This guaranteed online session of the TC Religion and Literature forum at the January 2027 MLA convention invites papers on literary production and culture that occurs at the intersections of Black Studies and spirituality. How have texts by Black writers imagined, challenged, and embraced traditional, new, and syncretic forms of spirituality?

Possible topics could include: 

• Black spiritualities as a source of joy and celebration
• Black spiritualities as resistance to and critique of nationalism and/or traditional forms of religion
• Black queer spiritualities
• Ecocritical Black spiritualities
• Black spiritualities and haunting/hauntology
• Literary representations of music and/as Black spiritualities
• Black speculative fiction and spirituality (Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, N. K. Jemisin)

Email 250-word abstract and CV to Jack Dudley at dudley@msmary.edu by 16 March 2026.