> CFP: Rage, Resistance, and Representation: Women in
> U. S. Race Riots
>
> Atlanta, GA. Washington, DC. Wilmington, NC.
> Chicago, Philadelphia,
> Ocoee, New York, Tulsa: cities among many others
> that have been home
> to race riots in the United States over the
> nineteenth and twentieth
> centuries. This collection of essays will
> investigate the various active
> roles women, and particularly minority women, played
> in such riots,
> paying specific attention to exposing the cultural
> fallacy of womens
> passivity in the public realm of violence,
> especially in relation to the
> construction of racial identity and cultural race
> relations.
>
> This project proceeds from the assumption that our
> historical
> representations and interpretations of race riots
> have constructed
> active resistance to or participation in (usually
> white) mob violence as
> primarily masculine: whenever possible, men fought
> to defend (reputedly
> or actually) their cultures, communities, and
> families. Womens roles,
> in comparison, are remembered as primarily passive
> on both sides of the
> color line: womens bodies were protected,
> defended, raped, beaten,
> mutilated, or ignored. These dual constructions,
> while often accurate
> and productive for highlighting the gendered and
> sexualized violence of
> race riots, leave a yawning void in both our
> understanding of minority
> communities resistance to national, racialized
> forms of terrorism, and
> our cultural memory of white womens role in the
> public domain and their
> engagement in the race question. This project will
> begin to fill those
> voids by investigating how women participated more
> actively, through
> both rhetoric and action, in race riots. While the
> essays in this
> collection should not ignore the ways that women
> or men were victims
> to (usually white) mob violence in race riots, they
> should primarily
> highlight how women actively participated in those
> riots.
>
> Essays may deal with the historical archive itself,
> or they may deal
> with fictional representations of riots in order to
> emphasize how
> womens roles have been proscribed, lauded,
> condemned, etc. in the
> cultural imagination at different historical moments
> by different
> voices. Essays should explore the theoretical and
> ideological constructs
> (such as the lingering myth of separate spheres,
> perceived biological
> racial and/or gender difference, or the cult of
> true womanhood) that
> proscribe and silence our cultural memory of womens
> participation in
> violent public acts in relation to race. While
> essays should note the
> precipitating causes of the respective riots, the
> essays should more
> importantly explore the underlying cultural issues
> such as the control
> of property, the attempt to exercise various rights
> (such as freedom of
> speech or the franchise), political power or
> definition of the nation,
> etc. that ultimately fuel race riots.
>
> The collection aims to be interdisciplinary and will
> tentatively include
> 12-14 essays, organized both chronologically and
> thematically. Although
> the project will emphasize non-white womens
> participation in race
> riots, some articles addressing white women's
> involvement will also be
> included. The collection also actively seeks to
> include various
> non-white groups such as Native, Asian, Latino,
> Jewish, and/or
> historically liminal European peoples (such as
> Italian, Irish, Spanish,
> etc.); thus, submissions of essays dealing with such
> groups are
> particularly encouraged. The essays should, however,
> focus on race riots
> rather than spectacle lynchings, as the
> socio-cultural dynamics of the
> two types of events are significantly different.
> Finished papers should
> be approximately 8,000 - 10,000 words and will be
> tentatively due in
> August 2004.
>
> Please send 500 word abstracts or papers by December
> 22 to Dr. Julie
> Cary Nerad at
>
> juliecarynerad@???
> or
> Morgan State University
> Department of English and Language Arts
> 1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
> Baltimore, MD 21251
>
>
>
>
> ===============================================
> From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing
> List
> CFP@???
> Full Information at
> http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
> or write Erika Lin: elin@???
>
> ===============================================
>
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