african-american

Call for Papers

International Conference “Narrative Encounters with Ethnic American Literatures”

Location: University of Klagenfurt, Austria

Dates: September 17-19, 2020

Taking a cue from pioneering efforts at the intersection of context-oriented approaches in race and ethnicity studies and post-classical narratology, this conference is interested in the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States.

Call For Papers:

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” at 100

Langston Hughes Review

Guest Editor: Shane Graham

Expected Publication: (May) 2021

People will be able to liberate themselves only after the legal superstructure itself has begun to wither away. And when we begin to overcome and to do without these [juridical] concepts in reality, rather than merely in declarations, that will be the surest sign that the narrow horizon of bourgeois law is finally opening up before us.

--Anthony P. Farley, “Perfecting Slavery”

What we’re looking for:

By defining ourselves as barzakh—a space of crossings & connectivity between histories, articulations, & media—we hope to make Barzakh Magazine a site of inquiry & revitalization. We want your fiction, poetry, criticism, personal essays, translations, paintings, drawings, photographs—any work that pushes against complacent taxonomies & forges new paths.

The United States, United States / Dis-United States

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Fourth Annual Global Souths Conference

Formerly the Deep South in the Global South Conference

March 19-21, 2020

University of Louisiana-Lafayette

Lafayette, Louisiana

“Doing southern studies is unmasking and refusing the binary thinking--‘North’/‘South,’ nation/South, First World/Third World, self/other--that postcolonial studies has taught us is the most damaging rhetorical structure of empire. Doing southern studies is thinking geographically, thinking historically, thinking relationally, thinking about power, thinking about justice, thinking back.”             --Scott Romaine & Jennifer Rae Greeson

November 24, 2019 is now the deadline for submitting proposals to the American Literature Area of the Popular Culture Association’s National Conference, to be held April 15-18, 2020 at the Downtown Marriott in Philadelphia, PA.

Welty and the Body

Call for Contributors

 Insecure, Awkward, and Winning: Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Works of Issa Rae

Edited by: Adria Y. Goldman, Ph.D., Joanna L. Jenkins, Ph.D., Andre Nicholson, Ph.D. and LaRonda Sanders-Senu, Ph.D.

“I was like, ‘Yo is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?’ And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.”

The Absurdity of Racism: an International Chester Himes Conference.

4-6 June, 2020

Co-Directors Alice Mikal Craven and William E. Dow

American University of Paris

Chester Himes quotes Albert Camus in the opening to the second volume of his autobiography:  "Racism is absurd. Racism introduces absurdity into the human condition…If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life, eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim one comes to feel the absurdity of life". 

Across the African diaspora, art was a form of expression and liberation at times of widespread cultural oppression, enabling artists of color to resist the tradition of silencing while preserving their histories, traditions, and more in ways that could be passed down intergenerationally. While much art worked to fulfill a political purpose by pushing for equality and liberty in oppressive cultures, other works aimed at achieving liberation by way of celebrating Black cultural forms, from the cutting-edge music of Erykah Badu to that of Janelle Monae.

Black Performing Arts: 

Sound, Movement, Image, Text

Popular Culture Association

2020 National Conference

PHILADELPHIA MARRIOTT DOWNTOWN

1201 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19107

April 15-18, 2020

Call For Proposals:  Sessions, Panels, Papers

Call for Papers:

The Howard University Graduate English Student Association’s 5th Annual Conference

Forging Identities: Agency, Voice, and Representation in African American Literature and Beyond

Deadline for Submissions: December 2, 2019

Conference Date: March 26 and 27, 2020

Conference Location: The Browsing Room of Founders Library, Howard University

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Keith D. Leonard, Author of Fettered Genius