Call for Proposals for a
Collection of Essays:
The Writings of
President Barack Obama
(Rodopi Press Dialogue Series)
Deadline: 31 August 2012
The Rodopi Press Dialogue Series seeks proposals for new writings to be included in a volume of critical essays devoted to President Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father. The volume seeks essays in the following areas:
● The relationship between President Obama’s writing and emergent scholarly interest in “post-race” American culture/President Obama’s memoirs in the context of cross-cultural or bi-national writings by Americans or other ethnic groups or Americans born outside the United States
● President Obama’s memoirs in the context of 19th- and 20th-century traditions of African-American autobiographical narrative, theories of African American self-writing, or rhetorical analyses of said writing not limited to male-authored works (e.g. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Richard Wright, Amiri Baraka, etc....) We are also interested in comparisons between President Obama's works and major figures like Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks and Maya Angelou – among other possibilities.
● President Obama’s writings within a tradition of 19th- and 20th- century by American Presidents (before, during, or after they were elected), and/or Presidential Writing in the Digital Age
● Dreams From My Father and the “Culture Wars”
● President Obama’s memoirs in the context of American autobiographical narratives of self-making dating from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography to the present, including autobiography as a mode of self-production that is a corollary to the Enlightenment and its legacy
• Critical discussions of ancillary works about President Obama’s writings (i.e. the books written by Dinesh D’Souza, or Jeffrey T. Kloppenberg, etc.)
• President Obama’s writings in the context of American spiritual writings (from Jonathan Edwards-to the present)
The volume’s editors will consider submissions across a range of writing styles and scholarly methods in order to achieve a collection of the most compelling and readable essays. Scholars, advanced doctoral students, artists and independent intellectuals are invited to submit.
SUBMISSIONS
Send C.V. and 500 word proposal (with contact information) to Richard Purcell (Carnegie Mellon University) rpurcell@andrew.cmu.edu or Henry Veggian (UNC Chapel Hill) torino3@email.unc.edu
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Dialogue Series publishes new and recent criticism on literary writing that has elicited or is eliciting critical debate. In addition, Dialogue devotes occasional volumes to neglected works deemed worthy of renewed critical attention. The Dialogue Series is devoted primarily to literary works written in English (or translated into English) after 1900.
The planned volume on President Obama’s memoirs will be the first in a planned line of edited collections on literary writings by and about modern heads-of-state, including but not limited to President Carter’s literary fiction and poetry, U.S. Grant’s Memoirs, Sherwood Anderson’s biography of Abraham Lincoln - among other possibilities.CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries/ submissions: rpurcell@andrew.cmu.edu or torino3@email.unc.edu
Website: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?SerieId=DIALOGUE