Call for Conference Papers
"Media Representations of Race and Sex in the Long Civil Rights Movement"
Southern Historical Association 84th Annual Meeting
Birmingham AL; November 8-11, 2018
This panel is seeking to bring together scholars who are working on topics that explore media representations of race and sex in the Long Civil Rights Movement using social, cultural, and legal history perspectives. My paper for the panel examines newspaper coverage of a 1963 rape case involving a black teenager, a white woman, and a Japanese woman in Lynchburg, Virginia. The case garnered local and regional attention from Movement supporters who understood Lynchburg papers' coverage of the case as the reworking of the "black beast rapist" narrative, especially in the midst of local tensions between black and white city residents over civil rights campaigns.
This panel encourages paper proposals that consider how southerners – particularly black southerners – conceived of and contested raced and sexualized images, rhetoric, and ideas of difference in the Jim Crow South through the lens of media coverage. New work on cases such as the Scottsboro Nine, Martinsville Seven, and Emmett Till cases are also welcome as well as scholarship that uncovers new histories and voices relating to the panel theme.
Interested individuals should submit a brief paper description (up to 150 words) and a brief author biography to Samantha Bryant at sbryant21@huskers.unl.edu by September 1, 2017.
Contact Info: Samantha Bryant, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Contact Email: sbryant21@huskers.unl.edu
