CFP: Women Writers, Activism, and Healing (9/15/06; NEMLA, 3/1/07-3/4/07)
Call for Papers
Panel: Women Writers of Color, Womanist/Feminist Activism, and
Personal Healing
38th Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
March 1-4, 2007
Baltimore, Maryland
This panel focuses on the connections between women authors, personal
healing, and the search for global justice. What is the relationship
between women's personal empowerment and their political action,
particularly in literature by women of color in the last half of the
20th and the first years of the 21st century? The panel will invoke
some of these questions:
--How do figures of emotion, affect, community, healing, psychology,
and empowerment operate in women's literature?
--How do authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Gloria Anzaldua, Danzy Senna, and others
employ the narratives and conventions of political activism and/or
individual experiences of healing, community, and personal discovery?
--What can we learn from the second wave's internal divisions of race,
ethnicity and class?
--What is the relationship in literature between personal empowerment
and political action?
--What is the relationship between theory and praxis in black feminist
literature and/or theory?
--How does the second wave's rhetoric of global socialist justice
influence contemporary feminist literature and theory?
--How do the literature and theory of womanist and second wave activism
relate to contemporary art and struggle for women's global justice?
Papers may certainly address any number of connections in addition to
black women's literature, such as the work of Latina, Asian-American,
and Native American authors, as well as contemporary literatures of
global feminism or engaged literature by privileged women. Panelists
should also feel free to address contemporary activism, as the panel
seeks not only to explore our recent history, but to use that history
to point to the road ahead. The key is the nexus of healing, activism,
and women's self-discovery and empowerment.
Please email a 500-word abstract and contact information to Susannah
Bartlow, sbartlow_at_buffalo.edu, by September 15, 2006.
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Received on Wed Jun 07 2006 - 10:15:12 EDT