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Call for Submissions
Home Girls, Make Some Noise!: Hip Hop Feminism
Anthology
Feminism, rap music, and Hip Hop culture, at first
glance, do not
appear
to be
likely cohorts. In the male-driven, testosterone
filled world of Hip
Hop
culture and rap music
labeling oneself a feminist is not a political stance
easily taken.
Thus, many women involved with Hip Hop
culture do not take on the label of feminist even as
their actions
imply
feminist beliefs and
leanings. Much of the strong criticisms of rap music
have been about
the
musics sexism and
misogyny. And much of the attention focused on sex and
gender have been
in terms of constructions of
Black masculinity, and rap music as a vehicle for
Black male posturing.
A lot of attention has been
paid to the impact rap music and the masculine space
of Hip Hop culture
has on the development of
Black male identities. In this volume, the editors
strive to understand
constructions of Hip Hop
feminism, gender, and sexuality in Hip Hop culture,
rap music and these
in transnational contexts.
We take the stance that Hip Hop is a cultural
phenomenon that expands
farther
than rap music. Hip Hop has been defined by many as a
way of life that
encompasses everything from
way of dress to manner of speech. Hip Hop as a culture
originally
included graffiti writing,
d-jaying, break dancing, and rap music. It has
recently expanded to
include genres such as film, spoken
word, autobiographies, literature, journalism, and
activism. It has
also
expanded
enough to include its own brand of feminism. The work
of Hip Hop
feminist writers such as Ayana
Byrd, Denise Cooper, Eisa Davis, Eisa Nefertari Ulen,
shani jamilla,
dream hampton, Joan Morgan,
Tara Roberts, Kristal Brent-Zook, and Angela Ards is
expanding black
feminist theory and black women
s intellectual traditions in fascinating ways. What
started out as a
few young black feminist
women who loved Hip Hop and who tried to mesh that
love with their
feminist/womanist
consciousness is now a rich body of articles, essays,
poetry, and
creative non-fiction.
We seek to complicate understandings of Hip Hop as a
male space by
including
and identifying the women who were always involved
with the culture and
offering Hip Hop feminist
critiques of the music and the culture. We seek to
explore Hip Hop as
a
worldview, as an
epistemology grounded in the experiences of
communities of color under
advanced capitalism, as a
cultural site for rearticulating identity and sexual
politics. We are
particularly interested in
seeing submissions of critical essays and cultural
critiques,
interviews, creative non-fiction and
personal narratives, fiction, poetry, and artwork. We
also encourage
submissions from women working
within the Hip Hop sphere, Hip Hop feminists and
activists on the
ground, as well as
scholars, writers, and journalists. We do not wish to
reify the
scholar/activist dichotomy, but we
want to encourage as broad a discussion of the
possibilities of Hip Hop
Feminism as possible and we
want to be sure multiple voices and perspectives are
represented in the
anthology. All work
submitted must be original and should not have been
published
elsewhere.
Word Count/Page Limits:
Critical Essays and Cultural Critiques 25 pages
(including
bibliography)
6500 words
Interviews 10 pages/2500 words
Creative Non-Fiction and Personal Narratives 20
pages/5000 words
Fiction 20 pages/5000 words
Poetry/Rhymes No more than 3 pages per poem/rhyme
and 3 poems per
poet/mc
Artwork Up to three pieces per artist
Editors:
Gwendolyn Pough is an Associate Professor of Womens
Studies, Writing,
and
Rhetoric at Syracuse University and the author of
Check It While I
Wreck
It; Black Womanhood,
Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere, Northeastern
University Press
2004.
Elaine Richardson is an Associate Professor of English
at Penn State
University and the author of African American
Literacies (2003) and the
forthcoming Hip Hop Literacies both
from Routledge Press.
Rachel Raimist is a Hip Hop feminist filmmaker,
scholar and activist.
Her film
credits include the award-winning feature length
documentaries
Freestyle, Nobody Knows My Name,
and Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed. She is a doctoral
student in
Feminist
Studies at the
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Aisha S. Durham is an essayist and Editorial Assistant
for several
cultural
studies journals, including Qualitative Inquiry where
her performance
work is featured. Durhams
dissertation research examining Hip Hop feminism will
be featured in an
upcoming anthology
and documentary about Hip Hop culture. She is a
doctoral candidate in
the Institute of
Communications Research at the University of Illinois
at
Urbana-Champaign.
Additional themes to be explored:
* Has Hip Hop feminism moved beyond the conflicted
stance of loving Hip
Hop,
being a feminist, and meshing the two? What is next?
What should Hip
Hop
feminism be doing?
* Now that we have at least two generations of women
who identify as
Hip
Hop
feminist, can we talk about multiple Hip Hop
feminism(s), multiple Hip
Hop feminist agendas?
* On that generational note, how then does the Hip Hop
feminist agenda
mesh
with the Black feminist agenda or womanist agenda of
our predecessors
and contemporaries who
do not claim a
Hip Hop sensibility?
* We know that there are dedicated educators out there
who are working
in the
trenches with no institutional support to bring
feminist education and
issues of sexuality,
sexual health, and emotional well-being to our youth,
but how can Hip
Hop feminists work to
ensure that feminist education is centered in the
curricula of
Americas
schools, elementary
through college for both male and female students?
* What are the defining contours of Hip Hop Feminism?
If we are of the
understanding that a Hip Hop feminist is more than
just a woman who
loves Hip Hop and feels conflicted
about it, what does a Hip Hop feminism look like?
* The continued sexual labor of women of color in a
global market place
now
depending on virtual "mass mediated" sex labor (e.g.
music video and
pornography) as well as other
forms of sex and gendered labor performed by women of
color still
policed.
* Is Hip Hop feminism simply a US phenomenon? Should
Hip Hop feminism
have a
global agenda?
And how should Hip Hop feminism participate in the
agendas of
transnational
feminism(s)?
* What roles can Hip Hop feminism play in combating
growing rate of
incarcerated woman of color and the expanding prison
industrial
complex?
For additional information contact:
Elaine Richardson ebr2@???
Please send four copies of the submission by July 30,
2005 to:
Gwendolyn D. Pough
Womens Studies Program
Syracuse University
208 Bowne Hall
Syracuse, New York 13244
Gwendolyn D. Pough
Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Writing
Syracuse University
http://www.gwendolyndpough.com
"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Fannie Lou Hamer
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