CFP: White Scholars/African American Texts (essay collection; 9/1/02)
In May of 1998 Nellie McKay published a provocative and timely guest
column in PMLA, where she reminded readers of the appalling paucity of
African American scholars in literary studies, and expressed concern
about the fates of the white scholars who end up studying African
American literature and culture. Based on the enthusiastic response to
an earlier conference call and on preliminary publisher interest, I am
proposing a collection of essays that takes up one of the pressing
implications of McKay’s powerful argument, focusing particularly on the
reality of a world in which the study and teaching of African American
texts is done so often by white scholars. In highlighting the
“whiteness” of some African Americanists, this book does not intend to
imply that the teaching and research of African American literature
should be done solely by African American scholars, nor that that
pursuit is definitively impossible for white scholars. While the study
of African American literature is possible for white scholars—indeed,
imperative—there also are real and pressing “impossibilities” in that
work, particularly given our nation’s still unprocessed racial history.
This book seeks to begin a public conversation about the vexing,
widely-acknowledged, and yet rarely spoken ideological, pedagogical, and
historical complexities faced by many white scholars who teach and
research in African American literature and culture. Those working in
feminist and multicultural pedagogies have already begun to tease out
the challenges of “teaching what you’re not” (to borrow from the title
of one anthology). However, the history of black/white racial
formations in America remains particular, powerful, and in some ways
paradigmatic, and deserves extended treatment of its own.
I will entertain a wide range of topics and approaches. Essays might:
-tackle the theoretical issues of authenticity and the “realities” of
race in this context
-explore the realities of graduate training, the job market, publishing,
tenure, etc. for white scholars who engage African American texts and
culture
-take on the complexities of teaching, whether at historically black,
historically white, more diverse, etc. institutions
-examine the nature of our interracial academic communities, whether at
local or national levels
-explore how American history ghosts the current academic moment,
particularly regarding racial privilege and authority as they pertain in
educational settings
-seek to interrogate the black/white dichotomy by positioning the
“brown” or “yellow,” the queer, the non-American, etc.
-plumb the African American texts we study in efforts to reveal the ways
that they already shape these conversations
I would like either a 2-3 page prospectus or completed essays and a
current c.v. by September 1, 2002. If your essay is chosen for final
consideration, you will have until the end of the year to complete it.
Please send or e-mail all inquiries to:
Lisa A. Long
Assistant Professor of English
Coordinator of Gender & Women’s Studies Program
North Central College
33 North Brainard Street
Naperville, IL 60566
(630) 637-5286
lilong@noctrl.edu
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