Call for Submissions

Home Girls, Make Some Noise!: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology

Feminism, rap music, and Hip Hop culture, at first glance, do not appear to be
likely cohorts. In the male-driven, testosterone filled world of Hip Hop culture and rap music
labeling oneself a feminist is not a political stance easily taken. Thus, many women involved with Hip Hop
culture do not take on the label of feminist even as their actions imply feminist beliefs and
leanings. Much of the strong criticisms of rap music have been about the music's sexism and
misogyny. And much of the attention focused on sex and gender have been in terms of constructions of
Black masculinity, and rap music as a vehicle for Black male posturing. A lot of attention has been
paid to the impact rap music and the masculine space of Hip Hop culture has on the development of
Black male identities. In this volume, the editors strive to understand constructions of Hip Hop
feminism, gender, and sexuality in Hip Hop culture, rap music and these in transnational contexts.

We take the stance that Hip Hop is a cultural phenomenon that expands farther
than rap music. Hip Hop has been defined by many as a way of life that encompasses everything from
way of dress to manner of speech. Hip Hop as a culture originally included graffiti writing,
d-jaying, break dancing, and rap music. It has recently expanded to include genres such as film, spoken
word, autobiographies, literature, journalism, and activism. It has also expanded
enough to include its own brand of feminism. The work of Hip Hop feminist writers such as Ayana
Byrd, Denise Cooper, Eisa Davis, Eisa Nefertari Ulen, shani jamilla, dream hampton, Joan Morgan,
Tara Roberts, Kristal Brent-Zook, and Angela Ards is expanding black feminist theory and black women
's intellectual traditions in fascinating ways. What started out as a few young black feminist
women who loved Hip Hop and who tried to mesh that love with their feminist/womanist
consciousness is now a rich body of articles, essays, poetry, and creative non-fiction.

We seek to complicate understandings of Hip Hop as a male space by including
and identifying the women who were always involved with the culture and offering Hip Hop feminist
critiques of the music and the culture. We seek to explore Hip Hop as a worldview, as an
epistemology grounded in the experiences of communities of color under advanced capitalism, as a
cultural site for rearticulating identity and sexual politics. We are particularly interested in
seeing submissions of critical essays and cultural critiques, interviews, creative non-fiction and
personal narratives, fiction, poetry, and artwork. We also encourage submissions from women working
within the Hip Hop sphere, Hip Hop feminists and activists "on the ground," as well as
scholars, writers, and journalists. We do not wish to reify the scholar/activist dichotomy, but we
want to encourage as broad a discussion of the possibilities of Hip Hop Feminism as possible and we
want to be sure multiple voices and perspectives are represented in the anthology. All work
submitted must be original and should not have been published elsewhere.

Word Count/Page Limits:

Critical Essays and Cultural Critiques – 25 pages (including bibliography)
6500 words
Interviews – 10 pages/2500 words
Creative Non-Fiction and Personal Narratives – 20 pages/5000 words
Fiction – 20 pages/5000 words
Poetry/Rhymes – No more than 3 pages per poem/rhyme and 3 poems per poet/mc
Artwork – Up to three pieces per artist

Editors:

Gwendolyn Pough is an Associate Professor of Women's Studies, Writing, and
Rhetoric at Syracuse University and the author of Check It While I Wreck It; Black Womanhood,
Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere, Northeastern University Press 2004.

Elaine Richardson is an Associate Professor of English at Penn State
University and the author of African American Literacies (2003) and the forthcoming Hip Hop Literacies both
from Routledge Press.

Rachel Raimist is a Hip Hop feminist filmmaker, scholar and activist. Her film
credits include the award-winning feature length documentaries Freestyle, Nobody Knows My Name,
and Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed. She is a doctoral student in Feminist Studies at the
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Aisha S. Durham is an essayist and Editorial Assistant for several cultural
studies journals, including Qualitative Inquiry where her performance work is featured. Durham's
dissertation research examining Hip Hop feminism will be featured in an upcoming anthology
and documentary about Hip Hop culture. She is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of
Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Additional themes to be explored:

* Has Hip Hop feminism moved beyond the conflicted stance of loving Hip Hop,
being a feminist, and meshing the two? What is next? What should Hip Hop feminism be doing?
* Now that we have at least two generations of women who identify as Hip Hop
feminist, can we talk about multiple Hip Hop feminism(s), multiple Hip Hop feminist agendas?
* On that generational note, how then does the Hip Hop feminist agenda mesh
with the Black feminist agenda or womanist agenda of our predecessors and contemporaries who
do not claim a
Hip Hop sensibility?
* We know that there are dedicated educators out there who are working in the
trenches with no institutional support to bring feminist education and issues of sexuality,
sexual health, and emotional well-being to our youth, but how can Hip Hop feminists work to
ensure that feminist education is centered in the curricula of America's schools, elementary
through college for both male and female students?
* What are the defining contours of Hip Hop Feminism? If we are of the
understanding that a Hip Hop feminist is more than just a woman who loves Hip Hop and feels conflicted
about it, what does a Hip Hop feminism look like?
* The continued sexual labor of women of color in a global market place now
depending on virtual "mass mediated" sex labor (e.g. music video and pornography) as well as other
forms of sex and gendered labor performed by women of color still policed.
* Is Hip Hop feminism simply a US phenomenon? Should Hip Hop feminism have a
global agenda?
And how should Hip Hop feminism participate in the agendas of transnational
feminism(s)?
* What roles can Hip Hop feminism play in combating growing rate of
incarcerated woman of color and the expanding prison industrial complex?

For additional information contact:

Elaine Richardson ebr2_at_psu.edu

Please send four copies of the submission by July 30, 2005 to:

Gwendolyn D. Pough
Women's Studies Program
Syracuse University
208 Bowne Hall
Syracuse, New York 13244

Gwendolyn D. Pough
Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Writing
Syracuse University

http://www.gwendolyndpough.com

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
                Fannie Lou Hamer

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Received on Sun Apr 24 2005 - 11:04:21 EDT