[Discussion] "Discourses on Colonialism: Civilizing Missions and U.S. Empire in the Gilded Age" (ASA 2003)

[Paksoy, Hb]

  "Discourses on Colonialism: Civilizing Missions and U.S. Empire in the
Gilded Age" (ASA 2003)
Location: Connecticut, United States 
Call for Papers Deadline: 2003-01-10  
Date Submitted: 2002-11-14 
Announcement ID: 131861 

 

CFP: "Discourses on Colonialism: Civilizing Missions and U.S. Empire in the
Gilded Age" 

Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association
"Violence and Belonging" 
October 16-19, 2003
Hartford, Connecticut


This proposed session will explore how the construction of United States
identity during the Gilded Age occurred through engagement with contemporary
imperialism and the rhetoric of civilization. If a central paradox of U.S.
history in the period between the Civil War and World War I was the
emergence of a society that was conflictingly both imperialist and
democratic, then the ways and means of this emergence should be a fruitful
source of inquiry into the contradictory ways in which American power
asserts itself in the modern world. This panel welcomes papers from a
variety of disciplines exploring these contradictions through an examination
of the intersection, confluence, and disjuncture, at home and abroad, of
U.S. empire. Topics might include: 

American missionaries in China and Japan 
Women's travel narratives and discourses of rescue 
Reenactment of the Boer War at the 1904 St. Louis Fair 
Democracy, Pragmatism, and U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and the
Pacific 
Representations of Africa and Asia on the U.S. stage and screen 
James Weldon Johnson and African American diplomats 
Tuskegee Institute's agricultural extension projects in Africa; "Social
imperialism" and women's suffrage 
Send a one-page abstract and one-page vita by Jan. 10 to both:  


 Geoffrey Jacques 
Email: gfjacq@aol.com 

Ira Dworkin 

Email: idworkin@brooklyn.cuny.edu