Report |
AISNA’s
(Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord
Americani)
22nd
biennial international
conference took place in Trieste this year and with the support of the Research
School’s travel grant, I was able to participate and present my paper at the event.
The panel I
presented
in
—
Topographies of Freedom: The Urban
Experience in Asian
American Communities,
dealt with
literary treatments of the cityscape
as a cultural
historical reflection of Asian American’s experience at various critical moments such
as the formation of ethnic enclaves in the 19th
century, the first
and second World
Wars, and contemporary readings of the city as an “multi
ethnic” and “post ethnic”
space. My paper, entitled
Reinhabiting the Emptied ‘Ghettos’: The Everyday Spaces
of Literary Chinatowns
theoreticized a new approach to the
reading of Chinese
American Literature
and Chinatowns
from a phenomenological perspective. The
extended discussion and feedback following the presentation was very encouraging
and generated new ideas and directions I could pursue in the near future. Moreover,
I
had the
opportunity to network with a diverse,
international group of scholars
that
specialized in other fields in American Studies from History to Sociology that further
enriched my experience and understanding of the importance of an interdisciplinary
approach to
my current work. With the agreement of a group of scholars I met, I
have started a mailing list
to continue our dialogues and exchanges that began at the
conference with the hope also for a greater cooperation between our various
institutions. |