In the wake of the passing of cultural icon, Maya Angelou, TBS is putting together a special issue devoted to her life, work, and legacy.  Her career ranged from poetry and autobiography/memoir to dance, film, theatre, and an engagement with generations of arts and politics in the United States and Africa.  Receptions of her and her work ranged from racial spokesperson and firebrand during the Civil Rights/Black Power movement to Poet Laureate, media presence, and arguably the most popular black poet for generations of Americans - certainly in the wake of her often satirized work with Hallmark greeting cards and her role as "spiritual counsel" for Oprah Winfrey and the new black media elite.  In the spirit of her unique and wide-ranging career, we welcome tributes, critical responses, scholarly engagement, and works of historical or personal reflection.   Submissions on any aspect of her work, life or influence, are encouraged. We are open to public intellectual work and all forms of non-fiction, but we must emphasize that TBS/The Black Scholar is primarily a scholarly journal that prioritizes political work.

Deadline for submissions is September 1st, 2015. Please see our submission guidelines for further information.

http://www.theblackscholar.org/call-for-papers/the-black-scholar-tbs-call-for-contributions-maya-angelou/  

"My writing reflects my own growth and expansion, and at the same time the society in which I have existed throughout this longish confrontation. Whether it is politics, music, literature, or the origins of language, there is a historical and time/place/condition reference that will always try to explain exactly why I was saying both how and for what."

 

- Amiri Baraka 1990

TBS is issuing a "Call for Papers" for an upcoming special issue commemorating and critically assessing the life and work of Le Roi Jones/Amiri Baraka (October 7, 1934- January 9, 2014). We are particularly interested in works that engage what Baraka described as his "motion-movement," the development of his praxis throughout his life. We are seeking critical essays that explore his biography, art, and politics. We welcome work that critically examines his life before (formative years, experience in the U.S. Air Force and at Howard University) and during the four periods described by William J. Harris: The Beat Period (1957-1962), the Transitional Period (1963-1965), the Black Nationalist Period (1965-1974), and the Third World Marxist Period (1974-2014).

We seek work grounded in the transdiscipline of Black/Africana studies generally or specifically utilizing concepts, theories, paradigms, and methodologies drawn from any of the transdiscipline's subfields (African American history, literature, music, political science, psychology, etc.). In addition to exploration of his major works-Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Blues People, The Dutchman, Home, Black Music, Four Black Revolutionary Plays, Black Fire, The Autobiography of Le Roi Jones/Amiri Baraka, The Motion of History, and Digging: The Soul of Afro-American Classical Music, we are also interested in essays that explore seminal essays such as "The Changing Same R&B and the New Black Music)," "Technology and Ethos," "Afro-American Literature and Class Struggle," "The 'Blues Aesthetic' and the 'Black Aesthetic': Aesthetics as the Continuing History of a Political Culture." Finally, we welcome articles that examine Baraka's role in the struggles of his times, his involvement in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the 1967 Newark Rebellion, The Committee for a Unified NewArk, The Congress of African Peoples/The Revolutionary Communist League, The Gary Convention, The National Black Political Assembly, and the National Black Independent Political Party.

Deadline for submissions is March 4th, 2015. Please see our submission guidelines for further information.