BLACK GIRL BANNED: REBELLION AND RADICAL BLACK GIRLHOOD IN LITERATURE (SAMLA 2020)

The novels of Black women like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, and Angie Thomas have been challenged and banned in a host of educational settings. While the “appropriateness” of the content is questioned, these Black women novelists and their characters combat censorship and the status quo to reveal the truths of Black girlhood. Despite being policed, surveilled, and censored in the material world and fiction, Black girls find creative ways to assert and insert themselves in spaces where their behavior may be considered “scandalous” “rebellious” or “womanish.” They often engage in what Aimee Meredith Cox calls shapeshifting to “confront, challenge, invert, unsettle, and expose the material impact of systemic oppression.” Aligning with the SAMLA conference theme Scandal! Literature and Provocation: Breaking Rules, Making Texts, this panel seeks papers that discuss the ways Black women writers and Black girl characters “make” and “break” (counter)narratives of girlhood. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Banned/controversial texts by Black women
  
• Black girls’ transgressions/deviant behavior
  
• Black girl activists
  
• Representations of rebellious or radical acts
  
• Depictions of feminist and womanist girls
  

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and brief bio to Ebony Perro at eperro@tulane.edu by July 21, 2020.

The South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference will be held online November 13-15th.

Please visit https://samla.memberclicks.net for more infomation.