Call for Abstracts from the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus for the 2024 Annual Meeting
“...Stereotypes are manifestations of the longstanding binary image of Asians as the yellow peril and the model minority that continually functions to exclude Asians from white American society.” - Audrey Wu Clark
“The destabilizing threat posed by this contradiction [in the binary image of Asians], in turn, produces spectacularly divergent results—images and representations, as well as legal rulings and governmental policies, that vacillate wildly between positioning Asian Americans as foreigners/outsiders/deviants/criminals or as domesticated/invisible/exemplary/honorary whites. Radically unresolvable, the tension generated in that social/historical contradiction results in the production of racial stereotypes of Asian Americans in representation.” - Karen Shimakawa
As these two quotes articulate, Asian Americans can experience racial stereotyping that is contradictory in nature. This stereotyping can cause negative impacts, psychologically as well as physically, as evidenced by the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic (Kim 2022, Wong & Liu 2022). In Greco-Roman antiquity, as today, race-based caricatures intersect with typecasting rooted in other identities (gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, occupation, etc.), forming conventions that manifest as stock characters in Roman comedy, for example, or targets of invective. But does stereotyping always function to exclude? Can stereotyping by a dominant group be harnessed by a marginalized group for its own aims? When do stereotypes hurt the stereotyper instead of, or as well as, the stereotyped?
For our 2024 panel at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies (SCS) in Chicago, IL (January 4-7), the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus invites abstracts for presentations that broadly explore the concept of “stereotypes” as applicable to the study of the ancient Mediterranean. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Performance, self-awareness, and metatheater of stock characters in ancient comedy
• Multiple and/or contradictory stereotypes in ethnographic and historiographic writing
• Construction and representation of stereotypes in texts or visual culture
• Modern receptions and uses of ancient stereotypes, and ways modern stereotypes are projected back onto antiquity
• Metascholarly reflections on academic and disciplinary stereotypes and their impacts
We encourage submissions that draw on Asian and Asian American Studies, critical race theory, feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, and identity development theory (e.g. Thompson et al. 2016), etc.
Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be submitted as a pdf email attachment to AAACCabstracts@gmail.com by Friday, March 3, 2023. The subject line of your email should be “SCS 2024 Abstract.” The text of your abstract should follow the guidelines available on the SCS website and should not mention the name of the author. Abstracts will be evaluated anonymously by the panel organizers. The AAACC is committed to fostering a collaborative and supportive environment for the sharing of innovative ideas; as such, we welcome submissions from students, educators, artists, and activists of all stages and disciplines. Should you have any questions, please contact Tori Lee (toriflee@bu.edu) and Katherine Lu Hsu (kluhsu@holycross.edu).