Interdisciplinary Research Cluster

Transnational Cultural Identities

Supported by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, Bowling Green State University 2000-2001

About Us

This new cluster brings together BGSU faculty and graduate students pursuing interpretivist and rhetorical-critical approaches to issues of transnationalism. Across a variety of disciplines, BGSU faculty and graduate students are immersed in studying the intersections of borders, nations, and ethnic, class, cultural and gender-based identities.

Transnational studies have been emerging as an interdisciplinary, international, and corss-national field of studies in the past five years. This cluster encourages exchange of ideas and work-in-progress among scholars with academic grounding in ethnic studies, communication studies, philosophy, linguistics, literary criticism, and popular culture.

The work of the cluster participants intersects in their studies of the construction of personal, cultural, class, race, ethnicity, and gender-based identities and in the realization that these identity constructions are affected by transnational dynamics. These dynamics include the globalization and internationalization of business; increased information exchange and connectivity resulting from the electronic (digital) revolution; the emergence of localized responses, resistance, and negotiation of globalized identities; and the emergence of transnational corporations as significant cultural and economic agents.

Our Mission

The rationale for the formation of the cluster includes the following considerations:

1. enhanced, structured exchange of work-in-progress, synergistic development of research proposals, interdisciplinary feedback and criticism;

2. enhanced and institutionally sanctioned involvement in partnerships across disciplines as in joint research projects, publications and grant pursuit;

3. formation of an initial cluster could be designed to lead to eventual development of a research center focusing on this area of scholarship at BGSU;

4. more attractive positioning for external grant funds; and

5. greater outreach resources for international and transnational research due to individual cluster members' connections to other countries

Activities

Cluster participants are anticipating the following scope of involvement:

1. Meeting of the cluster members as a seminar group to read work-in-progress, discuss current ideas in transnational scholarship, and to present papers.

2. Organization of an on-campus interdisciplinary colloquium series including BGSU and external experts (monthly, Sept-Oct-Nov-Dec, 2000; Jan-Feb-March-April 2001).

3. Kick-off colloquium series with a widely recognized external speaker, both to invigorate cluster, to serve campus community at large, and to create BGSU internal support and enthusiasm for this type of research. Professor Wen-Shu Lee from San José State University has been invited for a four-day campus visit for this purpose.

4. Web page moderated/designed to facilitate transnational/cyberspace platform and to enhance international communication and information exchange.

5. Production of at least one published scholarly article in 2000-2001 based on cluster work by team members.

6. If cluster becomes and stays productive, cluster members will reapply for cluster funding or other seed money and plan a conference on transnational cultural issues for Summer 2001.

7. If continuing work proves productive, initiate steps to develop a research center at BGSU focusing on transnational research agenda.

Participants

Cluster participants in academic year of 2000-2001 consisted of four assistant professors (Bettina Heinz and Radhika Gajjala, Department of Interpersonal Communication; Eithne Luibheid, Ethnic Studies; and Hai Ren, Popular Culture) and four graduate students in the School of Communication Studies (Amy Heuman, Ako Inuzuka, Yu Shi, and Cory Young).

In the year 2001-2002 active cluster participants are Bettina Heinz, Radhika Gajjala, Michelle White, Louisa Ha, Robert Ochieng, Cynthia and Ako Inuzuka.

The following description of some of the participants existing research agendas in this area reflect the potential for individual and composite improvement as a result of the scholarly synergy likely to emerge from being organized as a cluster.

Radhika Gajjala:

In one of my current projects, I'm intending to trace the formation of a transnational/travelling subject. The transnational subject at the present time in history comes into being at the intersection of traveling analogue and digital contexts within what has come to be termed as the "Digital Economy." The project will involve an examination/discussion of immigrant software professionals and the role of outsourcing within U.S. organizations. My research partners, Padmavati Nori (Bangalore, India), Annapurna Mamidipudi (Hyderabad, India) and I are approaching the examination of these transnational subjects by viewing them as subjects-in-process negotiating multiple communicative contexts at the intersection of the political, the social, the economic and the cultural. We are examining the processes of community, culture and production in relation to the globalisation. In addition this summer, I expect that Meena Narahari, a graduate student from York University will come to study with me on these issues - she too will be engaged with the cluster and my projects both virtually and on-site.

Bettina Heinz:

I'm currently pursuing two research inquiries that explore "the transnational" in communication scholarship. In one project I investigate, from a critical perspective, global and local constructions of "gay" identity as manifested on World Wide Web sites to document both the transformative and empowering aspects of transnational identity constructions and to examine the dynamics of localized constructions that take part in, support, negotiate, and resist such "global" constructions. In another line of research, I'm examining, from both interpretive and rhetorical-critical perspectives, the phenomenon of lesbians coming out in non-native cultures, societies, and linguistic spaces. This project focuses on the ethnolinguistic aspects of lesbian identity and of "global" identity constructions by examining the interplay of "global" English and participants' other first languages.

Amy Heuman:

My research interests focus on power, identity, and spaces from a critical/cultural perspective. I am currently exploring issues of identity construction and power relations in the Elian Gonzalez case. Overall, my interests embrace and are specific to multicultural and Latin American populations both internationally and in the U.S. I am also working on a study involving the spaces that are available to multicultural and bi-racial people in the U.S. -- as it pertains to their negotiation/construction of identity.

Ako Inuzuka:

I am currently working on two essays critiquing the construction of cultural identity of "others" in the dominant society. Specifically, one of them deals with the depiction of Japanese in Hollywood movies, using "whiteness." Japanese people have been portrayed as "violent," "decipline," or "prostitute-like" in the mainstream media. I critically examine the formation of these Japanese representations through "whiteness" coupled with historical and political influences. Another essay I'm working on critiques a Japan-bashing discourse in the 1980s from post-colonial perspective. This discourse may have promoted "otherness" of Japanese-Americans and other Asian-Americans.

Yu Shi Top:

With the development of such new technologies as the Internet, globalization is emerging as a new paradigm in social and cultural studies. The tension between globalization and localization is at the center of the globalization problematic. I am currently doing a study on how Chinese websites adopt global cultures in order to be competitive in the global arena while sustaining their local cultural identities and sovereignty. I choose four Chinese websites-defined as created by Chinese designers, written in English, and displaying certain Chinese culture aspects/elements-to study, through their web designs in terms of layout, content, and navigation, how global and local cultures interact and influence each other in the international environment of the Internet.

Eithne Luibheid:

Overall, my reserach examines the intersections between immigration policies and the construction of racial, sexual, and gender identities, both locally and globally. Presently, I am completing a book length manuscript that examines how the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) actively constructs sexual identities through its monitoring regimes, and deploys these constructions to police the US's borders in an exclusionary manner. The book is under contract with the University of Minnesota Press. I am also working on a book-length collection of essays, which situates Irish lesbian and gay migration within a transnational framework. Various chapters challenge the equation of Irishness with whiteness by addressing the experiences of immigrants and refugees of color who have resettled in Ireland since 1993. The chapters also theorize how Irish lesbian and gay identity emerges through experiences of immigration, diaspora, and the transnational circuits that structure Irish migration in the present day.

Hai Ren:

My work is generally concerned with the social and cultural manifestations of contemporary urban life in East Asia, especially the relation of the symbolic economy to the production of modernity in everyday life. More specifically, I examine how global flows of people, goods, and information affect the domain of the quotidian in relation to the public sphere. As part of this study group, I plan to actively engage in intellectual discussions with my colleagues at the BGSU on the issue of globalization. My goals are to promote academic studies on globalization at the BGSU and to produce scholarly publications.

(The original page was designed and constructed by Yu Shi and Bettina Heinz, and was maintained by Ako Inuzuka. Page has been updated to the current ICS web design by Clinton LaForest.)