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Forum on Race, Politics and National Belonging

March 31 and April 1, 2000 Smith College CISA is pleased to announce a Forum on Race, Politics and National Belonging. It will take place at the Smith College campus on Friday, March 31 and Saturday, April 1, 2000. A series of presentations will explore contemporary issues connected to racial formation and the politics of citizenship. Organized by visiting CISA Five College Professor Sanda Lwin, the aim of this series is to present new methodologies and theoretical approaches to questions of race and national membership, as well as to provide a forum for the Five College community to examine certain domestic and transnational aspects of the politics of race and migration in the 21st century. The four speakers and their presentations are as follows: Priscilla Wald, associate professor of English at Duke University, will speak on the intersections of genetics and diaspora in a talk entitled, "Future Perfect: Grammar, Genes, and Geography." Through an examination of contemporary scientific discourse, Wald will explore how genetics is reconceptualizing the terms, "human being," and, "population," and places them in a larger discussion of science and geography. Ruchira Gupta is an award-winning journalist who currently works at the United Nations on issues of violence against women, the trafficking of women, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on sex workers. She will screen her Emmy-award winning film, "The Selling of Innocents," on the trafficking of Nepali girls and women into India. Following the screening, Gupta will discuss the politics of trafficking, international human rights and larger issues of transnational justice concerning the rights of women. David Eng, assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, will present, "A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia," on issues of immigration, racialization, and assimilation. Through case histories, analyses of literature and film, and psychoanalytic theory, Eng will address questions of citizenship through an examination of the limits and possibilities of full enfranchisement for Asian American subjects in the American polity. Neil Gotanda, legal scholar, professor of law at Western State, visiting professor of American Studies at Princeton and visiting professor of Law at Columbia University, will speak on, "Comparative Racializations of Asian Americans and African Americans." Gotanda will historicize questions of foreignness and inassimilability of Asian Americans through an examination of legal identities and contemporary U.S racial politics. For additional information, please contact CISA at 585-3755 and fcc-cisa@smith.edu, or Professor Sanda Lwin at sl116@columbia.edu.