"Breaking the Silence: Strategies for Teaching Racially Provocative Texts in an Anxious Era"

The disproportionate number of people of color incarcerated in America's prisons, the ongoing challenges facing minorities living in America's inner cities, and the racially charged events that have led to the deaths of black men, women, and children on the streets of American cities are all painful reminders of the United States' troubled history regarding race. However, despite the urgent need for a dialogue about race throughout the United States and the earnest efforts of many institutions of higher learning to encourage students to engage in campus-wide discussions about race-related issues in recent years, classroom instructors themselves are often hesitant to add racially provocative texts to their course syllabi for fear of creating conflict within their own classrooms or of addressing subjects about which they themselves feel ambivalent. With this dynamic in mind, this panel seeks papers that explore racially complex texts and the pedagogical resources and strategies required to teach them. Proposals that address the conference theme of "Border States" are encouraged, but those that explore texts that are seldom taught, recently published, or frequently banned are especially welcome.

250-word abstracts (including paper titles) and abbreviated CVs may be emailed to Dr. Christina Triezenberg, at triezech@gvsu.edu, by April 5.

For additional CFPs and information about the Midwest MLA conference itself, please visit http://www.luc.edu/mmla/.