CFP: Bearing Untold Stories Symposium, 31 May 2022

Call for papers: Bearing Untold Stories Symposium, 31^st May 2022

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you”. So wrote Zora Neale Hurston in her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, a story of the untold lives of three generations of African American women.   

Responding to the growing movement to decolonise the curriculum, this event will endeavour to “allow space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated” (Meena Alexander) by promoting the untold stories and forgotten works of female practitioners whose contributions to influential creative and cultural movements have been obscured on account of their race, sexuality, economic background, or disability, as well as their gender. 

Participants are invited to give 15–20-minute presentations on the lives and works of women they have recovered in creative non-fiction, life-writing and biographical projects; the forgotten women they have encountered in art history, history, music, and literary studies, and to share their commemorative acts of storytelling in written and visual media, curation, and syllabi design.   

Proposals on female civil rights activists, the forgotten women of foundational artistic and cultural circles, women who have been overshadowed by male relatives, and women who have intervened in male artistic traditions, especially iconography, are particularly welcome.   

This event is open to creative practitioners, researchers, and students of all levels, who are committed to sharing the untold stories of forgotten women whose lives bear testament to the important contributions of marginalised communities both to history, and the world as we know it today.   

The symposium will be in-person.

Please send 300 word abstracts and a 100-200 word bio to Dr Azelina Flint at: bearinguntoldstories@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is 1st April.