The Africana program at Bates College invites paper submissions for a day-long graduate symposium devoted to the topic of citizenship, blackness and anti-blackness, and social contestation in the United States. We particularly welcome submissions that address the values and practices of social protest, and that attend to historical and contemporary legacies of democratic mobilization.

The symposium will explore this topic from a range of perspectives: to what extent are debates over citizenship, belonging, and exclusion inflected by their proximity to ideologies of white supremacy and anti-blackness? In what sense do contemporary mechanisms of anti-black disenfranchisement reproduce the political and juridical violence of earlier historical moments, and what solidarities and strategies of contestation have been mobilized to meet them? How do the ideological, material, and aesthetic conduits of protest in American culture inform the texture of historical and contemporary struggles over social, cultural, and economic precarity? We welcome interdisciplinary approaches to this question, as well as perspectives derived from such traditional fields as history, politics, sociology, and legal studies.

This symposium will showcase work by emerging scholars (recent PhD or ABD) from underrepresented groups in the professoriate including African Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders.

Invited speakers will have their travel expenses covered and will be guests of the College from the evening of 11/9 through breakfast on 11/11, with all paper presentations to occur on 11/10. Twenty-minute papers will be grouped into thematic panels, with additional roundtable and Q&A formats running throughout the day. We aim to create an intellectually enriching experience for all interlocutors, including the selected speakers and the faculty and students of Bates College.

What to Submit:

• A 300-word abstract describing the paper’s argument, critical context, and significance
• A current cv
• A 1-page cover letter describing your interest in participating in the symposium

Where to Submit:

Abstract, cv, and statement should be submitted in PDF format by email to [aas DASH chair AT bates DOT edu] by 5 September 2018. Please identify yourself if you are from an underrepresented group in the professoriate including African Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders.  Speakers will be notified of acceptance by September 15, 2018.