CFP: Critical Insights intoToni Morrison's Beloved

Maureen Eke Discussion

CFP: Critical Insights intoToni Morrison's Beloved 

You are invited to submit an essay on any of the following sections for an edited volume on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The volume will be “a collection of authoritative, in-depth scholarship suitable for students and teachers” in high school and undergraduate college courses.  

The following are the slated sections: 

1. Critical Contexts: The essays in this section should place Toni Morrison (the author), the work (Beloved), or the theme you have chosen in the context of its time “to help students ease into more focused readings in the Critical Readings section that follows.”  

Length: approximately 4000-4500 words, including Notes and Works Cited lists

-- Please consider submitting an essay under one of the following sub-sections:

  • HISTORICAL BACKGROUND essay addresses how the time period influenced the author or work (or focus on a particular theme in literature), as well as what makes the author or work relevant to a modern audience. 
  • CRITICAL RECEPTION essay reviews the history of the critical response to the author or work, surveying the major concerns to which critics of the author or work have attended over the years. 
  • CRITICAL LENS essay offers a close reading of the author or work from a particular critical standpoint, such as, for example, gender studies, narratology, or New Criticism. 
  • COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS essay analyzes the work or author in the light of another (similar or comparative) work or author. 

 

2. Critical Reading: These chapters offer readers a comprehensive introduction to commonly studied aspects of Morrison’s Beloved or new themes in Beloved and represent major critical approaches to the work. Some themes to consider in this section include, but are not limited to the following: gender, motherhood, history/past, narrative, memory, slavery, racism, identity (self/individual, culture, nation, community/collective), violence/trauma, alienation, language, religion, the supernatural, the gothic, and healing/recuperation. You can propose your topic.  

Length:  approximately 5000 words, including Notes and Works Cited at the end of the chapter

If you are interested, please contact me or send your abstract of 250 words to me immediately at: Maureen N. Eke: eke1mn@cmich.edu

Essay submission deadline: August 21, 2015.

Prof. Maureen N. Eke
Department of English
AN 240A 
Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, 48859 
Phone: 1-989-774-1087; Fax: 1-989-774-1271
Email: eke1mn@cmich.edu