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The Purdue American Studies Program announces its annual Symposium to be held April 20, 2007. This event is graduate student-run and focuses on the presentation of academic work by other graduate students. The Purdue American Studies Symposium Committee invites papers from students of all disciplines to engage the theme “Remapping America: Shifts in Nationality, Citizenship, and Community.” This topic is in conversation with the American Studies Association’s national conference theme for 2006, “The United States from Inside and Out: Transnational American Studies,” and 2007 “América Aquí: Transhemispheric Visions and Community Connections.” Additionally, this theme is meant to reflect the American Studies Lecture Series “Nationalism, Citizenship, Immigration and American Studies,” currently being held at Purdue University. Keynote speakers include George Lipsitz (American Studies in a Moment of Danger) and Michael Denning (The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century).
This is an interdisciplinary conference, thus, we invite papers from students of all disciplines to engage the theme “Remapping America: Shifts in Nationality, Citizenship, and Community.” Questions for consideration include, but are not limited to, the following:
-What happens to American Studies and the idea of America if we remap them by including discourse from other geographic regions? How does an “outsider’s” perspective change the academic discipline, what is studied, and who is heard or not heard?
-How is American Studies changed when we remap disciplines? How are the lines between history and literature, for example, blurred? Is a “definitive” history of America possible? How do these ideas relate to academic canon? What will this do to academic community? Can there be a national history, literature, art, etc.?
The conference's theme also lends itself to ideas concerning immigration, migration, language, displacement, civil rights, and borders.
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