CFP:  African and Diasporic Women’s Literature:
Transitions, Transformations and Transnationalism

WAGADU special issue

Deadline for abstracts: 27 September 2016

With the new wave of African and African Diasporic women writers, the transnational sphere has enlarged to encompass voices that were at the margins of gender and race hierarchies, and highlight the individual writer within the complexities of relations in and out of national, cultural, religious, gender, and ideological bonds.  While transnationalism, as a term, is as deeply divided and contested as any other ism, its use as a paradigm of engagement is open to elaboration in that it has profound effects on local and global cultures, the movement of peoples, the relations of power and domination, and intra-gender and inter-gender relations. In such light, how does transnational feminism help redefine and restructure local political activism, strategic engagements with patriarchy, and the power dynamics in the postcolony, to generate alliances across borders? Conceptually, theoretically, and pragmatically, what is the potentiality and trajectory of feminist thought in its trans-portation, transformation, incorporation, and dissemination through the voices of African and African Diasporic women writers?  This special issue of WAGADU is dedicated to exploring the transnational dimension of women writers from Africa and across the African Diaspora. Papers may focus on but are not limited to issues such as:

*   The rethinking and rearticulation of transnational feminist politics
*   The function of heteropatriarchy within the transnational articulation of self-hood
*   The significance and impact of memory and writing in the creation of agency
*   The question of nation and nationhood in the struggles of the postcolony
*   Women as agents of change and producers of knowledge
*   Questions of power across gender, racial, and sexual lines
*   Culture in the local and transnational contexts
*   The metropole, the immigrant and the migrant
*   Sexuality and sexual politics

Abstracts are due by September 27, 2016 and should be between 100 – 200 words in length. They should include: 1. A title, 2. Name, status and institutional affiliation, 3. A mailing address, 4. Email contact.

Send abstracts and inquiries to Prof. Cheryl Sterling, Associate Professor and Director of Black Studies, The City College of New York (CUNY), at casterlingcuny@gmail.com.

Final Papers due by Jan. 15th, 2017, for publication in the Winter 2017 issue of WAGADU.