RSAJournal: Rivista di Studi Americani asks all AISNA members to send a proposal for a special section to be published in the next issue (#32, 2021).

We have already received a proposal on Mapping the Contemporary US Novel: Theories, Forms and Themes, but we are open to any other suggestion. Proposals (of about 300/500 words) must be sent to the General Editor, Valerio Massimo De Angelis no later than October 31, and must specify the coordinator(s) of the section, who will take full responsibility (with the collaboration of the Editorial Board, of course) for the whole publishing process, from the call of papers to the peer review phase to the correction of proofs.

CFP: JAm It! #5, Special Issue
“Watching the Watchmen:” The State of Policing in U.S. Cultural Production

US obsession with policing can be traced back as far as John Winthrop’s sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” (climaxed in the noted “the eyes of all people are on us”), delivered in 1630 on board of the Arbella. In one of white America’s foundational texts, the “eyes of all people” stand as an early figuration of panoptical undercurrents in the United States, whereby a professedly metaphysical yet very concrete control is enforced to safeguard social and ethical order. Canonical US literature, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man also reminds us that order, even when not deferred to the State, has been violently enforced through coercion, stigma, or segregation throughout the history of the nation. Echoing the seminal figure of Esther Prynne, narratives produced by authors as diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, more recently, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, are figurations and proofs of the United States’ leviathan policing apparatus and its employment in regulating non-conforming subjects in the name of a perfectly-engineered City Upon a Hill and the capitalistic permutation of its transcendental concept of social order. 

The state systematically marshals the bodies of its citizens through practices such as biopower and necropolitics; in doing so, it also shapes and channels our understanding of race, gender, sexuality, and identity. This is especially evident in the US prison system, with its world-record constellation of institutions that actively re-design the institutional contours of national social inequality while also standing as a demonstration of how unfettered capitalism (even in its neoliberalist guise) predates on minoritarian and oppressed subjects for its reproduction. The recent wave of events across the United States and growing appeals to states of exception have further called attention to systematic police brutality and its role in stabilizing authority as part of the state apparatus. Across the nation, citizens are fighting back against what Herbert Marcuse has called “surplus-repression,” that is, “the restrictions necessitated by social domination,” (1955, 35) that characterize ideology and praxis of advanced industrial societies up to their contemporary neoliberal incarnations. If racialized violence that has been perpetrated since the Federalist Era through both institutional and private forms of racial policing reverberates in the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery; the protesting, marching, and rioting that ensued – culminated in the Defund the Police movement and in the deployment of federal troops to contain protests and protestors – point to the desire of new forms of governance (and self-governance) from the opposite poles of the political spectrum: a counter-apparatus from below, aiming to citizens empowerment and liberation, on the one hand, and what we may call a “neo-conservative revolution,” aimed at preserving old white patriarchal structures. 

The aim of this Special Issue of JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy) is not only to discuss representations and histories of police and policing across multiple systems but also to analyze (and produce) counter-imaginaries, modes of care that aim at seeing, rather than watching, citizens and bodies. At this sensitive moment in American history, when national understandings of, as Michel Foucault would have it, “disciplin[ing] and punish[ing]” are being especially questioned, we look for contributions that, through the analysis of representations and/or cultural artifacts, frame policing in its fluid connections with the way in which US culture and counterculture have imagined and produced systems of control.

Interested scholars should submit a 500-word abstract and brief academic bio to the editors Stefano Morello (veritas44@gmail.com) and Marco Petrelli (marco.petrelli@unito.it), and cc’ing journal@aisna-graduates.online by October 15, 2020. In case of acceptance, essays of no more than 8,000 words will be due January 15, 2021.

Possible areas of inquiry include:

 

  • The policing of space, with an eye to geography, borders, and immigration;
  • The normalization of police brutality throughout U.S. history and the myth of police heroism, as perpetrated through forensic drama, police procedurals and true crime narratives;
  • The role of technology and technocapitalism in containing, disciplining and punishing marginalized individuals (e.g., through technologies with built-in racial bias, such as machine learning, face recognition and quantitative and qualitative data analysis);
  • Prison abolition and abolitionism as connected by both Angela Davis and Ruth Gilmore Wilson;
  • Policing and weaponizing the body (and especially disabled and the destitute bodies), as legitimized and institutionalized by the medical discourse; 
  • Modes of politics from below – of counter-policing, if you will – that aim at replacing the state apparatus in matters of public safety and community support (e.g., The Black Panther Party, #BlackLivesMatter, El Movimiento, ACT UP, etc.);
  • Citizen militias and other forms of private justice as depicted by utopian and dystopian literature, comics, and screen productions (e.g., Margaret Atwood’s dystopian trilogy, US superhero and vigilante comics, the recent Watchmen tv show, etc.) ;
  • Colonial(ist) policing, nationalisms, and their role in patrolling history and national mythologies;
  • The complicity of the academy in promoting a culture of policing and surveillance; 
  • The role of discourse (in all its forms, gossip included) and language as social policing;
  • Ideological and identitarian policing in the current political climate.

 

Suggested Readings

 

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.  

Balto, Simon. 2019. Occupied Territory, Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Davis, Angela Y. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Penguin Random House.

———. 2005. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso Books. 

Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Paris: Gallimard.

———. 1976. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. Paris: Gallimard.

Gilmore Wilson, Ruth. 2007. Golden Gulag, Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hall, Stuart. 2018 [1980]. “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance.” In Essential Essays, Volume 1: Foundations of Cultural Studies, David Morley, ed. Durham: Duke University Press.

Herbert, Steve. 1996. Policing Space, Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Isenberg, Nancy. 2017. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. London: Penguin Books.

Lee, Julian C.H. 2011. Policing Sexuality: Sex, Society, and the State. London: Zed Books.

Manning, Peter. 2008. The Technology of Policing: Crime Mapping, Information Technology, and the Rationality of Crime Control. New York: New York University Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1955. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, Herbert. 1965. “Repressive Tolerance.” In A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon Press. 

Mbembe, Achille. 2003.  “Necropolitics.” Public Culture. 15, no. 1: 11-40.

McCoy, Alfred W. 2009. Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Mladek, Klaus, ed. 2007. Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Nelson, Alondra. 2011. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Roberts, Dorothy E. 1998. Killing the Black Body, Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Penguin Random House.

Schrader, Stuart. 2019. Badges without Borders, How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Vitale, Alex. 2017. The End of Policing. London: Verso Books. 

Wilson, Jeremy M. 2006. Community Policing in America. London: Routledge.

In riferimento ai recenti fatti di violenza pubblica ai danni di cittadini afroamericani, il Direttivo ha formulato la seguente dichiarazione. Ci auguriamo interpreti il pensiero e il sentire di tutta l’Associazione e invitiamo chi lo volesse a condividerla e farla circolare.

AISNA (Italian Association for North American Studies) stands in solidarity with militants and advocates of civil rights protesting police brutality, white supremacism, and structural racism in the United States, in Italy, and across the world.

In the past weeks, we read with dismay about the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. We watched with growing discomfort American police’s violent reaction before lawful expressions of righteous anger and distress. We listened carefully as the protests in the U.S. ignited a debate on structural problems of our societies that stretch well beyond the U.S. and invest our daily practice as teachers and researchers.

As scholars of U.S. literature, culture, history and politics, we understand that today’s problems have deep roots in the country’s long history of slavery, racism, anti-black violence, and imperialist aggression. We deem it crucial to use our knowledge and expertise to promote a more informed, competent and constructive discussion on the problems that the tragic death of Floyd, Taylor, Arbery and many others highlighted.

At the same time, we are committed to listening and learning from protesters, activists, and scholars in Italy who tell us that these problems are not just American problems. We express our support and solidarity to nonwhite communities in Italy who are victims of racial injustice and police brutality.

Black Lives Matter.

Premio Agostino Lombardo  

Per commemorare la figura del grande studioso scomparso, l’AISNA (Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord-Americani) bandisce il Premio Agostino Lombardo, assegnato alla migliore tesi di laurea di argomento americanistico discussa nel corso dell’anno precedente in un’università italiana.

Il premio consiste in € 500,00 (cinquecento). Al premio in denaro si aggiungono, come da regolamento, l’iscrizione all’AISNA per un anno e la proposta di pubblicazione di un estratto della tesi sulla rivista RSAJournal. L’estratto sarà in ogni caso sottoposto a un processo di peer review.

Possono concorrere al Premio tutte le tesi di Laurea Specialistica o Magistrale discusse nel corso dell’anno solare 2019 su argomenti inerenti alla letteratura, alla storia e alla cultura nord-americana. Ciascun membro dell’Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord-Americani, in regola con il pagamento delle quote associative, potrà proporre non più di una tesi, che dovrà essere accompagnata da una circostanziata relazione a firma del/della proponente. Il/la proponente non deve essere necessariamente stato/a relatore/relatrice della tesi.

La tesi dovrà essere inviata in formato cartaceo ed elettronico. La tesi in formato cartaceo e in unica copia, stampata fronte-retro e rilegata con semplice cartoncino e spirale, va inviata a: Premio Agostino Lombardo, c/o Centro Studi Americani, via Michelangelo Caetani, 32, 00186 Roma. La tesi in formato elettronico (pdf), va inviata invece all’indirizzo della segreteria-aisna@unibg.it. Il/la proponente dovrà inviare la propria relazione in formato elettronico al medesimo indirizzo della segreteria. 

Tutta la documentazione dovrà essere inoltrata entro il 15 luglio 2020. Farà fede la ricezione dei documenti in formato elettronico da parte della segreteria AISNA. 

I lavori relativi al precedente bando 2019, non pervenuti alla commissione a causa di comprovati disguidi di trasmissione/ricezione postale (cartacea e/o elettronica), saranno riammessi a concorrere per il 2020.

Le tesi pervenute saranno esaminate da una Commissione che, dopo aver valutato individualmente gli elaborati, stilerà una graduatoria di merito, designerà il/la vincitore/vincitrice e delibererà l’eventuale assegnazione di menzioni di merito. Il vincitore/la vincitrice del Premio verrà proclamato/a nel corso della prossima Assemblea dell’Associazione.

Premio Caterina Gullì

La famiglia Gullì ha istituito a partire dall’anno 2006 un premio per onorare la figura di Caterina Gullì, americanista prematuramente scomparsa nell’anno 1990, quando era in procinto di terminare la sua tesi di dottorato in Studi Americani presso l’Università degli Studi di Roma 3, nonché un Ph.D. in Letterature Comparate presso la Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ).

Il premio consiste in € 300 (trecento). Al premio in denaro si aggiungono, come da regolamento, una quota di iscrizione all’AISNA per un anno e la proposta di pubblicazione di un estratto della tesi sulla rivista RSAJournal. L’estratto sarà in ogni caso sottoposto a un processo di peer review.

Nell’istituire il premio, la famiglia Gullì delega l’Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord-Americani a scegliere ogni anno, fra le tesi presentate al Premio Agostino Lombardo, una tesi dotata di particolari caratteristiche di innovatività e originalità alla quale assegnare il premio. Tutte le tesi presentate al Premio Agostino Lombardo, pertanto, parteciperanno automaticamente anche al Premio Caterina Gullì.

L’AISNA si riserva di contribuire alle spese di viaggio dei vincitori di entrambi i premi per la sede prevista dell’Assemblea annuale.

The OASIS – Orientale American Studies International School is are now accepting applications for it’s fifth iteration. The school will be held in the Conference Center of University of Naples “L’Orientale” in the isle of Procida, Italy, from May 24 to May 29, 2020.

Confirmed speakers:

  • Jonathan Arac (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
  • Susan Balée (independent scholar)
  • Colleen Glenney Boggs (Dartmouth College, USA)
  • Derrais Carter (University of Arizona)
  • Jane Desmond (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
  • Virginia R. Dominguez (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
  • Ira Dworkin (Texas A&M University, USA)
  • Brian T. Edwards (Tulane University, USA)
  • Fred Gardaphé (Queens College-CUNY, USA)
  • May Hawas (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
  • Gordon Hutner (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
  • Ronald A. Judy (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
  • Donald E. Pease (Dartmouth College, USA)
  • Mounira Soliman (American University in Cairo, Egypt)

Compact seminar: “How to Get Published” held by Gordon Hutner (editor of American Literary History).

We invite applications from doctoral students, recent Ph.D.s, and junior faculty in American Studies, English, Comparative Literature, and related fields.

The fee for the School (covering registration, tuition, housing, breakfast, and lunch) is € 620 for the whole week. Applications will be accepted until March 15, 2020; successful applicants will be notified by March 31. You can find the CFA for PhD students here and the CFA for M.A. students here. For more info please see the school’s website.

We appreciate your help in circulating the news among your students and colleagues!

Issue #31 (2020) of RSAJournal: Rivista di Studi Americani, the official journal of the Italian Association for North American Studies (Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord-Americani – AISNA) will feature a special issue on the broader impact that the nuclear era has had on the United States. The issue, edited by RSAJournal Assistant Editor, Elisabetta Bini (University of Naples Federico II), Dario Fazzi (Roosevelt Institute for American Studies), and Thomas Bishop (University of Lincoln) is titled American Apocalypse(s): Nuclear Imaginaries and the Reinvention of Modern America and scholars from different academic fields are invited to submit their proposals.

In 1982, while president Ronald Reagan was blessing a 40% increase in America’s nuclear spending, pop-singer Prince released his famous 1999 song. “Everybody’s got a bomb, we could all die any day, oh – But before I let that happen, I’ll dance my life away, oh oh,” the refrain went. By the early 1980s, threats of nuclear annihilation and prophecies of doom had become part and parcel of American popular culture.

The US’s mastery of nuclear power is an entrenched feature of modern America. Throughout the second half of the Twentieth century, nuclear power simultaneously fascinated and repelled US society, by embodying faith in scientific progress and ancestral fears at the same time. It raised fears of a potential nuclear conflict – and therefore of a total annihilation of mankind – and was simultaneously the object of widespread beliefs in the possibility of producing an unlimited, clean and efficient source of energy. This polarizing character enabled the proliferation of different nuclear discourses and narratives. Nuclear power’s outreach was total, and its breadth extended over any field of cultural production. Nuclear power reshuffled the very vocabulary of American politics and society writ large. The power of the atom, its universalism and contested sustainability alike, swayed the mindset and worldviews of generations of Americans.

This special issue aims to explore the multifaceted impact that nuclear power and culture have had and continue to have in the United States, in order to reassess and redraw the contours of an age, the nuclear one, the dark shadows of which still impinge upon us today. All disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are welcome, and topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • The interactions among different nuclear visions, including philosophical, religious, literary and artistic conceptualizations;
  • Audiovisual representations of American nuclear culture, including literary, cinematographic, comic book, digital, and virtual renderings;
  • Indigenous, intersectional, or transnational encounters with nuclear power and culture;
  • Meta-geographies and material cultures of the nuclear;
  • Gendered and racialized renderings of nuclear culture and politics;
  • The international and global influence of American nuclear culture, and the multiple and complex forms of resistance to it;
  • The politicization of US anti-nuclear movements and their transnational dimensions;
  • Intersections between nuclear culture, and “apocalyptic culture” and “post-apocalyptic culture” writ large;
  • Similarities and differences between nuclear culture and climate fiction and criticism;
  • The relationship between the nuclear age and the Anthropocene.

Please send a 200-word abstract and a short biographical sketch to Elisabetta Bini, Dario Fazzi, and Tom Bishop by December 30. People whose abstracts have been accepted will be notified by January 15. The deadline for full-length articles (40.000 characters, including spaces, notes, and works cited) is April 15, 2020.

Condividiamo la locandina e il programma per il convegno Still White after Arrival? Americanization and Racialization of Early 20th-Century Italian Migrants to the United States  si terrà presso il Dipartimento di Studi umanistici dell’Università di Macerata il 19 e il 20 novembre. Il convegno è sponsorizzato dalla Commissione Fulbright, dall’Ambasciata degli Stati Uniti in Italia e dall’AISNA.