The MELUS Women of Color Caucus (WOCC) seeks scholars whose literary analysis (i.e., the examination of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays, film, music, and/or TV) of works by women of color centers approaches to literary research, especially work that makes visible or accounts for women of color’s invisibility and/or seeks to fill gaps in the canon and archives around experiences. Our models for this work include scholars and theorists such as Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, and Audre Lorde, and essayists such as Cathy Park Hong, Claudia Rankine, Elissa Washuta, and Carmen Maria Machado. These approaches can include: 

• autotheory or field notes
• combinations of creative and scholarly work
• multimodal and/or multimedia
• creative, critical archival work, especially in forms similar to or inspired by Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation
• and more

We will also welcome scholarly submissions that directly contend with and reflect upon this shift in scholarly publication as it relates to contemporary works of this nature, such as Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (2019) and Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes (2023).

Abstracts of no more than 250 words in Word or PDF, along with your name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation (if applicable) are due by November 15, 2024, to Dr. Leah Milne at MilneL@uindy.edu. Those with accepted submissions will be invited to register for the 2025 annual conference for The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) at CalState, Los Angeles, which will take place from April 3-6, 2025.

Anyone who wishes to be considered for a graduate student award or contingent faculty award must copy Karina Diaz (kdiaz5@niu.edu) on their submission.