in the Journal for Open Cultural Studies
guest editors: Dr. Katharina Gerund (Erlangen/Nürnberg) und Dr. Stefanie Schäfer (Jena)
In contemporary popular culture, black womanhood frequently takes centre stage. It occupies an increasingly central place and articulates new and renewed dimensions, prompting questions about the status of black women in the cultural imaginary of the US and beyond. Most prominently, Michelle Obama’s First Ladyship has sparked scholarly and media discussions around the significance of stereotypes associated with black women, the possibilities and limitations of public figures to create new images and anchor them in the cultural imaginary, and about the subject positions and images that express and shape constructions of black womanhood (cf. Harris-Perry 2011, Schäfer 2015, Spillers 2009). Further examples include the pop singer Beyoncé, who has proclaimed her commitment to feminism and designed an already iconic celebration of black motherhood (concerning Afro-futurist tropes), wildly popular TV shows like „Scandal“ or „How to Get Away with Murder“ which feature black female protagonists, or literary works and feminist manifestos such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s „Americanah“ (2013) or „We Should All Be Feminists“ (2014) and „Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions“ (2017).
Our special issue aims to examine the multifaceted ideological implications of this proliferation of black womanhood in popular culture. We understand popular culture as a site where “collective social understandings are created” (cf. Stuart Hall 2009) and as a marketplace governed primarily by economic interests, but also trading in symbolic capital, identities, and collective fantasies. Popular culture thus may model new subject positions, unsettle cultural authorities, and question cultural ideals – intentionally or inadvertently so. The contributions to this special issue discuss representations and performances of black womanhood in the transatlantic sphere. They raise issues about the genealogies of these images and their empowering and limiting qualities, about the “affective agency” (Rebecca Wanzo) and subjecthood that black women claim and/or are assigned in these cultural productions, and about the signifying functions of the black female body in visual economies.
The full CfP is available on the publisher’s website.
Deadline for Proposal submissions: Jan. 15, 2018.