(UPDATED: OCTOBER 9, 2019) HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK AT THE HOTEL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND University of Maryland, College Park co-sponsors Department of English; Bebe Koch Petrou Speaker Series; Center for Literary and Comparative Studies; University of Maryland Arts and Humanities Center for Synergy; Division of Research; Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities; Department of African American Studies; Department of American Studies; Department of Art History and Archaeology; Department of French and Italian; Department of Russian; Program in Film Studies; Department of Germanic Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Department of Women's Studies; U.S. Latina/o Studies Program; David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. with additional support from Department of English at Georgetown University, Association of Literary, Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), Johns Hopkins' Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Departmetn of Literature at American University. Welcome to ASAP/11 Dear ASAP/11 participants, Welcome to our eleventh annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present. We are delighted to welcome you to the University of Maryland, College Park. The program committee this year (composed of Tatiana Flores, Lee Konstantinou, Angela Naimou, Iván Ramos, Sarah Stefana Smith, and myself) was thrilled to receive broad and imaginative paper, panel, roundtable, and seminar submissions on our theme of the ecologies of the present. These vibrant discussions bring into ever sharper focus what makes an ASAP conference unique. Many of us come here when we find ourselves limited or stifled by our fields, disciplines, or institutions, looking for the sense of freedom and play that comes from being able to cross the lines between aesthetic camps and institutional divides. Placing artists, curators, activists, and scholars in creative dialogue, the founding mission of ASAP is well reflected in the exciting program in front of you: interdisciplinary, transmedial, and international. Papers range over a number of fields and media, charting debates and developments in architecture and design, art history, dance, digital arts, film, literature, music and sound studies, and performance. They blend high and low culture, the immaterial and the material, the historical and the evanescent. The breadth and richness of ASAP/11 embraces a truly inspiring diversity of approaches to the arts of the present. Our keynote speakers – Harryette Mullen, in conversation with Evie Shockley, Chris Abani, and Alex Rivera – have shown in their varied artistic practices what it means to combine critical thinking about race with the pleasures of rhythm, abstraction, and wordplay, how to imagine the psychic worlds of the disposable, vulnerable bodies of our era in both global and intimate registers, and how to harness the power of speculation to imagine life and labor beyond the dystopias of closing borders and controlling technologies. The ecologies of the present too often evoke a sense of crisis and catastrophe, as rising political forces of extremism threaten democratic life worldwide, economic and social inequality worsens in our colonial present, and the looming threat of climate change demands radical change. In these times, how do the contemporary arts allow us to make sense of – and perhaps remake – the world around us? I am reminded here of Toni Morrison’s famous words: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” 2 ASAP/11 promises to cement our growing sense of ASAP’s centrality as a multidisciplinary place to talk with each other about the texts, objects, images, performances, politics, films, and technologies that matter most to us. We have grown as an association in size in the last eleven years and adopted an annual structure of an international Spring symposium and a Fall conference in the United States but the insurgent and improvisatory spirit that characterized the first ASAP gathering at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 2009, organized by founding president, Amy Elias, continues to resonate at ASAP/11. We are pleased to continue our practice of offering support to independent artists, contingent scholars and graduate students via the Amy J. Elias Founders Award and look forward to the continued generosity of our membership in the years ahead. We are thrilled that the ASAP Journal edited by Jonathan Eburne won yet another prize this year, the 2019 PROSE Award for Best New Journal in Humanities. We say a heartfelt goodbye to the four departing members of the motherboard – Gloria Fisk, Sheri-Marie Harrison, Joseph Jeon, and Angela Naimou – and warmly welcome our new members – Ken Allen, Maria Bose, Lauren Cramer, and Karen Tongson. We are pleased to have a new communications coordinator this year, Kinohi Nishikawa, who handles our website and social media accounts with style. We also look forward to ASAP/12, scheduled at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, October 14- 17, 2020, organized by Jeremy Rosen. Finally, I want to thank all the people who worked so hard to make ASAP/11 possible. My thanks to Lee Konstantinou for his tireless work and vision. I am deeply grateful to our hosts and sponsors for their support, and appreciate the generosity of the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park and all other sponsors and organizers listed above. Special thanks to Mercedes Baillargeon, Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, James Matthew Rankin, Sangeeta Ray, and Christina Walter. I look forward to connecting with you at our receptions, our members’ lunch, our many panels and discussions, and welcome you to ASAP/11 at the University of Maryland. Yours, Yogita Goyal ASAP President, 2018-2019 Professor, African American Studies and English, UCLA 3 Welcome to College Park! When I attended my first ASAP conference, I was deeply impressed by the dynamism and seriousness of the scholars who had gathered, and I was thrilled by the promise of joining an interdisciplinary and multimodal conversation among academics and artists, all of whom were passionate about the arts of the present. Since then, ASAP has become an indispensable and field-defining organization. I am, therefore, hugely pleased that the University of Maryland, College Park, has the privilege of hosting the eleventh ASAP conference. Over the last few years, ASAP has grown quickly, starting a journal, hosting its large conference annually, and launching a dynamic web presence. This year marks another year of growth. ASAP/11 has attracted more than 95 panels, round tables, and seminars, welcoming scholars from a variety of fields; artists working in different genres and media; curators from around the world; editors from major presses; and many others. This conference would not have been possible without the support of many departments, organizations, and units within UMD, chief among them the Department of English. We also received crucial early support from the Bebe Koch Petrou Speaker Series; the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies; the University of Maryland Arts and Humanities Center for Synergy; and the Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities. Though this conference is hosted at the University of Maryland, it’s also a regional undertaking. Participants have come from schools across the DMV region, and we’ve received support from the Department of English at Georgetown; the Association of Literary, Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW); and Johns Hopkins' Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. Finally, ASAP/11 would not have been possible without the help of many individuals. Thank you, first, to Yogita Goyal, who has been a tireless collaborator. And thank you to Angela Naimou, Joe Jeon, Mark Goble, Iván Ramos, Mercédès Baillargeon, Christina Walter, Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, Edlie Wong, Karen Nelson, Amanda Bailey, Sangeeta Ray, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Shannon Bobbitt, Valerie Hornsby, Jenny Greenwell, and James Rankin. Best Wishes, Lee Konstantinou Associate Professor, English, University of Maryland, College Park 4 ASAP/11 Conference Overview Ecologies of the Present, October 10-12, 2019 Hosted by the University of Maryland, College Park WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 5:30-7:30pm Welcome Reception at MilkBoy ArtHouse THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10 8am-5pm Registration, Foyer B 9am-5pm Book Exhibit, Foyer B 9-10:30am Session 1 10:45-12:15pm Session 2 12:15-1:30pm Lunch Break 1:30-3pm Session 3 3:15-4:45pm Session 4 2:30-4pm Screening of Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra’s The Infiltrators Ulrich Auditorium in Tawes 5:30-7pm Keynote: Harryette Mullen in conversation with Evie Shockley Ulrich Auditorium in Tawes 7-8pm Reception in Tawes FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 8am-5pm Registration, Foyer B 9am-5pm Book Exhibit, Foyer B 5 8:30-10am Session 5 10:15-11:45am Session 6 12-1pm ASAP Members and Award Lunch, Calvert A & B 1:30-3pm Session 7 3:15-4:45pm Session 8 5:30-7pm Keynote: Chris Abani Ulrich Auditorium in Tawes Hall 7-8pm Reception at the David C. Driskell Center SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 8am-5pm Registration, Foyer B 9am-5pm Book Exhibit, Foyer B 8:30-10am Session 9 8:30-11:30am Session 9a (Seminars) 10:15-11:45pm Session 10 11:45-1pm Lunch Break 1-4pm Session 11 (Seminars) 4:30-6pm Keynote: Alex Rivera Calvert C & D in The Hotel at the University of Maryland 6-7pm Closing reception in Foyer A 6 Hotel Floor Plans Conference Level 7 Lobby Level 8 Area Maps From The Hotel to Ulrich Auditorium (in Tawes Hall) From The Hotel to MilkBoy From Tawes to the Driskell 9 Keynote: Harryette Mullen in conversation with Evie Shockley Thursday, Oct.