A publisher has issued an advance contract for an edited volume that offers scholarly insight into the moral, political, and religious thought of Frederick Douglass. The co-editors of this work seek essays serving as book chapters that address Douglass as a moral philosopher, political philosopher, theologian, and as a philosopher of religion. Essays are also welcome which engage the intersection of moral philosophy, political obligation, and theology in Douglass’s corpus.
The co-editors recognize that such critical reflection on Douglass may assume several forms. For example, an essay may examine Douglass’s moral, political, theological and religious thought from within his own work, either by emphasizing the evolution of Douglass as a philosopher throughout his works, or by indicating tensions internal to Douglass’s texts; an essay may also present a study of Douglass alongside other 19th century African-American, abolitionist, or political thought (i.e., Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Martin Delany, David Walker, Maria Stewart or Ida B. Wells); or an essay may discuss Douglass and U.S. Constitutional hermeneutics, emphasizing the complex relationship between a textualist interpretation of the Constitution on the issue of whether the Constitution is a slave document, and contemporary un-enumerated rights Constitutional interpretations that are non-textualist that Douglass may sanction. Finally, an essay may also examine the moral, political, religious and theological problems that Douglass raises in his work in relationship to canonical philosophical figures that run from Ancient Greek Philosophy (i.e., Douglass and Plato (perhaps either justice in the Republic or political obligation in the Crito), or Douglass and Aristotle (slavery and the will), through modern philosophy (i.e., Douglass and modernity in general, or Douglass and Kant), and into the 20th Century (i.e., Douglass and his relationship to Analytic and Continental Philosophy generally or to any of their major figures such as Quine, Wittgenstien, Nietzsche, Fanon, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault, de Beauvoir, Irigaray, or Derrida). These examples are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather they point to what the editors of this volume believe are the many ways to expand scholarly discussions of Douglass.
Please submit a 500–750 word abstract to fdouglassproject1895@gmail.com no later than August 15, 2014. Also submit a contributor’s biography of no more than 200 words, detailing your qualifications for a contribution to this volume. Authors will be notified of acceptance by October 15, 2014. If accepted, contributors will be contacted with a due date for their completed chapters.