Call for Panelists Verge-sponsored Panel at AAS 2026
“Global Asias’ Crossroads: Settler Colonialism, Diaspora, and Indigeneity”
Organizers: Lillian Ngan (lngan@usc.edu) and Wayne CF Yeung (wayne.yeung@du.edu)
Date/Venue: AAS, March 12-15, 2026 / Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Descriptions:
As scholars (Fujikane & Okamura; Day et al.) turn a critical eye towards the involvements of Asian diasporas in settler colonialism in places like Hawai’i and Canada, a salient absence from the conversation is the settler colonialisms currently active in continental Asia, including China (Tibet, Xinjiang), Japan (Hokkaido, Okinawa), and Russian Far East, as well as settler post-colonies like Taiwan and India (Kashmir). Meanwhile, Sinophone studies, which has pioneered settler-colonial criticisms in the study of Sinitic-language communities, remains ambivalent as to how diaspora’s expiration answers to the decolonization of immigrant-Indigenous relationalities in local contexts.
In Global Asias, the grey areas between migratory movement and settler colonialism, located between the political invisibility of non-white settler-colonial polities and the rhetorical indivisibility between Indigenous sovereignty and nativist nationalism, remain vexed political issues and messy theoretical lacunae. This panel thus invites critical, multidisciplinary interventions into questions attending to settlers or settler colonialisms of color from a Global Asias’ perspective, comparatizing and globalizing the term’s critical use-value. To what extent is the settler-colonial framework applicable in, for example, SinoVietnam borderland (where transculturation is imperially longue-durée) or Hong Kong and Singapore (where, as “societies of migrants, ” indigenous claims are weak)? Do intergenerational differences (“old” and “new” immigrants codified by terms like peranakans, tusán, sinke, sanyiman, xinzhumin), immigration status (undocumented, refugees, guest-workers), and diasporic indigeneity (Hmong-Americans and Indigenous Taiwanese diasporas) nurture new articulations of identity or solidarity relevant to existing settler-colonial/Indigenous dynamics? How do territorial disputes (Sino-Russo-Japanese Northeast Asia, China/Taiwan, and India/Pakistan) reflect on territory-based Indigeneity?
If interested, please send your (1) 250-word abstract addressing the connection between your research and the CfP and (2) two-page CV with information related to the call to Lillian Ngan (lngan@usc.edu) and Wayne CF Yeung (wayne.yeung@du.edu) by July 18, 2025. We will notify you about the decisions by July 22, 2025.