"Imagining South Asia" -- a journal CFP

I'm co-editing a special issue of South Asian Review with Kavita Daiya of George Washington University, and I wanted to throw it out there in case any readers have an interest in submitting something. The topic is "Imagining South Asia," and the goal is to look critically at the tension between regionalism and nationalism in South Asian literature, film, and the arts. Do people really mean "South Asia" when they use that term, or is it a tokenistic kind of regionalism? It's a kind of update on the Imagining India Ronald Inden wrote about some years ago. Here's the actual call for papers:

The South Asian Review, the refereed journal of the South Asian Literary Association, is soliciting essays for the 2007 Special Topic issue, volume 28, Number 1, devoted to “Imagining South Asia.” It examines the category of “South Asia” as a theoretical concept in literary and cultural studies. “South Asia,” an Area Studies term that came into wide usage during the Cold War, has wide purchase in the social sciences, but is sometimes questioned in studies of both modern and pre-modern literature and arts of the Indian subcontinent. Is the Area Studies term obsolete? Is it possible that many contemporary writers in India have more in common with their postcolonial peers in Kenya, South Africa or England than with those in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka? Do postcolonial writers imagine “South Asia” as a viable construct with the same degree of intellectual focus and creative energy as applied to particular national contexts? One could argue that the value of the term “South Asia” seems to be closely tied to diasporic writing and the recent spurt in such cultural artifacts as movies that have achieved success around the world in recent years. To what extent might "South Asian culture" be a product of diasporic consciousness?

SUGGESTED TOPICS: Some suggested topics (by no means exhaustive) that could be explored include the issue of India-centrism and the use of “South Asia” as a tokenizing category; the perspective of writers from South Asia's smaller countries on the category; the construction of national literary canons and South Asian Literature, in the subcontinent and/or diaspora; the history and politics of “South Asia” in literary and cultural studies, and/or in diasporic lives; the use of “South Asia” in the context of the Partition, uneven globalization and the “War on Terror;” the challenges and politics of “Imagining India” vs. “Imagining South Asia.”

If you're even remotely interested, we would love to hear inquiries and proposals from you. (Send me an email and I will forward it to Prof. Daiya) Also, even if you don't think you could submit, I would be curious to hear any comments or suggestions on the topic.

The deadline is January 30, 2007.