Whose Beloved Community?: Black Civil and LGBT Rights Movements
An international conference at Emory University, March 27-29, 2014
Call for Proposals: Review of proposals begins June 17, 2013. Notification of acceptance will be no later than September 15, 2013.

The role of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in both race-based and sexuality-based civil rights movements is frequently rendered invisible as a result of prevailing national narratives that present (presumed white) LGBT communities and (presumed straight) Black communities as opposing forces.  In recent years, however, an increasing number of scholars and activists have produced work seeking to make visible the vital points of intersection and contention among the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the LGBT equality movement, and Black LGBT communities.  This work is shaped by questions related to identity formation, intersectionality, tokenism, marriage equality, the role of religion and “respectability” in African American communities, the emergence of the South as a center of Black LGBT life in the U.S., HIV/AIDS and its continuing effect on African American communities, the proliferation of a prison-industrial complex unprepared for its LGBT population, and the appropriation of the civil rights movement by the right.  This conference seeks to make visible and critically engage the points of convergence and divergence between these two historic, overlapping, yet distinct social movements that continue to transform civil society, law, and the academy.

We encourage paper and panel proposals on a wide range of topics including, but not exclusively encompassing, the following:

•      The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
•      Identifications and disidentifications with “movements”
•      Black LGBT leaders and popular figures, historical and contemporary
•      Literary, artistic and popular culture engagements with Black LGBT identities
•      Inclusion and marginalization of transgender and bisexual identities in Black LGBT communities/politics
•      Intersections with other post-1960s civil rights movements (other racial groups, people with disabilities, women, etc.)
•      Black LGBT activism in relation to work in other LGBT communities of color
•      Racial diversity in White-led LGBT organizations
•      Law and politics
•      Black queer politics of space
•      Public health
•      Memory, mourning, trauma, and resilience
•      Black LGBT families
•      Marriage equality movements
•      Sexuality and respectability
•      Class and elitism
•      Sexism, classism, and other “isms” in the Black LGBT movement
•      Black masculinity in LGBT communities
•      Black feminism in LGBT communities
•      Intergenerational issues
•      Intersections between public advocacy/policy and academia
•      Intersections of U.S. Civil Rights with Black queer Atlantic political movements
•      The future of Black queer studies
•      Teaching Black LGBT history, Black queer studies, etc.
•      Black LGBT university populations
•      LGBT issues and Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Each submission must include a cover page with paper titles, presenters, their affiliations, and a current email contact, along with a maximum two-page c.v. of each presenter.  For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words. For panels, submit an overall abstract of no more than 500 words and individual paper descriptions of no more than 250 words each. Please submit materials via email to Whose.beloved.community@emory.edu<mailto:Whose.beloved.community@emory.edu>.

This conference is generously supported by the Arcus Foundation and Emory University.

Whose Beloved Community [whose.beloved.community@emory.edu]