CFP: Black Women in White America, Revisited

In 1972, Dr. Gerda Lerner published her pioneering study Black Women in White America.  That same year, Dr. Lerner and Dr. Joan Kelly Gadol were fighting  to prove that women had a history worth recording by co-founding the oldest women’s history graduate program in the country at Sarah Lawrence College.  In the political arena, a Black woman, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was waging a competitive campaign to become the first woman president of the United States and activists across the country were fighting an uphill (and ultimately unsuccessful) battle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Much has changed since 1972, and this fact makes 2017 a particularly opportune time to reassess the legacy of Gerda Lerner’s path-breaking scholarship.  Does the adage “the more things change, they more they stay the same” apply in the case of Black women in America today?  How has the expansion of scholarship by and about women of color enhanced our knowledge of women’s history and necessarily challenged previous assumptions? How has ongoing structural inequality undermined the gains of the women’s movement of the 1970s? What is the status of all women in a multiracial, multicultural, diversely religious but still deeply fractured America today?

The organizers invite papers, panels, workshops, performances, and art exhibits from students, activists, artists, and academics that address these questions from a number of different angles. Proposals for panels will be given special consideration, but individual papers are also welcomed.  Please include a description of each presentation and a one page c.v. for each presenter. Email submissions are preferred.

Subjects may include but are not limited to:

• Afro-Latinas in the Americas
• Black women in the Criminal Justice System
• Women’s activism in labor movements
• Survival as a Form of Resistance
• Black women and politics
• Black women’s resistance against racism
• Grass roots activism
• Women’ professionals clubs
• Education of girls and women
• Sex work and sexual exploitation
• Diverse women’s experiences with the healthcare system
• Motherhood, race and ethnicity
• Black women and reproductive rights
• Women’s work across the African diaspora

The panels will be held from March 3-4, 2017 at the Sarah Lawrence Conference in Bronxville, NY.

The deadline for proposals is December 9th, 2016. Full information can be found at https://www.sarahlawrence.edu/womens-history/conference/