CFP: Excellent Undergraduate Work Related to Civil Rights and Race

The peer-reviewed undergraduate journal Queen City Writers seeks submissions for the spring 2014 issue themed around civil rights and race relations. The issue will honor 2013, which marks several anniversaries related to the American Civil Rights Movement. These include: 1863—President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation; 1868—The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution defined citizenship and nullified the Dred Scott Case; 1963—Martin Luther King Jr. penned his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and made his “I Have a Dream” speech; 1968—Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act; 2008—Barack Obama became the first African-American elected to President of the United States, and was inaugurated for a second term in 2013.

Possible questions to consider include, but are not limited to:

● How are prominent historical figures represented rhetorically in current and popular culture (i.e., Abraham Lincoln in the recent film Lincoln)?
● In what ways are the ideas in Martin Luther King’s texts and speeches still relevant in contemporary conversations and struggles regarding civil rights?
● How has protest rhetoric, and the circumstances that called for it, evolved since the 1960s?
● How have civil rights expanded to include other racial and ethnic identities and causes, and in what ways are these expansions indebted to the Civil Rights Movement and other efforts to carve out new definitions of “civil rights”?
● Do you have a personal experience related to your own literacy and civil rights or race relations?
● What complexities exist in the relationships between voting, rights, and citizenship, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Voting Rights Act?
● What role do social media, and visual and multimedia texts play in conversations about civil rights?

Queen City Writers publishes undergraduate essays and multimedia works related to our focus on writing, rhetoric, reading, literacy, popular culture and media, community discourses, and multimodal and digital composing. For a full explanation of our focus and submission guidelines, please see: http://qc-writers.com/submissions/. For the spring issue, submissions will be considered through early December.