Comparative approaches reframe the question of cultural identity, and indeed complicate the very notion of a singular “AMERICA.” Traditional academic narratives—and disciplinary institutions, such as “American Studies” and “U.S. History”— have tended to rely on the fixed and hermetic contours of national culture. The comparative move attempts to question this fixation and singularity by comparing different national histories of the United States and other countries. Especially in an era when the significance of national boundaries is increasingly unclear, it also proposes a number of analytical frames which offer a focus other than that of the nation, be this focus local, regional or global: for example, the American South, New England, Little Italies, Chinatowns, “red states” and “blue states,” Turks in the United States and Germany, American intellectual “colonies” abroad, “border” communities of the United States with Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean, and the Black Atlantic. Comparativism may also challenge the historical attachment of culture to place, demanding alternative paradigms for the cultural and historical analysis associated with transnationalisms, trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific formations, diasporas, migration, and what has been termed the “poetics [and politics, and history, we would add] of relation.” For this conference we invite proposals from within the many disciplines of American Studies that focus on “American” and “U.S.” Studies not by abandoning these analytical frames but by (dis-)placing them within a comparative context.

Possible panels may include:

Comparative Historiographies
Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in the United States and Beyond
American Exceptionalism/Comparative Exceptionalisms
Atlantic or Pacific Crossings
Transnational and Trans-locational Paradigms
The Local, the Regional, the Global
Ethnic Studies in a Comparative Frame
Hybrid Americas vs. the Clash of Cultures
Caribbean Cultures
Civic vs. Ethnic or Religious Identities
The Poetics, Politics and History of Relation
Hemispheric Perspectives
Comparative Approaches in the Classroom
Comparative Gender and Sexuality Studies

We invite proposals for individual papers, but especially welcome proposals for panels of three to four presenters and roundtables of three to five presenters. The deadline for submission of all proposals is July 31, 2006. We request a one- to two-page abstract that summarizes the contents of the panel or roundtable and its relation to the conference, or, for individual papers, summarizes the paper and suggests a panel or panels to which it may relate. We also request a c.v. for all prospective presenters. All applicants will be notified of the conference contents by September 1, 2006.

Selected papers may be invited for submission for consideration for publication in the ASAT peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of American Studies of Turkey.