african-american

Call For Papers: We seek paper proposals on the following topics: 1) "Race, Slavery, and Social Justice in Biblical Interpretation by Historical Women: Papers Commemorating Maria Stewart." Inspired by the Boston setting of the 2020 Annual Meeting, this program unit remembers the work of Boston orator and essayist Maria W. Miller Stewart (1803-1879), the first recorded African American female political writer. We invite papers on Maria Stewart, as well as other historical women (active prior to World War I) who interpreted the Bible to promote social justice by confronting racism, slavery, and sexism. Papers should include significant attention to the historical figures’ work as biblical interpreters and their approach to scripture.

For people of color, the future has never been a given. Whether through the policies and practices of state-sanctioned genocide, enslavement, internment, or forced relocation and migration, racialized communities have survived their worlds ending, over and over. To cite the opening lines of Sun Ra’s 1974 Afrofuturist film Space Is the Place, “It’s after the end of the world, don’t you know that yet?” This special issue critically interrogates the supposed universal notions of a shared planet, ecological demise, and what it means to be human in an era of climate change. The collection aims to center the perspectives of people of color historically and in our contemporary moment on how they envision(ed) “surviving” apocalypse.

In outlining her presidential theme for the 2021 MLA Conference, Judith Butler writes of the precarity we face in the humanities and the vulnerabilities of human and nonhuman lives in the face of climate change and the “dominance of market values.” However, Butler’s outlook is not defeatist; her focus on persistence encourages reflections on alternative future possibilities centered on collective resistance and survival.

[Deadline Extended] The Society for the Study of Southern Literature invites papers on topics relevant to the SAMLA 92 conference theme: “Scandal! Literature & Provocation: Breaking Rules, Making Texts.” The works explored may be from any ‘literary’ medium including poetry, prose, film, or video games, and explore concepts of scandal, rebellion, resistance, creation, liminality, or precarity relative to the South[s]. We especially welcome papers that focus on the intersections of the South and lines of identity including race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

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