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Calls for Papers
Special Issue "Unsilencing Black Sexuality in the African Diaspora"In a 2012 Chronicle of Higher Education article, Stacy Patton addressed the silence surrounding the subject of black sexuality as a tenant of Black Studies. Pointing to a rise of scholars in “queer studies, women’s studies,anthropology, African-American Studies, sociology, literature, history, public health” who have dared to break that silence and expand scholarly studies in the lives and work of Black folks, Patton concluded: “It gets into the bedroom with heterosexual black men having sex with other men ‘on the down low’; onto the streets and porn sets with cross-dressers, transsexuals, and black sex workers; behind prison bars with gay and lesbian inmates; into the dungeons and play dens of blacks who seek pleasure through bondage and pain.” Indeed, in the five years since Patton published this article, Black sexuality studies had continued to expand. Most recently, work by C. Riley Snorton, Sharon Holland, Tricia Rose, Joan Morgan, Jennifer Nash, E. Patrick Johnson, Lamonte Aidoo, Lisa B. Thompson, Shayne Lee, and others has given new directions in Black sexuality through various disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. An increase of representations of Black sexuality in film, television, literature, and song beg for more analyses of these artistic expressions. Hortense Spillers, when discussing Black women’s sexuality in her 2003 text Black, White, and in Colour, speaks to the importance of such studies, “Black women are the beached whales of the sexual universe, unvoiced, unseen, not doing, awaiting their verb. Their sexual experiences are depicted, but not often by them, and if and by the subject herself, often in the guise of vocal music, often in the self-contained accent and sheer romance of the blues” (153). These are not issues that are unique to any one particular region of the vast and diverse African diaspora. This is a call for papers that offers analysis of Black sexuality studies in Africa and the African diaspora. Essays may address any time period or geographical region. Those that focus on any form of art by Black artists, including film, literature, song, drama/theater, and visual art are particularly welcome. Studies of historical figures are also encouraged. Some topics to consider: How have Black people’s depictions of sexuality changed over time? How have Black people used forms of art to respond to the colonial or dominant “gaze”? How have Black people reclaimed their bodies from the “gaze”? How have Black people defined or redefined sexuality? In other words, how have Black people generated or created new expressions of sexuality rather than responded to existing ones? What does pleasure or desire mean within the context of Black people’s lives and work? What is the relationship between resistance, protest, and sexuality for Black people in the diaspora? Please send 300 word abstracts (saved as Microsoft Word document) to [email protected] by December 10, 2018 and, if accepted, full essays by July 1, 2019. For more information about the peer-reviewed Humanities and this issue, visit: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/African_Diaspora
"Thomas Wolfe and History": The Forty-first Annual Conference of the Thomas Wolfe Society
(Deadline: January 7, 2019)
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania / May 24-25, 2019
Announcing Eugene Gant’s arrival on earth in the first year of a century that would be the millennium’s last, Thomas Wolfe heralded his protagonist as “borne in . . . upon the very spear-head of history.” And throughout accounts of the doings of Eugene Gant and George Webber (and others), Wolfe interweaves threads from ancestral and national stories and traces influences exerted on individual destinies by the tides of great events. As the 2019 Memorial Day weekend begins, we will gather near the New World home of Wolfe’s paternal ancestors and at the site of a fearful and decisive battle in this nation’s history. Gettysburg is an ideal place to consider Wolfe’s evoked intersections of public and private, of collective and individual, of past, present, and future. Organizers of this forty-first annual meeting look forward to productive discussion of history--recorded, remembered, or in the making--as subject, backdrop, or concern in Wolfe’s writing. Those who wish to present papers are invited to submit proposals on any aspect of Wolfe’s writing on the past and its influence, or on the struggles of individuals to contend with events and forces that shape their times and lives. Wolfe’s consciousness was formed by Western philosophical and religious thought and by the English language and the literature it spawned. He was aware of the overshadowing of the present by the past and of the need to understand the history of one’s forebears--and of those of others. Wolfe’s world-view was additionally affected by impressions of the conquest of this continent, by the founding of a new kind of nation and its tearing apart in civil strife, by waves of immigration and the rise of large cities, by the evolution of capitalism and resulting social disparities, by the sufferings of the Great Depression, by hatred and prejudice in its several forms, by the abomination of slavery. The clash between attachment to Germany as ancestral land and impressions of World War I, the rise of Nazism, and the lead-up to World War II affected Wolfe’s understanding of his world and his delineation of the nature and destiny of the characters he created. Please send 250-word (email attachment) proposals to Anne Zahlan at [email protected] by 7 January 2019. Conference registration and sessions will be located in the Wyndham Gettysburg, 95 Presidential Circle, Gettysburg, PA 17325: www.wyndhamgettysburg.com. For more information, see www.thomaswolfereview.org/2019-conference., or contact Rebecca Godwin at [email protected] or Anne Zahlan at [email protected].
Edited Collection: Editing the Harlem Renaissance (Abstract deadline January 15, 2019) From the beginning, individuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke attempted to mold and guide Harlem Renaissance authors, as well as control critical reception. Their roles as editors proved influential in the careers of many writers and in the movement itself. While the popular period has received much scholarly attention, the significance of editors and editing in the Harlem Renaissance remains woefully understudied. As a remedy, Editing the Harlem Renaissance will foreground an in-depth, exhaustive approach to relevant editing and editorial issues, offering a variety of voices and becoming a centralized authority on the subject. Rather than limiting the examination to a narrow understanding of editorial practices, this book will take a broad and inclusive approach, exploring not only those figures of the Harlem Renaissance who edited in professional capacities, but also those authors who employed editorial practices during the writing process, as well as those texts that have been discovered and/or edited by others in the decades following the Harlem Renaissance. To achieve this end, we foresee the book comprising chapters in several areas, including professional editing, authorial editing (or textual self-fashioning), textual editing, documentary editing, bibliography, and pedagogical approaches. Individual chapters are currently being solicited and vetted, with several abstracts already accepted. The editors are seeking additional contributions exploring the following key figures, among others: W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke. Interested contributors should be prepared to focus on important editorial methodologies and histories as they pertain to the Harlem Renaissance. Timelines The editors have received enthusiastic advance interest from Clemson University Press, who are interested in this proposal for their new African American Literature Series. Chapter abstracts of 300 words are due by January 15, 2019. The abstract should include a title and outline the approach and content, as well as research questions and tentative arguments/conclusions. The editors will inform you by the end of January 2019 if they are able to include your contribution with the volume proposal. If contracted, final chapters of 7000-8000 words will be due in Fall 2019. If interested, please send initial queries to Dr. Ross K. Tangedal ([email protected]) and Dr. Joshua M. Murray ([email protected]) prior to submitting abstracts. 45th Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium ENCHANTMENT/DISENCHANTMENT
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