Submit a Proposal

Black innovators are messengers. Our artists in the fine/performing arts and literature, our pioneers in community activism and business, have long served as the makers of "signal fires" for culture and for the multiple communities they live and serve–sending their life-saving information across vast distances. As with our ancestral messengers, the distance that news from a messenger-citizen-artist today must cross is formidable, often dangerous. And yet the risk is taken up again and again, for the messenger-citizen-artist understands that their signal fire is not only a chemical launching into air of light, heat, and smoke, but is also a beacon of hope, a guide to those who would follow it home to celebration, across "the gap" of innumerable physical, material, economic, legal, and emotional challenges.

During the Harlem Renaissance, Black innovators regularly turned to the multi-valent properties of Fire as metaphorical inspiration. One particular group of disruptive innovators in Harlem launched a short-lived quarterly magazine, Fire!!, which was dedicated to Black artists and utilized the suggestion of this ancient symbol of strength, beauty, spirit, and news-giving in its very title. This year's symposium honors both the boldness of that historical project and its pioneering disruptors, as well as disruptive innovator Melvin Van Peebles, an Ohio Wesleyan graduate, best known as a trailblazing Black filmmaker. A twentieth-century Renaissance figure, transgressing the boundaries of race and gender as a disruptive innovator in film, theater, music, art, literature, and business, Melvin Van Peebles was a true signal fire in his physical presence and in the lasting light, heat, and smoke of his works.

This symposium aims to celebrate emerging artists/artistry that extend our longstanding Black radical tradition of disruption. In doing so, we invite diverse proposals engaged in thought, action, and cultural production around political themes within Black arts today and/or in the Harlem Renaissance in fields including but not limited to, film, theater, dance, music, visual art, literature, and business.

Submission Deadline: October 30, 2024

Possible Presentation Formats

Scholarly Paper Panels

• Papers can be works-in-progress or a final product.
• A panel of 3-4 speakers presenting scholarly papers on a common theme.
• You may submit a panel proposal or an individual paper proposal (written by one or more authors).
• Selected presenters (i.e., the panel) should collectively speak for 60 minutes to ensure that audience members have 15 minutes to respond and discuss; therefore, each speaker may present their research for approximately 15-20 minutes given the number of panelists.

Roundtable Conversations

• Roundtables are intimate conversations between colleagues centered on a single topic, question, or idea.
• Roundtables can have anywhere from 3-6 speakers, each presenting a specific take on an issue.
• Roundtable participants should collectively speak for no more than 60 minutes to ensure that audience members have 15 minutes to respond and discuss.

Presentation Of, or Live Creation Of, Visual Art

• Art can be works-in-progress or a final product.
• Art can be a single work or a collection of works.
• With a live creation event, the maximum allowed performative length (for an audience's interaction) is 60 minutes to ensure that audience members have at least 15 minutes to respond and discuss.

Performance

• An individual or group performance of a selected piece of music, dance, play, or other oral/movement presentation.
• Performances should be no more than 60 minutes to ensure that audience members have at least 15 minutes to respond and discuss.

Film Screenings

• Films can be works-in-progress or a final product.
• Films can be narrative, documentary, or experimental.
• The maximum allowed film length is 60 minutes to ensure that audience members have at least 15 minutes to respond and discuss; however, there is no minimum film length.
• The person submitting the film must own full rights to allow for its presentation.

Proposal Submission Guidelines