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

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]. 

45th Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium ENCHANTMENT/DISENCHANTMENT
October 31-November 2, 2019
Sarasota, FL

Hosted by Florida State University and The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

Keynote Speaker: Anne Verjus, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Université de Lyon

The conference theme, Enchantment and Disenchantment, is inspired by the event's location. Myths of Florida typecast the state as a land of enchantment, entertainment, and Disneyfication. One of Florida's primary Gulf coast cities, Sarasota offers an eclectic blend of high culture and popular entertainment. Now part of the Florida State University, the Ringling Museum and the Ca’ d’Zan were built by the circus magnate, John Ringling, whose business claimed to deliver the 'Greatest Show on Earth.' This location offers an opportunity to look back on the nineteenth-century origins of spectacles of technology and fantasy as well as the (dis)enchantment that they can provide.

The 2019 colloquium will explore how nineteenth-century France was a time of confrontation between the age-old enchantment of faith, magic, and tradition, and the modern lure of rationalization, science, and innovation, leading to what Max Weber called the "disenchantment of the world." The nineteenth century is also a period of developing technologies and economies of popular entertainment. Along these lines, we can explore enchantment as a reward system that delights and inspires, or an enthrallment that constrains and inhibits. Enchantment can be a visceral experience of spectacle or one that plays with the simulacra of illusion.

We invite contributions on topics including but not limited to the following:

Illusion and disillusion

Fairy tales and féeries

Fascination and attraction

Magic, superstition and occultism

Phantasmagoria and Technologies of enchantment (magic lanterns, diorama, panorama, cinema, sound recording)

Enthrallment and constraint

Suspension of disbelief

Science of enchantment

Delight and rapture

Seduction and temptation

Magnetism and gravitation

Glamor and charisma

Propaganda and truth to power

Circus thrills

Revival-style architecture

Economies of enchantment

Expositions universelles

Submissions for individual papers or sessions may be in French or English and should be in the form of an abstract (250–300 words) uploaded to our submission portal available on the conference website (http://ncfs2019.fsu.edu). The deadline for all submissions is March 15, 2019. For session proposals, abstracts for each paper should be uploaded separately.

For more information, please visit http://ncfs2019.fsu.edu

Organizers Aimée Boutin et Lauren Weingarden, Florida State University ([email protected])

18th Annual Conference of the Transatlantic Studies Association (Deadline January 20, 2019)

University of Lancaster, July 8-10, 2019

Following its first trip across the Atlantic for last year’s annual conference at the University of North Georgia, the TSA is returning to the UK for its eighteenth annual conference at the University of Lancaster.

The TSA is a broad network of scholars who use the ‘transatlantic’ as a frame of reference for their work in a variety of disciplines, including (but not limited to): history, politics and international relations, and literary studies. All transatlantic-themed paper and panel proposals from these and related disciplines are welcome.

The conference is organised around a number of subject themes, each of which is convened by members of the conference programme committee (indicated below). If you would like to discuss your paper or panel proposal prior to submission, please contact the relevant programme committee members. This year’s subject themes are: 

1. Diplomatic and international history

(David Ryan, [email protected], Chris Jespersen, [email protected], Thomas Mills, [email protected])

2. Political and intellectual history

(Gavin Bailey, [email protected], Philip Pedley, [email protected])

3. Social, cultural and religious history

(Kristin Cook, [email protected], Constance Post, [email protected])

4. International Relations and Security Studies

(Luis Rodrigues, [email protected], David Ryan, [email protected])

5. Literature, film, and theatre

(Donna Gessell, [email protected], Finn Pollard, [email protected], Constance Post, [email protected])

6. Business and finance

(Thomas Mills, [email protected], Philip Pedley, [email protected])

7. Latin America in a transatlantic context

(Thomas Mills, [email protected], David Ryan, [email protected])

8. Ethnicity, race and migration

(Kristin Cook, [email protected], Gavin Bailey, [email protected])

Special subject theme: Transatlantic Romanticisms

Proposals are welcome for papers on any aspect of Romanticism in a transatlantic context. Possible topics might include (but are not limited to) comparative romanticisms, ecological romanticisms, romantic natural histories, romantic travel and exploration, romanticism and colonialism, romanticism and critical theory. Please send a 300-word abstract, 100 word author biography, and 2-page CV to Kevin Hutchings, University Research Chair, Department of English, University of Northern British Columbia ([email protected]). 

In addition to the subject themes above, we welcome papers and panels on any aspect of transatlantic studies. Interdisciplinary papers and panels are particularly welcome, as are innovative formats, such as roundtables / multimedia presentations. 

Submission Instructions

Panel proposals should constitute three or four presenters and a Chair (as well as a discussant if desired). Panel proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment, and include:

• 300-word overview of the panel theme;
• 300-word abstracts for each of the papers;
• 100-word author biographies;
• 2-page CVs for all participants.

The subject line of the email for panel proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of panel convenor]-[Subject theme]" (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. "TSA Proposal-Smith-Diplomacy and International History").

Individual paper proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment, and include:

• 300-word abstract for the paper
• 100-word author biography;
• 2-page CV.

The subject line of the email for paper proposals should read: "TSA Proposal-[Last name of presenter]-[Subject theme]" (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. "TSA Proposal-Smith-Other").

Travel Grants

The TSA particularly welcomes proposals from new members and junior scholars. Travel grants are available to support early career scholars presenting a paper at the conference. If wishing to apply for a travel grant, applicants should indicate this in the body of the email when submitting their paper or panel. In addition to the materials requested above, travel grant applicants should include a brief statement explaining why it is important for them to attend the TSA conference, and an outline of the principal costs entailed. For further details about TSA travel grants, see the TSA website: www.transatlanticstudies.com. 

All paper and panel proposals, and travel grant applications, should be sent to the conference email: [email protected]

Deadline for panel and paper proposals: 20 January 2019

Contact details and further information

Vice-Chair of TSA / Local Organiser: Thomas Mills: [email protected]

Chair of TSA: Christopher Jespersen: [email protected]

www.transatlanticstudies.com

Education Matters (Deadline March 1, 2019)

Culture in Focus (www.mga.edu/cif) invites contributions for its second issue.  The theme of this issue is “culture and education.”  Papers submitted can be in any language, but an abstract in English is required.  Topics may also include, broadly, cultural studies or literature (i.e., any European literature, Turkish literature, Japanese literature, Nigerian literature, etc., etc.). Please consult the submission guidelines when submitting.  Inquiries to [email protected].