Call for Proposals for the Anthology
Bronze Womanhood:Â
Chicana Feminisms, Activism, and Leadership in the Chicano Movement
Edited by Maylei Blackwell, Maria Cotera, Dionne Espinoza, and Linda Garcia-ÂMerchant
We  are  soliciting  new  essays  on  Chicana  feminist  organizing,  activism,  and  leadership  in  the 1960s and 1970s for a co-Ââ€edited volume, Bronze Womanhood. The volume will feature new scholarly essays on Chicana feminist praxis in its early years, as well as personal essays by some of the women her were active in social justice work during the period covered by the volume. We welcome scholarly essays that address one or more of the following questions:
- How have Chicana feminists and activists developed their own theories and praxes as a result of their participation in multiple movement spaces, and how has that experience of multiplicity shaped the political subject of Chicana feminism?
- How  have  Chicana  feminist  activists  analyzed  their  work  and  its  relationship  to  “Anglo feminism†and/or other women of color feminisms?
- How does new scholarly work and accounts by Chicana feminists revise a well-Ââ€worn narrative that constructs Chicana feminism as “growing out of†the Chicano movement or as a “delayed†form of feminism in the Second Wave? How do these accounts demonstrate the extent to which the movement’s key figures and organizational projects emerged from a variety of precursor contexts and struggles and also link to other movements?
- What  are  some  of  the  histories  that  have  not  been  told  about  Chicana  feminist organizing and leadership? For example, the history of Chicana lesbians who may not have identified within the construct of “out†sexuality during that time frame but who nevertheless made their mark as committed activists in the Chicano movement?
- While the Houston conference of 1971 is marked as a key moment in the development of early Chicana feminisms during which major conflicts and dialogue emerged, are there other areas in which conflict and collaboration were evident and how did these play out?
- How does the gathering of oral histories and archives by a new generation of scholars build upon previous documentation, fill gaps, and also question accepted accounts of organizational experiences, political mobilization, and women’s collectivities?
Among the essays we hope to include in the volume, are pieces on individual Chicana feminists and their bodies of work (writing, art, activism, leadership, performance) perhaps framed as a biographies or political histories; pieces on Chicana archives and the politics of collection, the construction of histories through the archives, and the purpose and need for these recoveries; reflections by key individual Chicana feminists in excerpted memoir form, position papers about their work, critiques of the existing narratives, or new accounts of their work; accounts of Chicana feminist formations and collectivities that have not previously been studied or written about in depth in places such as San Diego, the Bay Area, Seattle, Houston, Chicago, Tucson, Albuquerque, and understudied regional locations such as the Midwest, the South, the East Coast and the Northwest,  as well as work on national organizational efforts such as Comision Femenil; explorations of various media and the use of film, theatre, or other formats for re-†presenting Chicana feminist histories; the role of spirituality in the development of Chicana feminist discourse, and, more particularly, the organizing and theoretical work elaborated by Chicanas within institutional religious organizations.
We welcome contributions in various forms; from more traditional scholarly articles, to memoir and personal essays, to document curation and analysis.
If you would like to be part of this project, please submit an abstract proposal (max. 500 words) stating the tentative title of your article, its main arguments, and an overview of organizations, key figures, and data you will be drawing from.
 Proposals may be sent via email to moc.liamg@doohnamoweznorb Deadline: June 15, 2013
