Please note the following changes: Conference info is included and abstract deadline has been changed to July 7, 2004.
CONTEMPORARY WOMEN NOVELISTS: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
14TH ANNUAL CENTRAL NEW YORK CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CORTLAND COLLEGE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK (29-31 OCTOBER 2004)
Black maternity is a central theme of much literature by contemporary black women writers. These writers address the stereotype of black maternal negligence and the legacy of black women’s degradation and dispossession under slavery of which the stereotype is derivative. Abdul R. JanMohamed writes, “The most eloquent and penetrating expression of the horror involved in the destruction of the maternal function is [. . .] Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Contemporary black women writers also address—whether by way of countering or corroborating—the popular conception of black mothers as massive, suffocating, yet ineffectual presences that wreak havoc on the emotional, psychic, and material lives of their children and, by extension, on the black community.
Considering Julia Kristeva’s proposition that motherhood “functions as a fantasy that is nurtured by the adult, man or woman, of lost territory [. . . and] that involves less an idealized archaic mother than the idealization of the relationship that binds us to her,” this panel seeks papers that explore the relationship between black motherhood and black being. How are notions of black maternity, black identity, and black community linked? In what ways do representations of black motherhood simultaneously obscure and uncover cultural beliefs about black subjective and social development? And how do theories about black maternity impact historical and/or contemporary notions of womanhood and woman’s place?
Please submit 300-word abstracts via email (no attachments please) by July 7, 2004. Papers that read lesser known texts by contemporary black women writers throughout the Americas are especially sought.
Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman
Department of English
New York University
19 University Place
New York, NY 10003
aia201@nyu.edu
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