CFP: [African-American] Richard Wrightâs International Texts and Contexts

I am soliciting abstracts for a proposed Special Session at the 2008 MLA
Convention [27-30 December 2008 in San Francisco]. Accepted panelists
must be MLA members by April 1, 2008.

2008 marks the centennial of Richard Wright’s birth, and an opportune
moment for reconsiderations of his lesser-read, nonfiction works, as well
as his trans-national and non-aligned writerly commitments more broadly.
Important topics include:

--Wright’s travel writing (Black Power, The Color Curtain, and Pagan
Spain)

--Wright’s interest in rearticulating Marxist and Freudian theories to
reflect post-colonial realities

--Wright’s personal and authorial position vis-à-vis the Cold War

--Relationships between the later fiction and the travel works

--Atomic imagery in the later fiction

--Wright’s works’ reception in Europe and the global South

--The relationship between Wright’s exile and his present place in the
African American and US literary canons

--Relationships between Wright’s works and post-colonial African writing

Please submit abstracts and a one-page CV as attachments in .doc or .docx
format by February 22, 2008, to stringd_at_temple.edu.

Inquiries regarding related topics in Wright studies or African American
literature generally are also solicited.

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Received on Fri Feb 01 2008 - 14:33:08 EST