GoingToMeet

When hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region of the United States more than four years ago, the nation watched as members of one community, New Orleans’ ninth ward, fought for their individual and collective lives. In the aftermath of Katrina we heard many stories concerning the meaning of community for those who struggled through this momentous event. That aftermath forced all of us to ask of ourselves the questions being asked in New Orleans: What makes community? What binds us to places and spaces on the planet? It also made us wonder how members of our national community could be invisible, disempowered, and neglected. Did the discussion over semantics, (the label of “evacuee” versus “refugee”), reveal a deeper sensibility among Americans—that we may indeed contain populations that are not full citizens?

These two concepts, citizenship and community, are intellectually, socially, and organically linked to conflict. The interdependence of nations, contestations over identity, authenticity (ethnic or otherwise), global industrial exploitation or expansion, (depending on your point of view), and debates about which nations have the right to military power lead to inevitable conflicts. Are the origins of these conflicts, global, national, and communal, always what they seem on the surface?

This conference, held in California and a stone’s throw away from our most contested border, is the ideal place to engage in a dialogue about frameworks of citizenship and identity and analyses of conflict and resolution. I invite panels, papers, and roundtable discussions that expand and extend the scholarship on what it means to be a citizen, a member of a community, virtual, cultural, or physical.