The University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, and the Lesbian/Gay Studies Project of the Center for Gender Studies invite paper proposals for a symposium to be held on March 7, 2009, and which will become a special issue of Amerasia Journal, the core journal in the field of Asian American Studies for the last 40 years. This initiative expands upon the journal’s first collection "Dimensions of Desire: Asian American Sexualities" and takes us into the new century. David Eng and Amy Sueyoshi will be our symposium keynote speakers.

We welcome paper proposals on any aspect of sexuality among Asian American subjects or communities, both historically and in the present, from any disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective. Asian American sexuality has long been analyzed as a residual category constituted in relationship to class, race, ethnicity, and gender, or some intersection of these forms of differentiation. Clearly stratification principles operate in the definition of all societies and social groups, but we are especially interested in papers that look at sexuality in and of itself. Potential topics might include the study of transexuality as lived experience, personal identity, or industry, the emergence of lesbian, gay, and queer identities, bisexuality as a symbol and reality, the representation of heterosexuality among Asian Americans, genitals as cultural symbols in the fetishization of Asian Americans, promiscuity and its perils, sex work and the commercialization of sexual tourism, sexuality and migration, sexual pedagogies, the relationship between sex and religious faith, and any other topics where Asian American sexualities is the primary focus of the work.

Proposals can be sent electronically to the following email addresses by January 7, 2009: rgutierrez@uchicago.edu and rleong@ucla.edu. Paper proposals sent U.S. mail must reach us by the same date, with one copy each should be sent to: Ramón A. Gutiérrez, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, 5733 South University Ave, Chicago, Illinois, and Russell Leong, Editor, Amerasia Journal, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 3230 Campbell Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, Ca. 90095. Paper proposals should not be more that two single-spaced pages and should be accompanied by a short two-page resumé.

All travel and accommodation expenses will be paid by the University of Chicago for those presenters selected for the symposium.