As we enter the new millennium, issues of race and ethnicity remain vibrant and contentious in the United States and virtually everywhere else in the world. Migration, past and present, is a key to understanding the diversity and the dynamic pluralism of the United States of America. In Europe, nation-states that once considered themselves ethnically homogeneous now encompass increasingly diverse and self-conscious population groups. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America migration flows, voluntary and forced, have intensified as the web of global economic, social, cultural, and political linkages grow tighter. Ethnic and racial conflict, sometimes of a quite systematic and deadly kind, seems almost commonplace all over the world.

In the United States, questions of race, ethnicity, and changing demographics have long been at the heart of political and academic discourse concerning the past, present, and future of American society. In the last twenty years, these topics have also become fixed features of intellectual and policy debates in many other countries. The Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Conference intends to bring together scholars who work on the United States and other parts of the world for comparative and interdisciplinary discussions on race, ethnicity, and migration in communities, past and present. The conference seeks to address the urgent need for a more comprehensive and transnational research agenda.

Proposals are welcome from advanced graduate students, junior and senior scholars, and independent scholars. Proposals should include an abstract of each paper. Proposals for full panels, roundtables, interactive arts presentations, or performances are encouraged. Preference will be given to submissions which include the work of graduate students, which cross national boundaries by engaging in comparative or transnational work or by presenting material on racial and ethnic formation outside of the U.S., and which transcend single disciplinary boundaries. We encourage submissions on a range of relevant topics including, but not limited to:

Diaspora and diasporic identities; Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced migration; Gender, race, and migration; Comparative migrations; Political economies of migration; Politics of difference/Politics of otherness; Refugee migration; Creating and enforcing borders; Migration: Theatrical performances and literary texts; Labor and migration; Identity: Nationalism and transnationalism; Technology, migration, and cyberspace; Race and transnational radicalisms; Language, religion, and the racialization of immigrants; Migration and the (re)learning of race; State-determined identity and citizenship: documenting the immigrant; Migration and film; Race, migration, and law; Representations of immigrants and performances of identity; Linking the global and the local; Migration and cultural diffusion; (Re)imagined communities; Transnationalism and globalization; Teaching migration; Migrant families: Intergenerational issues; The rights of migrants (health care, education, and housing).

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2000