african-american

The Canadian Association for American Studies: A Symposium at Concordia University, Montreal, QC October 25-27, 2019

CALLS FOR PAPERS: DEADLINE—APRIL 5, 2019

The Canadian Association for American Studies will hold a symposium-style event at Concordia University in Montreal, from 25-27 October, 2019. The event will be an opportunity for both new and established scholars of American Studies to share new work, discuss the status of American Studies, and contribute to the future development of CAAS. All scholars are welcome.

In her 1977 essay “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” Barbara Smith says, “The use of Black women’s language and cultural experience in books by Black women about Black women results in a miraculously rich coalescing of form and content and also takes their writing far beyond the confines of white/male literary structures.” Smith uses “black women’s language” to make the case that a black feminist framework would have much in common with a rapidly expanding black women’s literary tradition. An unending source for “cultural manifestations” of black womanhood, literature from black women has a critical value outside of white/male literary structures.

August Wilson’s plays are powerful in their ability to center marginalized histories through performance and language. With the recent release of Denzel Washington’s award-winning film production of Fences (2016), and the award-winning Broadway production of Jitney (2016-2017), there has been renewed focus and interest in not only Wilson’s work, but also the Hill District, where Wilson lived and where all but one of his plays are set.

Call for Papers for the 2019 New England American Studies Association Conference

Representation(s): Image and Reality, Identity and Community

Persons in Poetry and Law

Panel Proposal for MLA 2020

January 9-12, Seattle, WA

What relationships exist between poetic and legal invocations of personhood? What emerges in examining the formal strategies involved in processes of invocation? Seeking papers that put poems and legal texts in conversation. Please send a 300-word proposal by March 13th to tshalev@gradcenter.cuny.edu.