Call for Papers: Edited Collection on Black Women’s Internationalism
Editors: Tiffany M. Gill and Keisha N. Blain
Deadline: Completed manuscripts by 30 December 2014
Submitted electronically in Microsoft Word to BWIAnthology@gmail.com
Guidelines: Essays should be no more than 35 typed, double spaced pages (12 pt. font), including endnotes. Citations should follow the latest version of the Chicago Manual of Style. All entries should be accompanied by a title page and an abridged version of the author’s C.V.
Please direct all inquiries to the editors via email at BWIAnthology@gmail.com. For additional information, please visit the website here.
The scholarship on the Black International has been predominately male-centric, emphasizing individuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois, George Schuyler, Paul Robeson and C.L.R. James. With few exceptions, black women have been marginalized in historical narratives of black internationalism, which center on the global visions of black people in the United States and their sustained efforts to forge transnational collaborations and solidarities with people of color from across the globe. This volume is a collection of essays that analyze the gendered contours of black internationalism and explore the creative and critical ways women articulated black internationalism during the twentieth century. Highlighting the writings, speeches, performances, activism, and overseas travel of a diverse range of female actors, this collection moves black women from the margins to the center of the historical narrative. However, this anthology does more than just expand the paucity of scholarship on black women and internationalism. Indeed, this volume is both an assessment of the field as well as an attempt to expand the contours of black internationalism theoretically, spatially, and temporally. In contrast to studies that confine black internationalism to foreign policy agendas and political insurgencies, this collection captures the shifting meanings, complexities, and varied articulations of the term.
The editors seek historical essays that employ a gender analysis, foreground black women’s voices, and reveal the under-appreciated importance of women in shaping black internationalist movements and discourse(s) during the twentieth century. The editors are especially interested in manuscripts that reconceptualize internationalism beyond narrowly defined notions of political struggle to include consumption practices, leisure, and artistic expressions. The editors also seek manuscripts that expand the scholarly discourse on black internationalism to include the ideas and activities of the black working class. The editors encourage potential contributors to submit articles that explore topics that include but are not limited to the following:
- Black women’s travels
- Black women’s international activism
- Expressions of cosmopolitanism
- International consumer practices
- Global Feminism(s)
- International cultural exchanges/ practices
- Working-class internationalism
- Gender and Pan-Africanism
- Global religious expressions
- Global black beauty culture and adornment practices
- Global performative and artistic expressions
- Black women’s engagement with the Black Atlantic/ Black Pacific
- Black women’s internationalist writings
- Black women and the military
- Black women’s engagement with foreign policy
- Anti-colonial/ Anti-imperial discourses
Message adapted from CFP announcement.
