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African American Review "Representing Segregation"

Short CFP

Representing Segregation. Is there an identifiable literary tradition responding to, representing, or protesting US racial segregation? Examination of individual works, authors, genres, or movements welcome for a special issue of African American Review slated for early 2008. Inquiries first to: Brian Norman (normbria@isu.edu) and Piper Kendrix Williams (williamp@tcnj.edu). Inquiries by December 15, 2006; completed papers are due by May 1, 2007. More information, including a link to the special issue website at http://aar.slu.edu/.


Medium CFP

Representing Segregation
A special issue of African American Review

African American Review is soliciting papers for a special issue on Representing Segregation slated for publication in early 2008. Is there an identifiable literary tradition responding to, representing, or protesting US racial segregation? Examination of individual works, authors, genres, or movements are welcome.

Segregation—as an historical condition, a political ideology, a municipal planning scheme, and a de facto social system—profoundly shaped the lives of African Americans and other groups in the first half of the twentieth century, at least. Whether protesting, rejecting, refusing, or reaffirming segregation, numerous writers have necessarily responded to the history and experience of racial division in their literary projects. The past two decades of African American literary studies have evidenced great interest in the tropes, narratives, and legacies of slavery, migration, and diaspora within the literary imagination. In addition, in recent years scholars have studied specific practices of segregation in literature, most notably lynching. A broad inquiry into literatures of segregation is necessary to account for the literary legacy associated with practices of US racial segregation.

Send inquiries or proposals to Brian Norman (normbria@isu.edu) and Piper Kendrix Williams (williamp@tcnj.edu). Inquiries by December 15, 2006; completed papers are due by May 1, 2007. More information, including a link to the special issue website at http://aar.slu.edu/.


Long CFP

Representing Segregation
A special issue of African American Review

African American Review is soliciting papers for a special issue on Representing Segregation slated for publication in early 2008. Is there an identifiable literary tradition responding to, representing, or protesting US racial segregation? Examination of individual works, authors, genres, or movements are welcome.

Segregation—as an historical condition, a political ideology, a municipal planning scheme, and a de facto social system—profoundly shaped the lives of African Americans and other groups in the first half of the twentieth century, at least. Whether protesting, rejecting, refusing, or reaffirming segregation, numerous writers have necessarily responded to the history and experience of racial division in their literary projects. The past two decades of African American literary studies have evidenced great interest in the tropes, narratives, and legacies of slavery, migration, and diaspora within the literary imagination. In addition, in recent years scholars have studied specific practices of segregation in literature, most notably lynching. A broad inquiry into literatures of segregation is necessary to account for the literary legacy associated with practices of US racial segregation.

Possible questions individual articles might ask include, but are not limited to:

• Is there such thing as a segregation narrative or a Jim Crow narrative? Is this a formalist, ideological, or historicist project?
• How have the historical conditions of racial segregation informed narratives of race, nation, and geography?
• What are the aesthetic techniques employed by Black writers to represent and protest racial segregation? Should these be in conversation with apologist or white supremacist writers of segregation literature, such as Thomas F. Dixon?
• Where is segregation located? Is there a geography underpinning the literary imagination arising from segregation narratives? What place do segregation narratives have in literatures of migration?
• What is the relation between literatures of segregation and literatures of separatism or racial self-determination?
• How and why have writers from different ethnic or racial backgrounds borrowed, built from, or rejected African American representations of segregation?
• Can transnational figures and texts like Richard Wright’s expatriate writings, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Ghanaian citizenship, James Baldwin’s European essays, or June Jordan’s anti-apartheid work elucidate the way writers negotiate the domestic and the international within segregation?
• What does an African American literary tradition writ large look like from the vantage of a distinct tradition of literatures of segregation?

Send inquiries or proposals to Brian Norman (normbria@isu.edu) and Piper Kendrix Williams (williamp@tcnj.edu). Inquiries by December 15, 2006; completed papers are due by May 1, 2007. More information, including a link to the special issue website at http://aar.slu.edu/.

 

Delta Blues Symposium XII: Delta Diversity

The Department of English and Philosophy at Arkansas State University (Jonesboro campus) announces its twelfth annual Delta Blues Symposium, to be held 30 March-1 April 2006. The theme for Delta Blues Symposium XII is "Delta Diversity." Presentations are encouraged from scholars and students of the humanities and social sciences-especially anthropology, art history, economics, folklore studies, geography, history, literature, musicology, political science, and sociology. This year's theme also encourages presentations from the natural and physical sciences which examine how the seven-state Mississippi River Delta provides a varied physical and cultural environment for a range of cultural responses from diverse groups defined by ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and other factors.

It should be emphasized that though we especially encourage presentations dealing with "Delta Diversity," we welcome proposals for papers and panels which deal with any and all aspects of the region or with the blues, perhaps the region's most famous export. We particularly invite presentations on artists who have appeared at previous symposia (fiction writers such as Lewis Nordan, Ellen Douglas, John Dufresne, Barry Hannah, and Beverly Lowry; poets like Yusef Komunyakaa, Michael Harper, and Al Young; visual artists, including James Fraher, David Rae Morris, and Maude Schuyler Clay; and musicians such as Frank Frost, Little Milton, CeDell Davis, and Billy Lee Riley).

Program proposals may be for individual presentations or for panels. These should be sent as 100-word abstracts. We also urge participation by creative writers and other artists. Please send samples of previous work for our consideration. The submission deadline is 13 January 2006. The registration fee of $25.00, which covers Symposium expenses and brings a one-year subscription to Arkansas Review, will be collected after proposals have been accepted. Note that this fee is waived for currently enrolled students.

Proposals may be sent via post, e-mail, or fax to the following address:

Delta Symposium Committee
Department of English and Philosophy
PO Box 1890
Arkansas State University
State University, AR 7246
blues@astate.edu
Phone: 870-972-3043
Fax: 870-972-3045.

Further information can be had by contacting the Delta Symposium Committee or by checking the Symposium website: www.clt.astate.edu/blues

College Language Association - April 5-8, 2006

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) will host the sixty-sixth annual convention of the College Language Association, April 5-8, 2006, in Birmingham, Alabama. The College Language Association (CLA) is a professional organization of university and college professors of English and Foreign Languages. Founded in 1937
by a group of black scholars and educators, the College Language Association serves
the academic, scholarly and professional interests of its members and the collegiate communities they represent. Since 1957, the Association has published the CLA Journal, a quarterly featuring scholarly research and reviews of books in the areas of language, literature, linguistics and pedagogy. The CLA and UAB welcome the participation of individuals of all backgrounds in the 2006 conference. For more information, please contact Dr. Dellita Martin-Ogunsola or Dr. Sheri Spaine Long at foreignlangs@uab.edu.