~Call for FULL Chapter:

Update: The manuscript is nearly finished however a planned chapter has fallen through. Replacement chapter needed immediately. Please review the details below and contact me: maureen.fadem@gmail.com

This is a call for chapters for The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison, a new companion volume intended for a scholarly audience, as support for newer Morrison scholars approaching their research, as well as graduate students working on Morrison.

The reason I took this project on was my general dissatisfaction with the ways Morrison has historically been received -- in particular as regards her radical politics and her broad, vast, deeply political vision. That is to say, it's always been my sense that her work has gotten watered-down or whitewashed, the full range of its life and power not husbanded in its treatment by critics ever since The Bluest Eye. Can we hear Morrison, do we truly hear her? This has been one of my questions, asked of myself and of the criticism — and when asked to take on this project, that's the reason I agreed. This literary critical issue is in part a structural matter in literary criticism (and in the world) in terms of who has/had "ownership" of Morrison and her legacy; that list starts with Harold Bloom, a critic who, in my view, may actually have done "damage," not only in terms of publications that are visible to us (because published) but in the vast and murky terrain of peer reviewing. There is, as Morrison scholars know, a great deal of brilliant incisive genuine "real" and highly valuable work on Morrison in print. But, leaving aside related matters of tenure and promotion, what brilliant work do we not have, what awesome hearings have we not heard because deemed too radical, too political, too "elsewhere," too [fill in the blank] therefore getting peer reviewed "out" of public availability and thus out of the conversation? The question daunts.

It also haunts me. And so part of what this volume is doing is to "re-introduce" Morrison in a kind of way, to read her work having opened the doors and windows and blinds and let the light in, let some fresh air in, push ourselves to find more, hear more, hear her better and more fully.

Thus, each chapter of this volume has a DUAL function: to offer a new reading of Morrison AND to review the scholarship in whatever thematic terrain the chapter falls within. This companion is different from others in that each chapter does both what a Companion volume typically does -- review the current state of the scholarship / conventional wisdom in a particular area or theme -- and, in addition, we're offering a new reading in that area or theme. In other words, it's both a Companion and a new scholarly collection. This would mean devoting 3 or 4 pages of the chapter, give or take and depending, to that scholarship review essential to any Companion with the remainder of the chapter being devoted to the elaboration of a full, new reading of Morrison, hopefully one that is a "new directions" interpretation. So first, we're telling the (hi)story of the "thought" on Morrison up until now, in one area, then we're creating a vision for Morrison studies going forward, thinking beyond the "conventional wisdom" and more or less entrenched, sometimes restrictive borders around her reception / interpretation.

It's vital that all chapters include both pieces: a review of the research AREA most relevant to the chapter and then a new reading of Morrison in that same thematic area.

A few notes:
--Importantly, any chapter of this collection should NOT be restricted to a single work by Morrison, all chapters must work with multiple texts from Morrison's oeuvre.
--Each chapter is eligible for Open Access, for those interested in that or whose universities encourage it. Open Access can mean greater exposure, both for the book and for the individual scholar.

Full chapter needed by two weeks from today, August 27 2026, including a Bio. The idea is that you already have new exciting material you're working on on Morrison, and this window gives you time to develop the opening piece (if not already written) before submitting the chapter for review. Chapters should not be more than approx. 8 - 10,000 words.

Email it to: maureen.fadem@gmail.com

~Maureen Ellen Ruprecht, The City University of New York