Keynote Speaker: Bernardine Evaristo

Evening Readings by: Dorothea Smartt, Jay Bernard, Katy Massey and Sheree Mack

Following the first international expert meeting on Black British Women’s Writing (Brussels, 2013), this inaugural conference of the Black British Women’s Writing Network (BBWWN) will offer scholars and postgraduate students the chance to come together to debate some of the continuing preoccupations and new directions in this diverse and burgeoning field of study.

Abstracts of 250 words are invited for 20-minute papers as well as 60-minute panel proposals that engage with, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Theorizing Black British Women’s writing: The state of the field and usefulness of the terms. Debates in the existing anthologies/edited volumes/special issues and new critical approaches to both established and critically neglected writers.
• Teaching Black British Women’s writing in the UK/US/the Caribbean/Europe and beyond.
• ‘I am a Black woman…and I don’t bite’: Contemporary (self-) representations of Black British women.
• Aesthetics and/vs. Politics: The politics of form and performance. Generic and thematic concerns.
• Intersections: Racism, sexism and other forms of positioning.
• The State of Feminism and Black (British) women’s stakes in this.
• Conversations with Caribbean/African/African American/European/other writing.
• Questions of Identity: National vs. diasporic identifications. Regional Identities. ‘Mixed-race’ identities. Gender and sexuality.
• Memory and the Body: Sites of excavation/exploration.
• Beyond Narratives of Unbelonging?: New imaginaries. ‘Post-racial’ narratives.

Please send abstracts as email attachments to:
Dr Vedrana Velickovic v.velickovic@brighton.ac.uk and Dr Sheree Mack sheree.mack@gmail.com by 1 February 2014.

Conference website:

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