Writing and Editing the Black Studies Jo

This course is a Black Studies research and publication design studio. Here, the integrity of “an imagined moral-intellectual community” and the practicalities of writing and publication are held in balance, toward two functional objectives: 

(1) To revise and submit (for publication) an original seminar paper, thesis, or conference paper. 

Following Laura Belcher’s, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, “…(t)he goal of this course is to aid participants in taking their papers from classroom quality to journal quality and in overcoming anxiety about academic publishing in the process. 

(2) To critically survey the field of Black Studies through close reading of its journals—resulting in the production of a consulting report focused on the student’s chosen area. 

This year Souls: Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Culture, Politics and Society returns to Columbia University, where it was founded by Manning Marable in 1999. This course is designed to prepare IRAAS/AAADS to receive custodianship of the journal and reshape its Black radical intellectual project in response to the current moment and prospective futures. 

“Journal work is not only not an arbitrary undertaking, and it is certainly not simply the practice of putting competent scholarly articles into print (though that is avowedly its formal function); rather, it is distinctive for being an intellectual undertaking that is pursued with a certain horizon in mind, namely, the collective constitution of an imagined moral-intellectual community.” (David Scott, Small Axe 50 July 2016) 

Facilitating reflexive, critically engaged, and sustainable writing practices; and focusing on the past and future of Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; our hybrid colloquy sessions will typically combine theoretical and methodological discussions, close readings of assigned journals, and ‘workshop’ elements— including sharing of work and occasional short in class writing. We will meet in-person and virtually. Small group work will be required.