Merf. Thinking is Hard.

CfP: South Asian Diasporic Masculinities: Men and Political Crises

Guest Editor: Chandrima Chakraborty, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

Scholarly engagement with masculinity and political violence in South Asia is primarily the work of political scientists, anthropologists, and historians, who do not adequately address the vulnerable situation of South Asian men in riot situations, or investigate the unresolved implications of the experiences and memories of these men on the present. Discussions of “social suffering” by sociologists and media theorists, on the other hand, rarely address immigrant and diasporic experiences. This special issue aims to complicate the longstanding critical focus on masculine aggression and disaffection in South Asian cultural criticism and contribute to the emergent postcolonial engagement with masculinity in the South Asian context. It also seeks to remedy the insular examinations of South Asian cultures—often limited by national borders—and enhance our understanding of men and masculinities in South Asia and its diaspora.

By engaging scholars from a variety of theoretical perspectives and disciplinary approaches in a conversation, this special issue seeks to identify sets of shared concerns, challenges to dominant national discourses, and investigate the myriad processes of history-making. It solicits papers that assess how political crisis manifests in cultural representations of South Asian men and masculinities within the shifting contexts of displacement, migration, state repression, and violent conflicts in order to raise questions about the relationship between men, masculinity, family, community, and national identity. By investigating how scholars, activists, creative writers, and filmmakers understand and imagine masculinity, its social constitution, and its social meanings and effects during political crises, the essays collected here will illuminate the cultural and political negotiations of postcolonial nationality, migration, violence, and citizenship in myriad public spheres. It will also intervene in critical discussions on identity construction, secularism, ethno-nationalism, multiculturalism, and religious nationalism.  Papers on first-, second- or third-generation South Asian diasporic communities in Africa, Caribbean, Canada, United States, and Britain as well as cross-border migrations within South Asia are welcome. 

Papers might address such topics as:

• changing notions of ‘South Asian’ masculinity during political crisis
• male suffering and trauma• male bodies and male honour
• the effects of masculinity upon men, women, and children 
• history and memory; personal and collective memories
• the relation between past crises and the present
• the “model minority” discourse
• popular culture, fiction, and cinema   
• testimonies and witnessing 
• mourning and reconciliation
• transnational identity claims (ethnic, racial, sexual, religious) and state-based nationalism
• intergenerational issues
• the post-9/11 rhetoric of terror
• youth criminality 

Please submit a 300-word abstract to chandri@mcmaster.ca by February 28, 2012. Full-length essays (8,0000-9,000 words including notes and bibliography) will be due by October 15, 2012. 

I studied with Dr. Chakraborty and she is pretty damn rad. Please reblog!