The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS) invites papers for a panel that addresses the growing number of Asian American writers working in alternative prose fiction genres such as mystery/detective/crime fiction, romance/”chick lit”, science fiction, graphic novels, or any other genre that falls under the categorization of “genre fiction.” Once thought of as a literature of “ill-repute” by the belletristic mainstream, genre fiction was long relegated to the margins of the literary academe. Many Asian American texts were first published by small presses and/or university presses, but more recently, mass market and trade publishers have been promoting a number of titles written by Asian American authors. We seek papers on works by Asian American writers who consciously choose to write genre fiction as a subversive or complicit narrative act. The aim of the panel is to investigate whether Asian American genre fiction expands or constrains the models and vocabularies of Asian American literary representation by negotiating established formal and thematic conventions, navigating the demands of fan culture and the publishing market, and interrogating genre fiction’s pop-cultural cachet vis-à-vis what Sven Birkerts calls “literature with a capital L.”

Please email a 250-word abstract and a two-page CV to BOTH Betsy Huang and Greta Niu, co-chairs, by January 10, 2008. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Betsy Huang
Department of English
Clark University
bhuang@clarku.edu

Greta Niu
Department of English
University of Rochester
greta.niu@rochester.edu