This seminar examines how racialized communities are positioned within and across social, cultural, historical, and geopolitical formations. Positioning is understood as a relational and historical process through which subjects and communities are made legible in relation to others. Such positions are not simply taken or given, but produced through representation, translation, and regimes of recognition, while also being negotiated, contested, or refused. What makes a community legible as "Asian," “Western,” “foreign,” “native,” or otherwise different, and from whose vantage point? How do racialized communities navigate positions that may be contradictory, unstable, or imposed? How do literary and cultural texts reproduce, challenge, or reconfigure these processes of positioning? We welcome studies that bring different literatures, media, and historical contexts into conversation to explore how racialized identities and relations between Asia and the West are contingently and continually positioned, contested, and transformed. 

We welcome proposals for 20- minute presentations in English for the seminar, part of the American Comparative Literature Association’s Virtual 2027 Annual Meeting.