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Literary and Cultural Aesthetics in the 21st Century: Revisiting Amiri Baraka’s Legacy

Literary and Cultural Aesthetics in the 21st Century: Revisiting Amiri Baraka’s Legacy

Publié le par Marc Escola (Source : N'GUESSAN Kouadio Germain)

Call for papers for edited volume

Literary and Cultural Aesthetics in the 21st Century: Revisiting Amiri Baraka’s Legacy

 

Imamu Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones and the co-founder of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), passed away in 2014. The duty of remembering is a unique opportunity to assess Baraka’s legacy, the movement, and the direction taken by African American literature. Baraka's poetic productions and general body of work have garnered mixed appreciation. According to David L Smith, “Some observers have regarded him as confused and unstable, others have hailed him as the apostle of the Black Aesthetic or as the Father of Contemporary Black Poetry”.

Anyways, Baraka contributed to redefining the Black Arts Movement (BAM) by way of recalibrating the western aesthetics’ relations with African-American literary expressions and the socio-political role of the artists. Thanks to the movement, African orality and the call-response tradition on plantations have been given a new life. Even today, it is not exaggerated to say that the fact that rap and dub tradition continuingly making forays into American cultural expressivity and extending its wing to the world outside is largely creditable to the BAM. Even the past millennium witnessed some writers, poets and other artists who attempted to reshape and redefined African-American literary aesthetics by espousing the cultural, political and social concerns of both the last millennium and the one we are living (in).

Using the Black Arts Movement as a focal point, we are seeking critical contributions offering an inter-/multidisciplinary approach for redefining and evaluating African-American aesthetics in our day and age. For this edited book, we are looking for a wide range of genres covered by Baraka and his colleagues of the BAM and bearing a similarity with contemporary “Black” cultural expressions seeking to reshape and redefine African-American aesthetics.

The contributions will be inclusive of, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Identity and politics
  • Identity politics and literary expressivity
  • Gender politics, class and race
  • Sexuality and sexism
  • Popular culture and politics/ideology
  • Contemporary African-American and politics
  • BAM and social critique in African diaspora
  • African-American vernacular and aesthetics
  • Rap, dub poetry and Baraka’s legacy.

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Contributions using Amiri Baraka and/or the Black Arts Movement as their concentration will be most favored. Potential authors are encouraged to consider exploring contemporary African-American works for their analysis. Interested authors are invited to submit a 300-word abstract of their paper by October 31, 2018 to Siendou KONATE or N’GUESSAN Kouadio Germain at the following addresses: siendouk@gmail.com, kouadiogermain@yahoo.fr. The final papers of accepted abstracts are expected on February 28, 2018.