Call for Nominations:

2024 SSAG Award for Best Scholarly Monograph on the American Gothic

The recently-launched Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG) invites nominations for its inaugural Award for Best Scholarly Monograph. This award is open to all scholarly monographs published in the past two years that focus on some aspect of the American Gothic. The winner of the award will be announced at the Society for the Study of the American Gothic business meeting, at the American Literature Association conference in May 2024 (exact date TBA).

This panel invites researchers to consider how African American writers deploy humor within what critics have termed the “post-soul,” “post-Black,” “Black post-Blackness,” and “New Black Aesthetic” movements. Derek C. Maus, in Post-Soul Satire (2014), notes that the propensity for Black satirists to turn their critiques inward at the Black community rather than outwardly toward white institutions marks a key shift from ‘soul’ to ‘post-soul’ aesthetics.

Every community craves a sense of identity in this world, and continuity with the cultural past. This is more so with the communities whose language, literature and culture are on the verge of extinction on account of multiple factors. Literature and culture can offer indigenous communities a sense of belonging and promote social cohesion, respect for diversity, human creativity as well as help people connect with each other. Hence, the call to preserve endangered folk cultural heritage of communities such as the Jetor, an indigenous nomadic community of Paschim Medinipur and Jhargram settled on the edges of Kangsabati and Subarnarekha. UNESCO has declared 2022-2032 as the decade of indigenous languages.