Tomorrow I'll be driving to St. Charles for the National Women's Studies Association annual conference. I'll be moderating a panel on Friday, and am very interested to see what women's studies scholars (at the conference) are thinking and talking about...
I'm involved due to my colleague Kim Park Nelson, who asked me to participate in this role. She is doing cutting-edge theoretical work and I'm very fortunate to be able to work with her in any capacity.
Here's the panel:
Asian Transnational Adoption: Gender, Race, Maternity,
Loss, and Identity
This panel's participants come from departments of English,
Culture Studies, and American Studies, and use literary, ethnographic,
and historical analysis as well as theories of global reproductive
politics and the new field of adoption studies. Park Nelson applies to
transnational adoption Aihwa Ong's concept of the "family romance" as
"the collective and unconscious images of family order that underlie
public politics [that]inform the way people imagine the operations of
power between individuals and the state, between different ethnic
groups, and of course, between men and women." The literature Novy
analyzes demonstrates some of these images in practice but also
explores how adoptees negotiate their identity. Patton challenges
romantic notions of transnational adoption by exploring the life
experiences of adoptees and birth mothers, and emphasizing the power
relations regulating the immigration of children to the
US
through
adoption.
Sounds like a great panel, Sun Yung. Hope it goes well.
Posted by: Lee H. | June 27, 2007 at 11:03 PM