Call for a Replacement Chapter on Race:

The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison

Editor: Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem, CUNY

This is a call for chapter proposals for The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison. This companion text is intended for a scholarly audience and as support for newer Morrison scholars as they approach their research.

Each chapter of the book is to have a dual function: 1) to review the Morrison scholarship in whatever general terrain the chapter falls within, and 2) to offer a new reading of Morrison in that area.

Different from some companion texts, the Routledge Research Companion series publishes cutting-edge research rather than (mostly) secondary material. The secondary nature of such many companions—that it informs readers about scholarly trends and history as well as generally accepted understandings of an author and her work—is, in this case, to be built into each chapter, at the opening, and with regard to the general topic area of the chapter. That section will lay out, in a thoroughgoing manner, a review of the existing Morrison scholarship, to fill out the picture in terms of where and what Morrison studies has been, what scholars have been thinking, writing, and arguing since she started publishing through to today once again in the topic area or theme of the chapter.

Each chapter is, in addition -- in a detailed second major section of the chapter -- to point the way forward in terms of some new direction in our understanding of Morrison's work, again, within the same thematic area. What we want to accomplish in this book project is to tell the (hi)story of Morrison studies, such as it is, through the opening review section, and then to create a vision for Morrison studies going forward, into the 21st Century. That is, importantly, to think beyond some of the more or less entrenched, perhaps even restrictive, "borders" around the reception and interpretation of and the knowledge on Morrison, things that have perhaps become "givens." ...How do we think beyond those confines, outside accustomed response? How create new and fruitful pathways in the understanding of her work, new and fresh meanings, readings, new knowledges inspired by the work of this African American woman writer, teacher, theorist, and universally celebrated Nobel Laureate? This is the challenge of this unique Companion text.

At this point, because I already have a set of very good chapters, I am ONLY looking for proposals in the area of: Toni Morrison and Race / racism / antiracism 

A few additional notes... Importantly, any chapter of this collection should not be restricted to a single work by Morrison; all should work with multiple texts from her oeuvre. And, each chapter is eligible, so I am informed by Routledge, for "Open Access"; for those interested in that or whose universities may encourage it, Open Access can mean greater exposure, both for the book and for the individual scholar's contribution.

Your one- or two-page proposal is due by 7/31/24, including a working title and a Bio and being sure to make the methodology clear: where, how, in what ways does your chapter enter and fit into the conversation on Morrison on your topic, what you are innovating or primarily responding to; also, what new direction or new reading of Morrison will you offer and develop in the second major part of the chapter. All this should be clear, as well as some of the theoretical scaffolding for chapter. (That could either be a separate statement, a working bibliography, or simply made clear through the content of your proposal.) fu

Email it to: maureen.fadem@gmail.com  by 7/31/24. The full chapter will be due 9/15/24 and should be in the range of 8,000 words. Thank you for your consideration and interest,

~Maureen Ellen Ruprecht, The City University of New York (Kingsborough)

Bio: 

Maureen Ruprecht Fadem (she/her) is Professor of English at CUNY-Kingsborough and a postcolonial and gender studies scholar. She works on contemporary Irish literature, mostly from the North, on literature of the African diaspora, and on the global literatures of partition. Her research looks at (racial)capital in its relation to empire, at political justice, especially reparations, at race and gender justice, and at the poetics of conflict, trauma, and silence. Maureen’s monograph Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian was brought out in 2020 by Rowman and Littlefield. In 2021, Routledge published two of her books: Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’: The Case for Reparations, and the co-edited collection The Economics of Empire. She recently brought out a journal article titled “Architecting the Carceral State” that looks at radical deployments of the fragment in Walter Benjamin and Medbh McGuckian (RISE 2021), and, more recently, “‘A thing breaks beyond naming’: A Review Article on David Lloyd’s 2022 Books”(ISR 2023). Along with writing opinion pieces for papers like Inside Higher Ed, Truthout, Common Dreams, and Mondoweiss, Maureen’s forthcoming research includes two books—the edited collection Imperial Debt (Liverpool UP, 2024) and The (New) Routledge Companion to Toni Morrison (2025)—and two articles, a comparative look at the epistemology of empire in Joyce’s “The Dead” and a reading of Mandel's Station Eleven as a partition narrative signaling the end of capital. Maureen appears in interview, she organizes and participates in conferences, and she recently completed a two-year term on MLA’s committee on Academic Freedom (CAFPRR). Before entering academia, she managed a twenty-year career in the corporate world while raising her children on her own, Dr. Cynthia Fadem, a geoarchaeologist, and Brooklyn restaurateur Mike Fadem. She lives in Brooklyn.

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