introduction
   mission
   facilities
   people

   events
   news
   initiatives

   journal
   research
   publications
   conferences
   library

   courses
   specialization
   opportunities

   calls for papers
   related links

   contact
   archives

News
 

MELUS Reception and Award Ceremony at MLA
Please join us at the reception as we present this year’s MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Shirley Geok-lin Lim.
Time: at 8:00PM
December 28, 2009
Place: Wenying Xu's suite, Courtyard Philadelphia Downtown, 21 Juniper Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107, 215-496-3200

Dr. Lim is an internationally recognized scholar who is currently Professor of English at University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Lim has published widely in the areas of literary criticism, Asian American studies, poetry, fiction, and memoir. Her most recent publications
include Princess Shawl (Maya Press: Kuala Lumpur, 2008); Listening to the Singer: New and Selected Malaysian Poems (Maya Press: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2007); and Sister Swing, A Novel (Singapore/London: Marshall Cavendish, 2006). Dr. Lim’s wide-ranging and deeply influential contributions to scholarship and teaching have frequently been acknowledged with numerous grants, prizes, awards, and honors such as NEH and American Book Award.

 

 

 

"Torture and the Future: Perspectives from the Humanities"
Visit the website that has been established regarding the 2006-2007 Critical Issues in American Programming.
http://www.complit.ucsb.edu/projects/tortureandthefuture/events.html

 

 

Sister Swing coverSister Swing
By Shirley Geok-lin Lim
paper 9812612270 $12.00

Buy This Book!

Karen Yamashita, author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
"... [set] against [a] wild cultural backdrop... the story unfolds to reveal the strong and intimate ties and responsibilities of sisterhood."

Shawn Wong, author of American Knees
"... a richly textured understanding of a family rooted in a rigid patriarchy ... and their new identity molded in [1980s'] America."

Richard Lim, The Straits Times
"As in her first novel "Joss and Gold", Shirley... has infused the work with her poetic sensibility. A compelling read."

Book Description
"Sister Swing" chronicles the growing up years of three sisters. It follows their transplant from a relatively sheltered life in Malaysia to the raw realities of the United States. It illuminates the complex relationships between the sisters, and gently but firmly explores the morals, values and mindsets of growing up Asian in a Western world.

America and the Reshaping of a New World Order: Normative Implications, Cultural Constraints
 

The American Cultures and Global Contexts Center in the Department of English, together with UC Santa Barbara's Global and International Studies Program and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, are co-sponsoring a year-long, campus-wide project on the subject of "America and the Reshaping of a New World Order: Normative Implications, Cultural Constraints." Funded by an annual grant devoted to "Critical Issues in America" and administered by the Office of the Provost in the College of Letters and Science, this project will include a sequence of special programs, from a distinguished speaker series, and a major academic conference, to a UC system-wide Faculty Roundtable, and a film series, and it will be coordinated with a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses.
Series of Events

 

Imagination and the Nation: In, Between, and Beyond States
ACGC Graduate Student Conference
Saturday, May 8th, 9am - 6:30pm, 2004
Centennial House, UCSB

In recent years, the processes, flows, forces, and trends which could be called "globalisms" or "globalization," as well as theories surrounding these developments, have contributed to renewed interest in the connections within and among America, the Americas, and the rest of the world. With this in mind, this conference brings together student scholars from various disciplines around the central theme of the national imaginary and how it relates to the global imaginary.

Up and coming scholars from various humanities and fine arts departments in the UC system and across the nation are presenting papers on topics as divers as Philipino-American spoken word performance, female Indonesian dancers, and American literature survey courses. A faculty panel will hold a rountable discussion on the topic as well: Susan Koshy (Asian American Studies), Jacqueline Stevens(Law and Society), Chris Newfield (English) and, tentatively, Kumkum Bhavnani (Sociology) will hash out issues of the national imaginary. English Department doctoral candidate Emily Davis will moderate the discussion. In addition, artists from our university community will show selected works in Centennial House that day.

 

World Order and Documentary: Davis Guggenheim and Elizabeth Shue Celebrate the work of Charles A. Guggenheim

Tuesday, May 11, 2004
7:30-9:30 p.m., Girvetz 1004

Hollywood writer, producer, and director Davis Guggenheim (of such films as “Gossip” and the new HBO series “Deadwood”) and Academy Award nominee for best actress (“Leaving Las Vegas”) Elizabeth Shue discuss the legacy of world renowned documentary film-maker Charles A. Guggenheim. Nominated for ten Academy Awards and winner of three for such films as “Nine from Little Rock” (1964) and “Robert Kennedy Remembered” (1968), Charles Guggenheim is also remembered as well for such classics as “Klan: A Legacy of Hate in America” (1982), “Monument to the Dream” (1967), “The Johnstown Flood” (1989), “D-Day Remembered” (1994), “A Time for Justice” (1994) and “Berga: Soldiers of Another War” (2003).

 

International Conference on America and the Reshaping of a New World Order: Normative Implications, Cultural Constraints
April 23-24, 2004,
Corwin Pavillion, UCSB

This conference will feature keynote addresses by Ronald Steel and Richard Falk, an evening exhibition of performance art (and walk-through, participatory diaorama on the global) by world famous performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña, and papers by, among others, Myra Jehlen, Rutgers, Lisa Lowe, UCSD, Eileen Boris, Mark Juergensmeyer, Lisa Parks, Clark Roof, and Juan Campo, UCSB, Carolyn Porter, UCB, Donald Pease, Dartmouth, David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford, Helmut Anheier, UCLA, and Berndt Ostendorf, University of Munich. With the exception of the plenary talks, papers will be kept to 20 minutes in length in order to reserve a maximum amount of time in each session for discussion among the panelists and well as with the audience.

 

 

Homi Babha
"A Global Measure: Writing, Rights, and Responsibilities"

April 15, 2004, 4pm, UCSB Corwin Pavilion
"The Global and the Postcolonial: A Conversation with Homi Bhaba"
April 16, 2004, Lobero Room in the UCEN

Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard Univerisity, Professor Bhabha is author of The Location of Culture and the forthcoming A Measure of Dwelling and editor of Nation and Narration. His interests are extraordinarily wide-ranging and extend to colonial and post-colonial theory, cosmopolitanism, 19th- and 20th- Century British and other English-language literatures, semiotics, theories of ethics, psychoanalysis, and questions of culture and globalization. His more recent essays include "Americanization: Imaging the American Century" (1999); "Anxiety in the Midst of Difference" (1998); "The White Stuff" (1998); "On the Irremovable Strangeness of Being Different" (1998); and "Day by Day . . . with Frantz Fanon" (1998).

 

 

ACGC Colloquium:
New Directions in American Literary and Cultural Studies
Laura Szanto and Jacob Berman

Friday March 5, 3:30-5:00
ACGC Seminar Room, South Hall 2617

Laura Szanto and Jacob Berman will discuss aspects of their research at
the ACGC Colloquium: New Directions in American Literary and Cultural
Studies this Friday, March 5 from 3:30-5:00 PM in the ACGC seminar room
(SH 2716). Jacob's research is focused on the influence of the image of the Arab
on Ante Bellum American identity formation, and Laura's research
examines the impact of the urban experience on contemporary Native
American literature.

To be sure we have enough goodies, please RSVP to Elizabeth Freudenthal
at freuden@umail.ucsb.edu by Wednesday if you plan to come.