The biennial Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC) conference is a staple for many in the adoption community, particularly adoption scholars in the humanities. It is an intimate, yet wide-ranging international conference, this year featuring plenaries from Black Scottish creative writer Jackie Kay and renowned adoption scholar Laura Briggs. Attendees presented on topics such as “Adoption in World Writing,” “Adoption and Political Ideologies,” “Foster Care and Its Representations,” and “Gays, Lesbians, Adoption, and Surrogacy.”
With a conference theme of “Adoption: Crossing Borders,” this year’s gathering at Florida State University, Tallahassee, brought people together across disciplines, geographies, countries, and the adoption triad. For many, it was a chance to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, and also to break new discursive ground with others.
Rosemarie Pena, a doctoral student at Rutgers University and founder and president of the Black German Heritage and Research Association, described her first ASAC conference as “a memorable experience.” She added that “The best part for me was meeting and sharing experiences with fellow adoptees. I believe that I made invaluable relationships in Florida that will last a lifetime. I am looking forward to working together with this community of adoption and adoptee scholars, professionals and activists, and the next opportunity to meet again.”
Gazillion Voices (GV) had the opportunity to talk to Eric Walker (EW), 2014 ASAC Conference Organizer and Host and Professor of English at Florida State University (FSU), about some of this year’s highlights, as well as why GV readers might be interested in future gatherings.
GV: Can you tell me how you got involved with ASAC?
EW: I was an adoptive parent; I have two girls. When the call for papers went out for the very first conference, which I believe was 2002, I thought, “This is a group that I would love to begin to talk to, some other professionals who are doing adoption studies.” So I submitted a paper proposal and went to the group. The first meeting was in Tampa, and I’ve been to every meeting since then, except for Pittsburgh, which was the third meeting.
GV: What’s your impression of the conference?
EW: What I have found especially valuable about the conference … one of the reasons I think that Marianne Novy and Emily Hipchin and Margaret Homans got it going was to broaden out adoption studies from public policy and ideological issues into literature, film, drama, creative art, while simultaneously, however, keeping it multidisciplinary. So what I’ve enjoyed about the conference is that there’s a place for people like me who do literature, historical studies; there’s a place for creative writers; there’s a place for dramatists, filmmakers. But at the same time, you can engage in conversations with people who are doing legal theory, people who are doing philosophy and ethics, people who are doing political science. And it’s that multidisciplinary nature that I really value about it.
GV: What about this particular conference here in Tallahassee? You were the conference chief organizer?
EW: I really was just the chief cook and bottle washer. Any time anybody does an academic conference, there are a lot of ordinary details. I was the local host, but in terms of setting a program agenda, we let the proposals generate the kinds of sessions that we had. There was an emphasis: the two keynote films were featuring Asian adoptions. There was a conference theme: “Crossing Boundaries.”
There were some features of previous conferences that were not as well represented this time. Two years ago in California, for example, there were many more papers featuring Native American adoption and Canadian adoption, which we didn’t do very many sessions about here at all, but we will do that again.
So some years it will look like we’re emphasizing international adoption or domestic adoption or crises in South American adoption, but the mix is generated by the proposals, essentially.
GV: How many attendees were there this year?
EW: There were about 75 people on the program supplemented by local academics at FSU, so between 75 and 100. This is normal for this conference.
It depends on where we’re meeting. Four years ago, we were in Boston, which is easier to get to, get plane flights, and there’s a lot of things to do in Boston. It was probably as large as it’s ever been—I would say in the 100 to 120 range.
GV: Would you say that this conference was a success or didn’t reach your expectations or exceeded them? How would you characterize it?
EW: I hope it was a success. What I like to see are the many different conversations that occur, both in the sessions and what you see out in the lobby in between: one-on-one conversations, people having a chance to talk to each other. To that extent, I hope it is as successful as it usually may be.
GV: GV readers are adoptees, birth parents, adoption studies professionals, adoptive parents, and everything in between. Do you have any particular message about the conference, or ASAC as an organization, that you would like to share with them?
EW: I think that it’s helpful to me, as an adoptive parent, simply to know that there are good, smart, interested people who are constantly thinking about adoption and adoption policies—always with the welfare of the adopted children, the welfare of birth parents, and receiving parents in mind.
I think that the group is alert to the fact that there are many, many, many different interests that need to be nurtured, and this conference tries to do all of those things.
To find out more about ASAC and its biennial conference, visit http://www.adoptionandculture.org.
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