CFP: Disability and the Modern Black Body (4/15/06; CAAR, 4/18/07-4/21/07)

full name / name of organization: 
chris bell
contact email: 

Call for Papers
Disability and the Modern Black Body

The Collegium for African American Research (CAAR)
will convene its seventh international conference from
18 to 21 April, 2007 at the National University in
Madrid, Spain. The theme for the conference is
"Blackness and Modernities." Drawing on the
conference aim to include presentations on "The Modern
Black Body," this workshop will examine how disability
informs the desirability, experience, knowledge, and
representation of that subjectivity.

Participants might speak to the following concerns
(the list is suggestive, not exhaustive):

*Literary representations of disabled modern black
bodies by authors such as Maya Angelou, Pearl Cleage,
Jamaica Kincaid, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Alice
Walker

*Stage, film and television depictions of disabled
modern black bodies e.g. Alex Désert in "Becker",
Jamie Foxx in "Ray", Morgan Freeman in "Million Dollar
Baby", Cuba Gooding, Jr. in "Radio", Danai Gurira and
Nikkole Salter in "In the Continuum", Irma P. Hall in
"Soul Food", Djimon Hounsou in "In America", Daryl
"Chill" Mitchell in "Ed", and Denzel Washington in
"The Bone Collector"

*Real-life disabled modern black bodies e.g. James
Byrd, individuals disabled by wars, civil strife,
(inter)national disasters, and police brutality

*"Larger than life" or celebrity disabled modern black
bodies e.g. Muhammad Ali, Lola Falana, Louis
Farrakhan, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Michael Jackson,
Earvin "Magic" Johnson, James Earl Jones, Teddy
Pendergrass, Richard Pryor, Desmond Tutu, Luther
Vandross, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Mary Wells, and
Stevie Wonder

*Comparisons between those modern black bodies with
apparent disabilities and those with non-apparent ones

*Health and treatment disparities amongst disabled
modern black bodies e.g. the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

*Issues of femininity and masculinity and disabled
modern black bodies

*How the idea of the disabled modern black body is/not
complicated by the ideologies of "dismodernism" and
"post-race"

*The failure of African American Studies, Africana
Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Disability Studies to
examine disabled modern black bodies

One-page proposals, questions, and/or ideas should be
sent by 15 April 2006 to (e-submissions preferred):

Chris Bell
PhD Student
Nottingham Trent University
College of Communication, Culture and Education
Clifton Campus, Clifton Lane
Nottingham
NG11 8NS
United Kingdom
tooferbell_at_yahoo.com

More information about the Madrid conference and the
CAAR is available at www.caar-web.org.

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Received on Tue Feb 07 2006 - 13:17:04 EST