EXTENDED DEADLINE: JULY 1, 2001
PLEASE CIRCULATE
A selected number of the papers presented at this conference may be
published in book form by a university press. We are currently working
out terms for this contract.
Race in the Humanities
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse will hold an interdisciplinary
conference on Race in the Humanities from November 15-17, 2001. As the
organizers of the conference, we seek individual paper abstracts and
panel proposals related to the conference theme. We envision the
conference as an interdisciplinary venue that will allow students,
staff, and faculty to discuss the role of race in the humanities--both
within individual disciplines and within the foundations of humanistic
studies in the university. Four keynote speakers will present at the
conference--Molefi Asante (Africana Studies, Temple University); Chester
J. Fontenot, Jr. (English and African American Studies, Mercer
University); Charles W. Mills (Philosophy, University of Illinois at
Chicago); and Ishmael Reed, renowned African American author and
scholar.
In keeping with Mills's theoretical interrogation of philosophy as a
racialized discipline, this conference will examine the constitutive
role that race has played in the formation of other disciplines in the
humanities, such as literary studies, women's studies, art, art history,
history, and theatre. Critical discussions at the conference will not
merely reflect on the opening of canons--literary, historical, artistic,
philosophical--to minority writers, scholars, and thinkers (although
this shift is certainly a significant one that will inform our
discussions of race in the humanities), but it will also examine the
very foundations of humanistic, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary
studies in the humanities.
Research questions posed by the organizers of the conference, Race in
the Humanities, include:
********How are literary genres racialized? How have national
literatures erased ethnic and racial difference within its nationalistic
parameters of definition?
********How are definitions of history and historicity predicated on
notions of racial difference? (For example, Hegel's notions of world
history as articulated in Philosophy of History.)
********How have the arts been constructed on racialized aesthetic
foundations? How have art historians shaped research through racialized
frames of enquiry and analysis? How, historically and institutionally,
have the arts benefited from the institutions of slavery and
colonialism?
********How has race been formative in the establishment of disciplinary
boundaries? And how do the methodologies of disciplines perpetuate the
racialization of knowledges?
We encourage submissions related, but not limited, to these research
questions. As an interdisciplinary and multi-ethnic conference for
faculty, staff, and students, the organizers also solicit papers that
address the following: race and research in the humanities; teaching
about race; race in the classroom; and myriad other topics related to
race in the humanities.
Conference topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
********the metaphysics and poetics of race
********race and history; postcolonial critiques of race and history
********race as philosophical idea; postcolonial critiques of race and
philosophy
********race as culturally-constructed metaphor
********race as linguistic imperialism and semantic colonization
********language as racial/national imperialism (Ngugi's "colonization
of the mind"; Brathwaite's "nation-language"; and other postcolonial models)
********historical genocides in Americas & humanistic renaissances in
Europe
********rhetorics of subpersonhood; race as inscriptions of Otherness
and alterity
********property as identity; identity as property
********race, racism, capitalism, global capitalism, and the (uncertain)
future of the humanities
********dialogues of monocultural flogging
********race and transatlantic passages (the Black Diaspora, the
Indo-Caribbean Diaspora, Jewish Diaspora and other transnational
migrations)
********literary and historical constructions of Old World/New World
********African diasporan religions (Vodou, Obeah, Santeria, et cetera)
and political resistance
********race as ubiquitous trope in American literary, historical, and
social discourse
********race and theorizations of metissage, criollo, creole, creolite,
and hybridity
********racialization of minorities in the U.S. (African American, Asian
American, Latin/o American, Native American, and other ethnic
minorities)
********racialization of minorities globally (for example, Maghrebis in
France; Turks in Germany; Pakistanis and others in Britain)
********race, ethnic minorities, and citizenship in the U.S.
********race, ethnic minorities, and citizenship globally
********race and history; racial memory and historical monuments
********race, critical race theory, and legal discourse
********whiteness as institutionalized in humanistic disciplines
********privileges of whiteness; failures of whiteness
We strongly encourage submissions by faculty, graduate, and
undergraduate student researchers on the conference theme. We also plan
to hold a final "round table discussion" (following the panels) to allow
for critical exchange of ideas generated by conference speakers and to
further encourage dialogue about the formative role of race in the
humanities.
Please submit extended abstracts (2-3 pages) and/or panel proposals with
a brief curriculum vitae by
JULY 1, 2001 to the following address: Dr. Joseph Young or Dr. Jana
Evans Braziel, English Department, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La
Crosse, WI 54601.
Email inquiries to young.jose@uwlax.edu or braziel.jana@uwlax.edu. For
more information, please visit the conference web site at
http://www.uwlax.edu/RaceConference
<http://www.uwlax.edu/RaceConference>
Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin System Office of Multicultural
Affairs, UW-Milwaukee Office of Multicultural Affairs & Department of
Student Academic Development,the UWL Foundation,
the Noel J. Richards Fund, the College of Liberal Studies at UWL, the
Institute for Ethnic and Racial Studies at UWL, the following UWL
Departments: English, Philosophy, Foreign
Languages, Political Science/Public Administration,
Sociology/Archaeology, and Women's Studies.
===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
===============================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 01 2001 - 13:02:32 EDT