An 8,000-10,000 word chapter will be due by May 30, 2013. Approach

This is a study of African American women that is informed by an “ethos of difference.” The essays collected here all expand, explore, and critique this concept in a range of contexts and discourses. This study seeks to challenge the idea that enslaved women in the southern United States experienced emancipation the same and more importantly encourages further exploration of the “effects and affect of difference”—to use one of the central ideas in Naomi Greyser’s essay on feminism and affect studies. The study of gender can illuminate deeper historical patterns and processes, which continued to affect African American women in the twentieth century. This collection of essays extends the arguments presented by Pamela Scully and Diana Paton, who reflect on emancipation from the point of view of women, and who demonstrate through an analysis of comparative Atlantic emancipations how emancipation confirmed or disrupted existing gender relations and placed issues such as violence, sexuality, and the gendered politics of public space at the heart of emancipation studies. As such, “slave emancipation was not only experienced differently by men and women, it also served to “reconstruct” the very categories of “man” and “woman.” Recognizing how gender shaped slave emancipation requires that we reconceptualize the narratives that have dominated scholarship in this area. We are especially seeking proposals which highlight geographical differences.

Karen Cook Bell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, African American History
14000 Jericho Park Road
MLK 0218
Bowie State University
Bowie, MD 20715
(301) 860-3615(o)
(301) 860-3619(f)
kcookbell@bowiestate.edu

Dr. Sharita Jacobs Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Civil War Studies
Gettysburg College
300 North Washington Street
Gettysburg, PA 17325
sejacobs@gettysburg.edu