Call for papers for Panel Session Entitled:
"African American Homoeroticism Across Genres:
Revolutionary Praxis in Texts from the Harlem
Renaissance to the Present"
Sender: owner-cfp@dept.english.upenn.edu
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Northeast Modern Languate Association
Toronto, Canada
April 12-13, 2002
Summary Description:
Presentations saught on all aspects of African American GLBT experience,
theory and practice in literature, film, music, art, photography,
performance arts and other genres from the 1920's through the hip hop era,
with preference given to papers including or on non-literary
representations.
Broader Description:
The proposed panel, "African American Homoeroticism Across
Genres: Revolutionary Praxis in Texts from the Harlem Renaissance to the
Present," seeks to expand upon treatment of gay and lesbian themes in
the African American cultural canon. The purpose of the panel is to
offer a forum that emphasizes interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary
approaches to such study and to place these treatments next to one
another in a cross-generational context. For this reason, the panel seeks
presentations on any aspects of African American GLBT experience, theory
and practice not only in literature but also in genres such as film,
music, art, photography, pornography, graphic arts, newsprint, drama,
performance arts and television, or on the relationships between these
representations and those found in literary texts. While such a scope
cannot be fully conveyed by one panel, especially given the broad time
frame allowed (from the 1920's through the hip hop era), the purpose of
this panel is to elicit an interdisciplinary focus not widely reflected
in current scholarship.
Studies of the blues by Hazel Carby and others reveal that
various genres have voiced homoerotic themes in very different and
sometimes apparently conflicting ways within the same time
period--Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey or Gladys Bently, for example, standing
in contrast to Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes. By comparison, no
treatment has been given to representations of the homoerotic found in
James Baldwin's canon in comparison with homoerotic representations of
Baldwin in the documentary _The Price of the Ticket_ or in contrast to
the "masculine" iconography of the Black Power Movement. At the same
time, discussion of films such as _Tongues Untied_, _Looking for
Langston_ or _The Watermelon Woman_ have yet to fully inform cultural
studies or the treatment of concurrent literary or non-literary genres,
nor have they received exhaustive critical attention in their own right.
Similarly, within the literary genres, less attention has been given to
the poetry of Essex Hemphill, Cheryl Clark, or Pat Parker than to their
novelist counterparts or to the ways these may inform one another.
These are only examples of the kinds of topics upon which the panel
hopes to focus.
Format/Submission Deadline:
Presentations will be 15-20 minutes in length, and all panelists
must be members of NEMLA by November 1, 2001. Information on NEMLA and the
upcoming conference is available at the NEMLA website at www.nemla.org.
Please send a cover letter, a one-page abstract, and notice of any
audiovisual needs to the panel chair at the email or address below.
Abstracts are due by September 20, 2001.
E-Mail: ydegout2@howard.edu
(Send as text rather than attachment, if possible.)
Mail:
Yasmin Y. DeGout
1301 Mass. Ave., NW Apt. 601
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 347-0049
Fax: (202) 806-6708
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