Call for Papers/Presentations Digital Diasporas: Distances, Cultures, Languages a seminar to be held at ACLA 2010, April 1-4, New Orleans, La. Despite the continued existence of the book, the newspaper, and the scholarly journal, digital humanists are confronted with the sneaking suspicion that the internet is somehow different, a vast new space that mixes up our identities, our politics, and our languages. Networked texts give comparative literature the opportunity to ask: what exactly are we comparing? What kind of a diaspora is it when we can simultaneously be here, there, everywhere, and nowhere? Who is spreading out, where are they spreading to and from, and what might organize their itineraries? Finally, how do these texts, spaces, subjects, movements, and cultures coexist with and modify earlier media regimes? This seminar will address aspects of internet culture that cross, crush, redefine, and/or reinforce borders; that eradicate and/or extend notions of distance; that legitimate, destabilize, and/or invent linguistic practices. Potential topics include (but are certainly not limited to) blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube, Facebook, SMS and mobile telephony, listservs, MMORPGs, lurkers, activists, hacking, art, affinity groups, citizenship, affect, nationality, gender, race, class, geographies, histories, literacies. Work representing all theoretical inclinations is welcome. Please contact Scott Kushner (scott.kushner@gmail.com) with questions. To receive full consideration, proposals must be submitted by Friday, November 13, at the website of the American Comparative Literature Association (http://acla.org/acla2010), where you can learn more about the conference format.