Griot Institute || Griot Project Book Series

The Griot Project Book Series

Editor: Carmen Gillespie
Professor of English
Director of the Griot Institute for
Africana Studies
Bucknell University

Published in partnership with the Bucknell University Press

The Griot is a central figure in many West African cultures. Historically, the Griot held many functions, including as a community historian, cultural critic, indigenous artist, and collective spokesperson. Borrowing from this rich tradition, the Bucknell University Griot Institute for Africana Studies and the Griot Project Book Series define the Griot as a metaphor for the academic and creative interdisciplinary exploration of the arts, literatures, and cultures of African America, Africa, and the African diaspora.

The publications of the Griot Project Series consist of scholarly monographs and creative works devoted to the interdisciplinary exploration of the aesthetic, artistic and cultural products and intellectual currents of historical and contemporary African America and of the African diaspora using narrative as a thematic and theoretical framework for the selection and execution of its projects. The series will be edited by the Director of the Bucknell University Griot Insitute, Carmen Gillespie, and considers potential publications in Africana studies from a wide range of disciplines.

The series aims to produce three books during each three-year period, beginning with the year 2011. Each book will be approximately 100-300 manuscript pages in length and will generally have a minimum 500-book print run. The audience for the books produced by the Griot Project Series will be academics, artists, and will include a lay audience, as well. We ask potential authors to submit for consideration works that have expanisve and inclusive appeal and significance.

The first two books forthcoming in the series are The Clearing: Forty Years With Toni Morrison, 1970-2010, edited by Carmen Gillespie, and In Media Res, edited by James Braxton Peterson. Subsequent titles will include a translation of Angele Kingue's novel Venus de Khalakanti, the edited collection I'll Be There: Scholarly and Artistic Reflections on the Meanings and Messages of Michael Jackson, and a poetry collection from the winner of the Griot-Stadler Prize for Poetry.

Authors should send proposals (not manuscripts) to the series editor:

Professor Carmen Gillespie
Department of English
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, PA 17837
or electronically to carmen.gillespie@bucknell.edu