The Center for Black Studies at Portland State University is seeking submissions for an edited volume analyzing the state of Blacks in higher education in the U.S. Academics Write Black focuses exclusively on the critical perspectives of black women and men at the graduate, faculty, staff, and administrative levels in academe.

The place of blackness in the academy remains a point of contention despite, and in spite of in some contexts, the emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism. Though it is clear that the problem is no longer a matter of blatant exclusion, what persists is that many Black academics find themselves struggling to make blackness (and being Black) relevant in predominantly white institutions of higher learning. Consequently, the academy becomes a battlefield delineated by familiar struggles of race and privilege and Black academics rarely find themselves comfortably situated in the institutional design of the Eurocentric American academy.

Academics Write Black adds to the ongoing debate about the place of the Black intellectual in the American academy. The purpose is to reinvigorate the emphasis on defining what it means to be Black in higher education through critical narratives and other analyses that capture central concerns.

The editors invite papers in the following thematic areas: