Paul Crutzen’s warning against modern human’s impacts on the earth through his discourse on “the Anthropocene,” has brought our attention to the catastrophic effects of damages caused by human activities and raised questions about human-centered perspectives on civilization and world systems. Scholars in the humanities have been problematizing the epoch of the Anthropocene, using approaches in relevant fields such as ecocriticism, animal studies, new materialism, and posthumanism, to challenge human-centered vantage points. While we humans certainly bear tremendous responsibility for the impacts on the ecosystem due to the damaging effects of our industrial, scientific, biotechnological, and political activities and the repercussions of neo/colonial warfare, we are also placed in an extremely vulnerable and precarious state exposed to unprecedented environmental threats, whose effects are felt disproportionately across the globe. The hierarchical divide imposed and enforced by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and dis/ability often are expressed through the unequal distribution of physical and psychical violence. Meanwhile, lesser species on the food chain continue to be left unacknowledged.
Understanding the current urgency to establish a dialogue towards planetary consciousness, this edited volume invites scholarly essays on works of Asian American literature and on Asian American representation that portray and evaluate various natural and man-made disasters and their aftermaths. Global catastrophes leave a flotsam and jetsam of debris that reveals not only evidence of towns and cities gone asunder, but from the aftermath surge disease, pollution, socio-political discord, and further dissonance and destruction. Being aware of their involvement in the global system of imperialism, Asian American authors have been compelled to engage with the crises that occurred in their ancestral origins. Their particular racial position and socio-historical backgrounds in U.S. society also enables them to witness disastrous events differently from the majority. Thus, Asian American narratives reflect the way in which imperial influences function as corrosive agents that mediate, perpetuate, and exploit systems and peoples while disclaiming accountability and maintaining vested transnational interests and global power. How do these subsequent entanglements yield new damages and renewed disparities, and meanwhile how have the tethers that have rigorously tied national subject to nation-state been countlessly redefined, reasserted, and refuted? In an age when the malaise of distrust and deception is a constant threat to our efforts to reach consensus, this anthology is an attempt to open a dialogue on how Asian American narratives through their portrayal of disaster may lead to uncovering truths about the multifarious impacts of disaster and reveal new understandings on ways in which attaining recompense may be possible. We welcome transnational perspectives across the world to acknowledge our shared vulnerability and need for cooperation/collaboration beyond the boundaries of nation-states.
We welcome chapters related to natural and man-made disasters. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- The aftereffects of earthquake and tsunami disasters
- The impacts of climate change including hurricane and typhoon disasters
- 9/11 and its aftermath
- Wars (the Vietnam War, WWII, Iraq Wars, etc.)
- The effects of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons
- Food contamination
- Diseases caused by industrial pollution
- Biopiracy
- Gene manipulation
- The epidemic and pandemic
- Starvation and poverty
If you are interested in contributing to this edited volume, please submit your proposal (500-word max.), and biography (300-word max.) to the editors Dr.Yasuko Kase and Eliko Kosaka (aawondisasters@gmail.com) by August 15th, 2023.
Proposal acceptance will be notified by the end of August.
Full chapter submissions are to be delivered by March 15, 2024.
Volume editors, Dr.Yasuko Kase and Eliko Kosaka
