*CFP* "BLACK MASCULINITIES, DRESS AND STYLE", SPECIAL ISSUE, CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEN'S FASHION JOURNAL

Like other colonized or otherwise marginalized communities, self-identified Black people employ their bodies as their primary vehicle of cultural expression. For men of African ancestry in particular, how they fashion themselves has literal life or death consequences. Framed by current anti-Black racism protests the world over, the goal of this special issue is to assemble a body of scholarship on the intersections of Blackness, masculinity and appearance.

Authors engaged in studies about blackness and masculinity in relation to dressing and styling practices are encouraged to submit articles, independent of the type of research, methodologies or theoretical frameworks implemented.

Potential themes might include but aren’t limited to:

*CFP* "AFROFUTURISM", SPECIAL EDITION, COLLEGE LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION JOURNAL

In this special edition of College Language Association Journal, we will explore Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism has quickly emerged as one of the most dynamic and urgent traditions in black expressive culture. Although the incredible success of Black Panther has introduced it into mainstream conversations, works of Afrofuturism—which include art, literature, and music—have been growing steadily over the last two decades. As the critical discourse surrounding Afrofuturism has begun to grow and mature, we have reached a critical reflection point where a critical mass of works and artists has intersected with mainstream popularity. So, artists like Janelle Monday and works like Nnedi Okorafro’s Binti and Tomi Adeyemi’s Chidlren of Blood and Bone have received populate acclaim while situating themselves in the growing body of work that explores the mix of black cultural tradition, technology, and futurists. 

This special issue engages the discourse surrounding Afrofuturism and its increasingly crucial place in contemporary African American literature. While its first usage has been tracked to Mark Dery’s use of the term in 1994, we are equally interested in its presence before, whether in the works of Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, speculative fiction in early African American literature, as well as its current explosion in popular culture and its creative, critical and cultural possibilities in the future. 

*CFP* "DIVA: HIP-HOP, FEMINISM, FIERCENESS", CENTRE FOR FILM, MEDIA, DISCOURSE & CULTURE SYMPOSIUM

Centre for Film, Media, Discourse & Culture, University of Wolverhampton

Symposium: Diva: Hip-Hop, Feminism, Fierceness

The shift from the margins to the mainstream has occurred simultaneously, over the last few decades, for two groups that now jointly exert a central influence over contemporary culture and politics: female r’n’b and hip-hop artists, and feminist thinkers and activists. The coming together of these two groups and sensibilities has redefined contemporary popular music (in all senses of musics of black origin), and wider culture and politics, in the West – from the banlieues to the White House, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, from Betty Davis to Neneh Cherry, TLC to Aaliyah, Alicia Keys to Iggy Azalea, Beyonce to Ariana Grande, and all points in between.

The symposium will seek to address this ongoing development, within the scope of exploring the origins of this shift, its resultant successes and failures, its social activism and relationship to “Black Capitalism”, its identity politics and LGBTQ+ components, its saints and sinners and controversies old and new, and its oppositions to, and recuperations by, the establishment, in African-American and Afro-European contexts, and beyond.

*CFP* "HIP-HOP ARCHIVES: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION", CHAPTER BOOK

As editors of this book, we seek contributions that critically address hip-hop archives (both digital and physical) and the processes of archivization, encompassing theoretical and analytical perspectives and exploring globally dispersed cases. We particularly welcome contributions from individuals who are in some way actively engaged in the development or operation of hip-hop archives in any medium and at any stage or scale, whether independent collections or institutionally supported enterprises. We also value the various ways in which hip-hop culture is engaged from historical and material perspectives, allowing for examination of the archive as a historical apparatus as well as a contemporary physical assemblage of artifacts.

This book focuses on the culture and politics involved in building, maintaining, and researching hip-hop archives. It addresses practical aspects, including methods of accumulation, curation, preservation, and digitization and critically analyzes institutional power, community engagement, urban economics, public access, and the ideological implications associated with hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values.

*CFP* “SONIC FUTURES: PERFORMING IDENTITY IN THE 'GLOBAL' CITY”, LONDON COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION

Sonic Futures: Performing Identity in the ‘Global’ City

April 25

London College of Communication

The idea for this one-day conference stems from a series of workshops, Sonic Futures: Identity and Sustainability through Music and Performance, supported by London College of Communication(Teaching and Learning Fund) in collaboration with May Project Gardens (Hip Hop Garden). Adopting a mixed-method approach, this pilot project sought to engage students from LCC in a series of workshops that explored the connections between social issues (e.g. social cohesion, participatory and sustainable practices and active citizenry, to name a few), politics and identity formations at the intersections of class, ethnicity, race, gender and the environment.