african-american

Stephen King is one author that has been accused of transgressing the
canon. Is this a fair accusation? What other authors have been said to
commit this violation, and to what end? What are the consequences to the
literary community when standardization is applied to art and
communication? What are the implications of graphic novels and other
genres entering into academic criticism? This panel seeks critical and
creative presentations that explore these questions.

Panel--Langston Hughes: Authenticity, Performance, and the Voice

American Literature Association
Memorial Day Weekend 2008
Hyatt Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA

Authenticity as a concept first attained prominence in literary studies
during the 1960s along with the rise of so-called confessional poetry and
anti-war protest poetry. Since then, the idea that literature should
accurately represent the writer’s experiences and views, in fact should
represent his or her own voice on the page, has remained largely dominant
despite some notable detractors.

CALL FOR PAPERS

California State University, Sacramento
The college of Health & Human Services
The Center for African Peace & Conflict Resolution
&
The Pan African Studies Program
Present
The 17th Annual African/Diaspora Conference

African Youth in America & Africa: Bridging the Gaps

To be held at California State University, Sacramento, Sacramento,
California, USA
May 1 - 3, 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 16th annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media
(MCLLM) will be held February 29 and March 1, 2008, at Northern Illinois
University in DeKalb, Illinois, to coincide with African American History
Month and Women's History Month.

Confirmed keynote speakers: David Bevington (of the University of
Chicago) on race and gender in Shakespeare, and Russ Castronovo (of the
University of Wisconsin at Madison) on American and African American
history including the military-industrial complex.

Proposals are solicited for fifteen- to twenty-minute papers from
scholars at all career stages, from beginning graduate students to
established and senior scholars.

Imagined Landscapes, Environing Worlds: African-American Literature as
Environmental Writing

New Approaches to William Wells Brown
NeMLA Board-Sponsored Panel

39th Annual Northeast MLA Convention
Buffalo, New York
April 11-13, 2008

Contributors are sought to pen entries for a work tentatively titled:
Icons of African American Literature. This reference work will be around
300,000 words, 2 volumes. It will have extended entries on 24 “iconic”
figures of African American literature. Those works are:
1. Angelou, Maya
2. Baldwin, James
3. Beloved
4. Black Arts Movement
5. Black Aesthetic
6. Blues Aesthetic
7. Color Purple, The
8. Ellison, Ralph
9. Harlem Renaissance
10. Hansberry, Lorraine
11. Langston Hughes
12. Hurston, Zora Neale
13. Invisible Man
14. Jazz Aesthetic
15. Morrison, Toni
16. Native Son
17. Raisin in the Sun, A
18. Signifying
19. The Souls of Black Folk

Race in the Writing Center: Towards New Theory and Praxis

We invite panel and individual-paper proposals for the UIC Writing Center
and Public Space conference series on "Race in the Writing Center: Towards
New Theory and Praxis" to be held at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, February 29 & March 1, 2008. We are seeking new and exciting
work that explores the relationship between writing, race, tutoring, and
writing center spaces and practices.

Submissions are solicited for the following panel, to be held at the NEMLA
Convention in Buffalo, NY, April 10-13, 2008. The submission deadline has
been extended to October 15, 2007

This panel focuses on representations of memory (both traumatic and
ordinary) in the contemporary African American novel or short story. The
goal of the panel is to gain new perspectives on the varied approaches
African American writers have taken to represent collective and private
recollections of historical events. At the same time, the panel encourages
comparisons of contemporary depictions of memory to classic portrayals such
as the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass or Harriet Jacobs.

The Africana Studies Group of the CUNY Graduate Center presents:

The “Theorizing Blackness” Conference

April 4th 2008

CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Sheldon Brivic and Margo Crawford are editing a collection of essays on Toni Morrison's trilogy
(BELOVED, JAZZ, and PARADISE), and would welcome for consideration essays of 20-30 pp. in
length in the MLA format. Essays may focus on one novel, but should say something about the
trilogy, and should be submitted by November 15 to one or both of these addresses:

              sbrivic_at_temple.edu
              crawform_at_indiana.edu

If you are interested and would like more information or a few indications of how the trilogy has
been designated, contact Brivic.

This panel will explore the connection between Marxism and African
American literature. Black writers who were involved with leftist
movements during the early part of the twentieth century included Claude
McKay, Chester Himes, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Proposals that
explore the ways race complicated the role of the black writers involved
in leftist movements, and the ways these political movements influenced
their work are welcomed. Kristin Moriah, McGill University
kristin_moriah_at_mail_mcgill_ca

New Approaches to William Wells Brown
NeMLA Board-Sponsored Panel

39th Annual Northeast MLA Convention
Buffalo, New York
April 11-13, 2008

Call for Contributors
 
>From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances
 
We seek engaging papers/writings for an edited book collection. The essays are being compiled in recognition of the golden anniversary of E. Franklin Frazier's controversial monograph __Black Bourgeoisie__ (1957), and must discuss both class and blackness as expressed in film, literature, media, music, autobiography/biography, theatre, or the performance of everyday life. The publisher for the collection will be announced at a later date.