Modern Language Association

616. NARRATIVES OF POST–WORLD WAR II BLACK GERMAN ADOPTION: IDENTITY, HISTORY, AND CULTURAL IMAGINATION

SATURDAY, 6 JANUARY 1:45 PM-3:00 PM

Black Germans: Reunification and Belonging in Diaspora, Rosemarie Pena (Rutgers U, Camden) [#2634]

Black German Orphans in the United States Literary Imagination, Cynthia A. Callahan (Ohio State U, Mansfield) [#2631]

Screening the Postwar Myth of Racial Integration: Germany and Italy in Comparative Perspective, Angelica Fenner (U of Toronto) [#2636]

Respondent:

Sonya Donaldson (New Jersey City U)

Presiding

Marina Fedosik (Princeton U)

Saturday, 7 January

539. Adoption in Contemporary Drama and Performance

12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 110B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture

Presiding: Marina Fedosik, Princeton Univ.

1. “Psyches Going Solo: Transnational Adoption in Recent Plays from the Twin Cities,” Josephine Lee, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities

2. “Seeing into Being: Dis-affiliated Children in Naomi Wallace’s English Plays,” Beth Cleary, Macalester Coll.

3. “A Cyborg That Explodes Adoption Dualities: Rolin Jones’s Most Intelligent Design,” Martha G. Satz, Southern Methodist Univ.

Austin, Texas

Saturday, January 9, 2016

10:15-11:30 a.m.

PANEL TITLE: COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO ADOPTION

Chair: Jenny Heijun Wills, University of Winnipeg

1. Pamela Kirkpatrick, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

“Transracial Adoption in Jacqueline Woodson’s Feathers and Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee”

2. Deanna Stover, Texas A&M University

“Gold Slippers and Cyborg Feet: Comparing Adopted Bodies in the Grimms’ “Cinderella” and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder”

3. Tracey-Lynn Clough, University of Texas, Arlington

“No Longer Silent in ‘a White Man’s World’: Documenting the Legacy of the Indian Adoption Project in Lost Sparrow and Reclaiming Our Children”

4.Joshua Whitehead, University of Calgary

“Representations of Operation Babylift and the Sixties Scoop.”

PANEL TITLE: “NARRATIVES OF DISPLACEMENT: TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION IN FILM”

Chair: Marina Fedosik, New York University

Respondent: Mark Jerng, UC Davis

Panelists:

Eunah Lee, MSU. “Be White, (my daughter, Jenny)!”: Internalized Racism and International Adoption in South Korean Director Chan-wook Park’s Lady Vengeance (2005)”

Jaehyun Jeong, Rutgers. “Queer Ethnic Subjectivity and Nationality of Transnational Adoptees in the U.S”

Catherine H. Nguyen, UCLA. “Approved for Film: Graphic Experience in Couleur de Peau: Miel/Approved for Adoption.”

Jessaca Leinaweaver, Brown University. “Colonial Guilt, Xenophobia, and Shame: Transnational Adoption and Migration in La Vergüenza.”

PANEL TITLE: METAPHORS OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP: ADOPTION AND DISABILITY

Presiding: Marina Fedosik, New York Univ.

Respondent: Emily Hipchen, University of West Georgia

1. “Children with Special Needs in the Chinese Transnational Adoption Program: Local Needs Reformulating the Globalized Market,” Julia Vich Toebben, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

2. “When ‘Able’ Birth Mothers Surrender ‘Disabled’ Infants: Postnatal PTSD, Disability, Adoption, and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,” Janet Mason Ellerby, Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington

3. “Adoption and Disability in Context,” Carol J. Singley, Rutgers Univ., Camden

4. “Pernicious Narratives; or, The Portrayal of Monstrous Disabled Adopted Children: Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child and Ann Kimble Loux’s The Limits of Hope,” Martha G. Satz, Southern Methodist Univ.

OUR FIRST AS AN ALLIED ORGANIZATION:

PANEL TITLE: WHAT’S ADOPTION GOT TO DO WITH IT? NEW DIRECTIONS IN STUDIES OF KINSHIP AND LITERATURE

Presiding: Carol J. Singley, Rutgers Univ., Camden

Speakers:

Nancy Bentley, Univ. of Pennsylvania;

Cynthia A. Callahan, Ohio State Univ., Mansfield;

Emily Hipchen, State Univ. of West Georgia;

Caroline Field Levander, Rice Univ.;

Carol J. Singley

Scholars in a range of fields–including American literature, cultural studies, global studies, and African American literature–respond to the question in the session title by analyzing how attention to myths, fantasies, and material and affective realities of adoption lead us to rethink the history and meaning of concepts such as nationhood, class, genealogy, and familial and racial formation.

Friday, 07 January, Los Angeles

363. Telling Life Stories of Korean American Adoptees: Testimony, History, and Politics

5:15–6:30 p.m., Olympic 1, J. W. Marriott,

Presiding: Marianne Novy

“Projecting Life Stories into Histories: Korean Adoptee Narratives and the ‘Forgotten War,’” Mark Jerng

“Speaking for, as, and about Adoptees: Genre, Authenticity, and Testimony,” Eli Park Sorensen, Univ. of Cambridge

“Rewriting National Routes in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Fugitive Visions,” Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Saint Olaf Coll.

A short business meeting will begin at 5 in the same room.

Korea is the birthplace of more transnational adoptees than any other country. Originating just after the Korean War, adoption from Korea has now resulted in a population of about 170,000 adopted Koreans, of whom two-thirds are in the US. Most of them were raised when adoption aimed at assimilation; but many of their personal narratives have described bad effects of this policy and have contributed to a current trend to see adoption differently. In recent years, aided by the Internet, Korean adoptees have become an organized political and social group; many of them have been meeting together (for the past ten years in large international Gatherings), returning to Korea, sometimes in governmentally sponsored “homeland tours,” sometimes longer, and telling their life stories in published creative writing, film, and the visual arts. Thus they form a literary subculture, but one of interest to other transnational adoptees as a model of community, and one whose stories of upbringing have often served as cautionary to parents of other transnational adoptees.

The papers on this panel will discuss how writers have used narratives to create community, promote political change, connect life stories to national history, and bear witness to trauma. They will also consider questions of authenticity and genre-consciousness, and link these narratives with the work of Korean adoptee visual artists and attempts by Koreans to re-evaluate the Korean War. In addition to Fugitive Visions, other works discussed will be Deann Borshay Liem’s new film In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Thomas Park Clements’ memoir The Unforgotten War, and Marie Myung-ok Lee’s novel Somebody’s Daughter.

Mark Chia-Yon Jerng is an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. His book Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press this fall. Eli Park Sorensen is a research fellow at Cambridge (U.K.), is currently writing a book about autobiography, Korean adoption, and postcolonialism, and is on the edidtorial board of the Journal of Korean Adoption Studies. Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is an assistant professor at St. Olaf College and is guest editor of the third issue of the Journal of Korean Adoption Studies, on the theme of community. She has done activist work in Korea with the NGO Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community in Korea, and is collecting oral histories of unwed mothers to help their new organization, Korean Unwed Mothers and Families, change Korean adoption laws. Marianne Novy will chair the session.

MLA SPECIAL SESSION PROPOSALS ACCEPTED FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING

1996 Albee and Adoption, session leader Marianne Novy, Univ. of Pittsburgh

—“The Bumble of Joy: The Adoptee as Fantasy Space in the Drama of Edward Albee,” Gary Leonard, Univ. of Toronto, Scarborough

—”Cultural Narcissism: The Adoption Triad in Plays by Albee and Thatcher,” S. Michael Bowen, Whitworth Coll.

—“Performativity and Adoption: Citational Practices in the Plays of Edward Albee,” Jill Roberts, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst

2001 Adoption, Nation, and Race: Family as Contact Zone, session leader Marianne Novy

—“Renaming the Body, Rewriting Race: Adoption in Anglo-Indian Novels,” Nancy Louise Paxton, Northern Arizona Univ.

—“Ramona’s Uneasy Adopted Mexicanness,” Robert McKee Irwin, Tulane Univ.

—“Adoption as Foreign Policy in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I and Pearl Buck’s Welcome House,” Danielle Glassmeyer, Loyola Univ., Chicago

2003 Adopting Identities: Race, Nationality, and the Transethnic Adoption Narrative, session leader Emily Ann Hipchen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater

—“The Implications of Interracial Kin Adoptions for Black Identity Formation,” Darcy P. Y Ballantyne, York Univ., Strong Coll.

—“Adopted Children, Adopted Countries?” Ruth Phyllis Haber, Worcester State Coll.

—“Adoption and Adaptation: Namibia’s German Democratic Republic Kids,” Jason Paul Owens, South Dakota State Univ.

2006 “Saved? Religion in Literary Representations of Adoption, Presiding: Emily Hipchen, Univ. of West Georgia

—“Words Made Flesh: Silas Marner and Pigs in Heaven,” Margaret Homans, Yale Univ.

—“Calculating Differences: Adoption and Individuation in William Faulkner’s Light in August,” Mark Jerng, Univ. of California, Davis

—“Conservative and Liberal Religion in Contemporary Adoption Fiction,” Marianne Novy

—Respondent: Carol J. Singley, Rutgers Univ., Camden

2007 Writing Transnational Adoption across Asia and America
Presiding: Mark Jerng; Marianne Novy

—“Ghostly Selves in Korean Adoption Narratives: H. K. Fenkl, D. B. Liem, and J. J. Trenka,” Patricia P. Chu, George Washington Univ.

—“Representing Transnational Chinese Adoption in a Hemispheric Context,” Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State Univ,

—“Racial Identity and the Making of ‘Adoption Nation,’” Vincent J. Cheng, Univ. of Utah

2008 Strained Relations: (Narrative) Conflict in the Literature of Adoption Presiding: Marianne Novy

—“The Happy-Ending Myth: Juno and the Idealization of Adoption,” Janet Mason Ellerby, Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington

—“Reading for Adoption in Disability Life Writing: Adam Dorris and The Broken Cord,” Emily Hipchen, [canceled because of illness]

—“Searching for Koreatown: Afro-Asian Adoption in A Gesture Life and Country of Origin,” Jenny Wills, Wilfrid Laurier Univ.

2009 Birth Mothers: Reclaiming Missing Voices in the Literature of Adoption
Presiding: Emily Hipchen

—“The Too-Embodied Voice: Reading Trauma in Surrendered Child: A Birthmother’s Journey.” Emily Hipchen

—“Mothers Global and Local: Representations of Birth Parents in Transnational Adoption Narratives and the Politics of Social Exclusion,” Marina Fedosik, John Jay Coll. Of Criminal Justice, City Univ. of New York

—“When Birth Mothers and Adoptees Speak Together,” Margaret Homans

—Respondent: Marianne Novy