Toward a Critical Color Theory; Black American Women’s Writing and Color

This roundtable seeks to bring together scholars across rank and place who are thinking at the intersections of color and Black American women’s writing broadly defined. This roundtable encourages interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to Black American women’s writing and the authors’ treatment of color. What happens to the connotations of color(s) within a Black feminist context (if BFT is a context to be read)? What does color work to reveal or conceal about Black women’s interior lives and humanity? How does color work beyond its mere aesthetic function in Black women’s narratives? What does a critical inquiry of color tell us about the past, present and future of African-American women’s writing and cultural production? Authors and topics for this roundtable include but are no means limited to: 

• Contemplation on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
• Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and critiques on beauty, aesthetics and the human
• Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls and thoughts on relationality, trauma or interiority
• Explorations on innovative method, craft or genre, considering newer works such as Imani Perry’s Black and Blues
• Analyses of lesser-known works such as bell hooks’ “Black is a Woman’s Color” and Fannie Barrier-Williams “The Colored Girl”, and the thematic treatments of color as social critique

Please send an abstract of 250-300 words and a brief bio to myw8198@nyu.edu by February 25th, 2025. Roundtable participants will be notified by the 27th.