Monica Michlin teaches at the Université Paris-Sorbonne. Jean-Paul Rocchi teaches at the Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée.

• Introduction: Monica Michlin (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France) and Jean-Paul Rocchi (Université Paris -Est Marne-la-Vallée, France)Exordium:Writing and the Relation: From Textual Coloniality to South African Black Consciousness Rozena Maart (University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa)I) Challenging Hegemonic Gender Identities:Postcolonial Backlash & Being Proper: Femininity Blackness Sexuality and Transgender in the Public Eye Antje Schuhmann (Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa)Productive Investments: Masculinities and Economies in Fisher’s The Walls of Jericho Eva Boesenberg (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, Germany)‘I Hugged Myself’: First-Person Narration as an Agential Act in Octavia Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” Florian Bast (Universität Leipzig, Germany)II) Nonconformity and Narrative Theorizing:Benjamin Franklin’s Ethnic Drag—Notes on Abolition, Satire, and Affect Carsten Junker (Bremen University, Germany)“Weh eye nuh see heart nuh leap”: Claude McKay’s Literary Drag Performance in Banana Bottom Jarrett H. Brown (College of the Holy Cross, USA)The Souls of Black Gay Folk: The Black Arts Movement and Melvin Dixon’s Revision of Du Boisian Double Consciousness in Vanishing Rooms Charles Nero (Bates College, USA)III) Upsurges of Desire:“Risking Sensuality”: Toni Morrison’s Erotics of Writing Claudine Raynaud (Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France)Cultures of Melancholia: Theorizing Desire and the Black Body Laura Sarnelli (University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy)Richard Wright’s Poetics of Black Being: Metaphor, Desire, and Doing Rebecka Rutledge Fisher (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)IV) Epistemological Genealogies and Prospections:On the Monstrous Threat of Reasoned Black Desire Lewis R. Gordon (University of Connecticut at Storrs, USA)Revising Jezebel Politics: Toward a New Black Sexual Ethic Jennifer S. Leath (Yale University, USA)The Challenge of Black Feminist Desire: Abolish Property Sabine Broeck (Bremen University, Germany)