications for understanding the local forms of contestation–often around labor–across the US global military archipelago.”

New titles in Transnational American Studies from Rutgers University Press

Congratulations to 2020 Receipient of Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize

Dr. Christopher Patterson

JTAS congratulates Dr. Christopher Patterson, 2020 winner of the Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies. Dr. Patterson, who teaches and researches transpacific discourses on literature, queer theory, race, and empire, is Assistant Professor at the Social Justice Institute of the University of British Columbia, Canada. We are excited to offer an excerpt of the awardwinning monograph, reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press. Read the excerpt here or visit Rutgers UP for details about the book.

JTAS Call for Papers: Nov. 1, 2021

Diagnosing Migrant Experience: Medical Humanities and Transnational American Studies

This JTAS special forum proposes using the insights and perspectives of medical humanities and transnational American studies to theorize each other in reimagining differing concepts of life: How do medical narratives contain or seek to contain migrants who are "unruly subjects"? What does listening to migrant experience reveal about state categories of those "deserving"/"undeserving" of medical care? How can the approach of transnational American studies bring social justice issues of racialized border-crossing experiences and migrant trauma into conversation with the focus of medical humanities on health and well-being, both personal and collective? The editors invite 250-word abstracts by Nov. 1, 2021.

Details here. Thank you for submitting proposals. Call now closed.

JTAS celebrates Shirley Geok-lin Lim

JTAS is proud to include new work by Anndretta Lyle Wilson and Davorn Sisavath in the Winter 2019 issue, and, something very special, five new poems by Shirley Geok-lin Lim. For this 10th-anniversary edition, we took the opportunity to honor Lim, extraordinary lyric poet, principled activist, compelling scholar, educator, mentor, and JTAS founding editor. Editor-in-Chief Nina Morgan commissioned a Festschrift celebrating The Poetry and Poetics of Shirley Geok-lin Lim, edited by Mohammad A. Quayum, with wise and wonderful essays by BOEYKim Cheng, JoanChiung-huei CHANG, Grace V. S. CHIN, Dennis HASKELL, Walter S.H. LIM, Pauline T. NEWTON, Andrew Hock Soon NG, and Tamara S. WAGNER.

The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies

Cover

JTAS congratulates JTAS editors Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, and Takayuki Tatsumi on the publication of Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies (April 2019) with new essays by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Paul Giles, Emron Esplin, Kevin Gaines, Elizabeth West, Takayuki Tatsumi, Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, Hsuan L. Hsu and Bryan Yazell, among others.

ISBN: 978-1-13-805890-3 Order here

Congratulations to JTAS authors and JTAS co-founder Takayuki Tatsumi

SAGE India has published a four-volume set of essays entitled Trans-Pacific Cultural Studies, edited by Takayuki Tatsumi and with a foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. JTAS congratulates journal contributors Belinda Kong (JTAS 3.1), Haiming Liu (JTAS 1.1), and Christopher T. Fan (JTAS 6.1) for having their essays chosen for inclusion in this important new publication.

Chinese Railroad Workers Project

Read an excerpt from The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad (Stanford University Press, 2019) in our current Winter/Spring issue of JTAS.

"This landmark volume shines new light on the Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West."

Abstracts and Table of Contents here

Transnational American Studies: Vol. 11, no. 2 of JTAS

HIGHLIGHTS In their Special Forum on Transnational Nuclear Imperialisms, editors Anaïs Maurer and Rebecca H. Hogue and their contributors map linkages between nuclear futures and older imperial formations while also remaining attentive to Indigenous critiques and environmental racism in the Pacific Islands and mainland USA. Essays by Fiona Amundsen and Sylvia Frain, Aimee Bahng, Kyoko Matsunaga, George Gregory Rozsa, and Jessica A. Schwartz, and introduction by Anaïs Maurer and Rebecca H. Hogue. A symposium on teaching United States history edited by Elaine S. Abelson and Daniel P. Kotzin offers reflections on various ways Thomas Bender's transnationalizing approach to US history has been taken up by five of his former graduate students. Essays by Marc Aronson, John S. Baick, Tracy Neumann, Greg Robinson, and Andie Tucher. Don't miss the excerpts from exciting new publications introduced and contextualized by Jennifer A. Reimer in Forward; and classic excerpts by Brian Russell Roberts in Reprise, asking what the field looks like through a critical geography lens attentive to race. Opening the issue is a vital set of short essays on Covid-19 edited by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci in response to an idea by Shirley Geok-lin Lim. Essays by Douglas B. Craig, David Goodman, Perin Gürel, and Wen Liu, and an introduction by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci.

JTAS wishes you happy reading! Vol. 9, no. 1 is out!

We are excited that the latest issue of the Journal of Transnational American Studies includes work by David Bradley, novelist and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America, as well as by several historians such as Teishan A. Latner on the FBI as unwitting archivist of Cuba-solidarity activism, Westenley Alcenat on the understudied topic of African American emigration in the revolutionary Atlantic, Greg Robinson on the soft power diplomacy of Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as articles by Nir Evron on Israel’s past and future engagements with America as concept and model of liberal thought, Eric D. Larson on how Puerto Rican activists in Boston advanced the cause of independence for Puerto Rico while also lending the struggle in Puerto Rico an American slant, Begoña Simal-González on the aporia of transnational American studies, José Liste-Noya’s exploration of the affiliations between transnationalism and the transglobal imaginary found in the science fiction of Samuel R. Delany, a JTAS special forum on American literature and globalization, as well as excerpts from recent books by Takayuki Tatsumi, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Ana Raquel Minian, and others.

Teaching and Theorizing Transnational American Studies Around the Globe

Call for Papers: Teaching and Theorizing American Studies Around the Globe

What would American Studies look like if the transnational rather than the national were at its center? Since Shelley Fisher Fishkin first challenged us with this question in 2004, scholars in the US and around the globe have redefined the field imaginary, object of study, and methodology of TAS. Transpacific Studies has theorized US empire-building, military intervention, and economic expansion as an extension of the conquest of the Americas but also promoted decolonization and advocated Indigenous epistemologies in the South Pacific and the Asia Pacific. It is time we shift our attention to how such critical articulations play out in our pedagogy and teaching practices around the globe. If American Studies was a Cold War product, how have US government-funded programs, centers, and journals worldwide impacted and continued to impact our teaching? How do we relate critical issues in American Studies such as race, gender, class, citizenship, migration and border-crossing to colleagues and students around the world?

Thank you to all who submitted proposals. Call now closed. Download CFP.

Top