Call for Papers // “Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies” // Special issue of "Atlantic Studies: Global Currents"

Call for Papers // Atlantic Studies: Global Currents
Routledge, UK: www.tandfonline.com/rjas

Special Issue “Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies”

Current (geo)political and economic developments as well as the ongoing flow of people, ideas, and goods in the Pacific region, have recently triggered a surge of interest in Pacific studies and have prompted attempts at framing a transpacific approach to the field, often drawing on existing research in Atlantic studies. Rather than regarding Atlantic studies as a rival to its comparably underresearched (Steven Yao) and undertheorized (Janet Hoskins and Vien Thanh Nguyen) Pacific counterpart, scholars engaged in the field of (trans)Pacific studies, like Rob Wilson, Denise Cruz, Steven Yao, John Carlos Rowe, and Arif Dirlik emphasize the common reference points and shared interests of Atlantic and (trans)Pacific studies. Although these scholars have proposed connections between Atlantic and Pacific studies—in questions of diaspora and mobility, oceanic discourses, (post)colonial legacies, imperialist histories—the current interest in Pacific studies demands further engagement with reciprocities and incongruities between the two fields.

This special issue will explore connections and reciprocities between Atlantic studies and a transpacific approach to Pacific studies. It explores the potential discursive, topical, and historical overlaps of the two fields to carve out mutual concerns and theoretical affinities, and also divergent approaches and differences. It aims to examine how both Atlantic and Pacific Studies are part of global currents, overlapping in topics, approaches, discourses, and goals, without glossing over fundamental differences that characterize the individual fields. Directed at scholars with a background in (trans)Pacific and/or Atlantic studies, or working at the intersection of Atlantic and Pacific studies, this special issue is an attempt to stimulate mutual exchange between the two fields, to intensify their impact within the current transnational focus of literary and cultural studies, to encourage the questioning of well-mapped paths of inquiry, and to outline new theoretical approaches and concepts productive for both fields.

This special issue invites submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following subjects:

• related histories of nationalism and trans-Atlantic/trans-Pacific imperialism and their shared critique
• legacies of imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonial movements; implications of postcolonial perspectives and transnational indigenous studies
• global diasporic concerns that shape Atlantic and Pacific mobility, including questions of (forced) migration, citizenship and national belonging, territory, social and economic capital, class and labor
• the significance of oceanic discourse and ecocritical approaches
• explorations of the crucial semiotic marker of the ship (cf. Boelhower) and its meaning for discourses of/on the Pacific
• the signficance of the “Black Atlantic” for a conceptualization of a diasporic perspective on transnational networks and Asian migration in the Pacific
• the Pacific as a site of literary and cultural exchange between Asian, Pacific and Atlantic traditions
• the Atlantic and the Pacific as spaces of knowledge and knowledge production

We kindly ask contributors to submit an abstract of 300 words and a short biographical statement by December 1, 2015. Please submit your abstract to transpacific@uni-potsdam.de.

Contributors will be notified December 20, 2015 if their abstract is accepted. Deadline for final papers of 7,000-10,000 words will be May 1, 2016. All articles will be subject to two peer reviews.