We are writing to solicit several 5000-word responses to Brent Hayes Edwards's _The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism_, to be published bilingually in the United States and France in 2005.

In _The Practice of Diaspora_, Edwards has proposed that interwar black literary and cultural studies should be reconfigured towards an international perspective, one in which diaspora is figured in an "anti-abstractionist" manner. Edwards organizes an expansive archive of materials, one that notably privileges periodicals as salient international texts, as a means of configuring black internationalism as a series of practices. Intellectual labor is thus often located within the "necessary misrecognitions," productive and otherwise, among different black people's crossings in metropolitan spaces, preeminently Paris.

We seek responses that reflect and expand upon the critical themes of the book, responses that engage both with Edwards's specific studies (of René Maran, of Paulette Nardal, of George Padmore), but also speak to and debate more generally the book's implications for future studies. What are the possibilities and limitations of interdisciplinary work? What role do literature and literary studies play in adjacent fields such as anthropology or history? Should the archive be privileged as a source for work in twentieth-century studies? What does it mean for diaspora to be configured as a set of singular (if interrelated) practices? Does the future of postcolonial studies lie in an internationalization of subaltern studies? What are possible responses to the book's periodization?

Please send 200-word abstracts by March 15, 2004 to Abdul-Karim Mustapha or Jeremy Braddock, via the email addresses below.