Religion Call for Papers | @relcfp

Call for Papers: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Liberal Arts Tradition:

A Symposium and Edited Volume

October 9-11, 2025

Morehouse College

The Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Collection welcomes submissions for the symposium “Martin Luther King and the Black Liberal Arts Tradition”, which will be held on October 9-11, 2025 on the campus of Morehouse College. 

As an alumnus of Morehouse College, Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘48 is the product of a rich and vibrant “circle of culture” encompassing the various places and means by which Black peoples examined, discussed and practiced education as a weapon in the arsenal of the Black freedom struggle. The Historically Black College and University (HBCU) as an institution reveals a broad and complex democratic space by which to examine the transformational educational, social, political, cultural trends and influences in Black life, as filtered through what we are tentatively calling a Black Liberal Arts tradition.

Conventional treatments of King’s life and work largely exclude his tenure at Morehouse College and ignore the transformative nature of the Black Liberal Arts tradition. His time as a student at Morehouse College (1944-1948) has received scant scholarly attention in the literature on King and the Movement. Similarly, there has been scant work on Coretta Scott, a liberal arts graduate in her own right, and King’s intellectual and political partner. We assert King as an exemplar of the Black Liberal Arts Tradition. Morehouse and other HBCUs placed the mission and vision of the liberal arts in the service of Black freedom. As a student, King encountered, in a powerful way, the questions that form the basis of intellectual inquiry – questions of existence, identity, and place in the world. He explored these and other questions across disciplines. King was not alone in this experience. His experiences reflect a larger process that influenced and continues to influence generations of Black students. The Black Liberal Arts Tradition serves as a doorway through which to explore the reverberations of this tradition as manifested in the work of generations of their alumni and the communities in which they lived and served. 

While we are open to a range of themes, we are particularly interested in abstracts that explore a wide range of issues that include but are not limited to:

• Martin Luther King, Jr.: Citizenship, Leadership and The Black Liberal Arts Tradition

• The Black Liberal Arts Tradition in Religion, Education and Society

• The Black Liberal Arts Tradition: Perils and Prospects

• HBCU and BLAT spaces for intersectional identity formation

• The BLAT and the cultivation of public/political life

• King’s “World House:” The Black Liberal Arts Tradition and Global Communities

• The Political Economy of the HBCU

• The Black Liberal Arts Tradition and STEM

• Alternatives and Challenges to the Black Liberal Arts Tradition

• Aesthetic Representations and the Black Liberal Arts Tradition 

• Media, Voice, and the Black Liberal Arts Tradition

• Black College pedagogy and the archive

Submission Instructions

• Deadline: January 15, 2025

Submit a 300-word abstract to mlksymposium@morehouse.edu

Please be certain to include title of paper/essay, institution/affiliation, and contact information. Participants will hear back about acceptance to the Symposium by March 30

Selected papers will be included in the symposium edited volume. Papers selected for inclusion must be original work and not previously published, and the paper cannot be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Graduate students and early career scholars are encouraged to apply.

The Symposium is generously supported by: 

• Morehouse College

• The Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Collection 

• The Africana Studies Program and Department of History, Rhodes College

• The Morehouse Movement, Memory and Justice Project (Funded by the Mellon Foundation)

• UNCF/Mellon

• The Institute for Race and Social Transformation at Rhodes College (Funded by the Mellon Foundation)

Details

• Abstracts Due: January 15, 2025
• January 25, 2025 Begin Review
• March 30, 2025: Choose abstracts/panel construction
• April 15-22, 2025: Program construction
• Symposium: October 9-11, 2025
• Morehouse College
• Atlanta, GA

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