Call for papers–2020 Annual Symposium

December 19, 2019
Categories: Uncategorized

Call for Papers

The University of North Carolina, Africana Studies Department and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program invites you to submit a proposal for our 2020 symposium.

Theme: Imagining Futures: Black Girls and Women at the Intersections

The Africana Studies Department and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at UNC Charlotte invites you to submit a proposal for presentation at our Annual Symposium, April 16-17, 2020. This interdisciplinary symposium is intended to bring together diverse participants including for example academics, activists and artists to critically interrogate the ways in which Black girls and women imagine their futures in response to, and independent of, institutional practices and ideologies that may limit Black girls and women’s possibility of living fully and freely. Black girls and women across the African diaspora have creatively found ways to challenge, survive and thrive in the face of multiple oppressive structures; this symposium focuses on how they imagine and make real their behaviours to do such.

We are seeking individual papers, full panels, and interactive/performative workshops that address this theme of Black girls and women imagining futures. Academic and nonacademic submissions that look at Black girls and women in Africa, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. (among other regions) are welcome. Below are possible topics for exploration, but we encourage you to use your imagination on the general theme of the symposium:

  • Black femmes, girls and/or women imagining futures

  • Making legible older Black women and/or femmes

  • Curating digital spaces

  • Literature and imagination

  • Digital literacies and space making

  • Imagining wholeness

  • Navigating intersectional spaces

  • Creativity, imagination and identities

  • Imagining the erotic and pleasure

Submission Guidelines

We are accepting proposals for individual academic and creative papers and readings (each lasting 15­-20 minutes) and full panels, participatory workshops and round-table discussions (3­-4 participants, each lasting 60 minutes). We especially welcome participatory workshops. Proposals should consist of a single Word file containing the following:

1. Presenter(s) name, email address, and institutional affiliation (if relevant)

2. Title of presentation

3. Abstract (300 words for individual papers and presentations. 500 words for full panels, workshops and roundtables on targeted issues or topics)

4. Format of presentation

5. Anticipated AV needs and any other logistical or technical requirements

6. A brief biographical information of presenter(s) or one­ page CV or resume (please do not send a full CV)

Send proposals by January 10, 2019 to africana_studies@uncc.edu (using Imagination_YourName) in the subject line.

The symposium is to be held at The University of North Carolina, Charlotte, April 16-17, 2020

Organized by:

Julia Jordan-Zachery, Ph.D.

Chair, Africana Studies Department

Janaka Lewis, Ph.D.

Director, Women’s and Gender Studies