The African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) invites proposals for its second annual conference scheduled to take place at Vanderbilt University on March 24-25, 2017. Proposals are due on November 15, 2016.
A brief excerpt, but please visit their site for the full Call:
What does it mean and what has it meant to “do” black intellectual history? What is a black intellectual? Who have been the producers of black intellectual history? Through a series of papers, panel sessions, roundtable discussions, films, and talks, this two-day conference seeks to address those questions and explore the boundaries of black intellectual history. The conference will examine the vital contributions that self-defined black intellectuals-including artists, writers, and activists–have made to U.S. and global intellectual history. It will also raise questions about the role of organic intellectuals, including enslaved people, in the Black intellectual tradition. The conference will focus on reassessing established theories within Black intellectual history and proposing new paradigms for this critically important field. It will draw upon traditional methods of writing and researching Black intellectual history while integrating new approaches of historical production. In short, the second annual AAIHS conference encourages new thinking about the historical boundaries of African American intellectual history and new ideas about how scholars in the twenty-first century can best define, practice, and recover it. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, religion, political thought, gender, racial ideologies, philosophy, sexuality, queer theory, popular culture, internationalism, pan-Africanism, slavery, secularism, literature, and Black Nationalism.