Cultivating Promise and Possibility: Black Feminist Thought as an Innovative, Interdisciplinary, and International Framework
Moya Bailey
Rachel
Rachel Alicia Griffin, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies—cross-appointed
Africana Studies—cross-appointed
Southern Illinois University
Communications Building 2205
1100 Lincoln Drive, Mailcode 6605
Carbondale, IL 62901
Special Issue Call on Black Feminist Thought for Departures in Critical Qualitative Research
Cultivating Promise and Possibility: Black Feminist Thought as an Innovative, Interdisciplinary, and International Framework
Guest Editor: Rachel Alicia Griffin, PhD, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Created by Patricia Hill Collins over 20 years ago, Black Feminist Thought (BFT) has flourished in multiple disciplines including sociology, English, political science, psychology, education, law, history, philosophy, Africana studies, mass communication, and communication studies. Since its inception, BFT has served as a key means to unapologetically center the embodied knowledge of Black women and foster opportunities for Black women to “talk back” to systemic oppression(s). To honor the legacy of BFT and propel its theoretical and methodological significance into the future, this special issue will feature critical, qualitative, and performative works that productively utilize, challenge, and extend BFT.
Essays in this special issue will be characterized by:
- Innovative approaches to critical, qualitative research (e.g., theoretically, methodologically, representationally, aesthetically, etc.).
- Rich, nuanced, and complex insights into and/or applications of BFT.
- Provocative uses of critical and qualitative methods to challenge and extend BFT.
Exemplars of how BFT can be industriously challenged and extended include works that:
• Address the rich contributions of Black girls/adolescents/women to society opposed to a singular focus on what is done to Black girls/adolescents/women by society.
• Focus on Black girlhood and/or adolescence given that the majority of BFT scholarship focuses on Black womanhood.
• Center Black femininity as a positionality that reflects raced and gendered marginalization and privilege (i.e., Black females can be marginalized by race and gender and simultaneously privileged by nationality, sexuality, ability, religion, etc.).
• Deconstruct the reproduction of privileged ideologies and discourses (e.g., classism, homophobia, ableism, Christian hegemony, etc.) in the marginalized context of Black womanhood.
• Critique BFT’s cisgender normativity (e.g., rarely are Black trans and/or Black gender queer women centered, included, addressed, etc.).
• Politically mark BFT as US American BFT (i.e., how might we deeply respect the canon of US American BFT while being accountable to how US American and Western ethnocentrism often render Black women from beyond Western societies invisible and silent?).
• Draw upon African feminisms, Black internationalist feminism, third world feminisms, and/or postcolonial feminisms to theorize Black femininity in global, transnational, and/or diasporic contexts.
• Explore considerably under-theorized intersections of Black femininity such as race, gender, and age; race, gender, religion, and nationality; race, gender, and ability; etc.
• Explore considerably under-theorized topics in the realm of BFT including but not limited to: conservative and/or Republican Black female rhetoric; new media and digital technology; progressive alliances within the Black community; parenthood and parenting; coalitional praxis between Black women and other collectives of women of color; linkages between BFT, womanism, Chicana feminisms, Arab feminisms, African feminisms, etc.; “post-” identity politics; ideological and discursive emphasis on Black masculinity at the expense of Black femininity; sexist, patriarchal, and misogynistic erasure of Black females espoused by Black males; etc.
Faculty and graduate students are welcome to submit manuscripts. The deadline for submissions is July 3rd, 2015. All authors should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (2010), identify their essay as a “BFT Special Issue Submission,” and submit manuscripts electronically via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ucpress-departures
Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word (a PC-compatible version) using 12-point Times New Roman font, should be double-spaced, and should not exceed 9,000 words including notes. Manuscript title pages should be submitted as a separate file and include: (1) the title of the essay, (2) any acknowledgments, including the history of the manuscript if any part of it has been presented at a conference or included as part of a thesis or dissertation, and (3) author bio(s) of not more than 100 words each. Manuscripts should include: (1) the title of the essay, (2) an abstract of not more than 100 words, (3) a list of five suggested keywords, and (4) an accurate word count (including notes). Images, figures, and other ancillary materials should be submitted as separate files and conform to the Departures instructions for file size and format (see below).
Authors of accepted manuscripts will be responsible for clearing the necessary reproduction rights for any images, photos, figures, music, or content credited to a third party (including content found on the Internet), that fall outside of the fair use provisions described in US copyright law. Authors of accepted manuscripts will be asked to provide separate image and grayscale TIF files at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, line art should be submitted as Illustrator EPS files at a resolution of 600 to 1200 dpi and in bitmap mode. Please do not embed images or grayscale or line art in Word files.
Essays will be reviewed by a Special Issue Editorial Board and should not be under review by any other publication venue. To inquire about this special issue, please contact:
Rachel Alicia Griffin, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies—cross-appointed
Africana Studies—cross-appointed
Southern Illinois University
Communications Building 2205
1100 Lincoln Drive, Mailcode 6605
Carbondale, IL 62901