In collaboration with Words Beats & Life Fest: Dance Edition (The Way You Move)

Call for Papers, Panels, Proposals (CFP)

KEYWORDS: movement, generation

Saturday, December 13, 2025
Washington D.C.
Martin Luther King Library 

In collaboration with the Words, Beats, & Life (WBL), the Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference series (S&P) will host a mini-conference as part of the WBL Fest: Dance Edition. During this week-long celebration of movement, rhythm, and community, the S&P mini-conference invites new and developing scholarship activated by the conference keywords: movement and generation.

Taken separately, these keywords offer several points of entry. Movement invokes the physical body, embodiment, and the meaningfulness of what the body can teach you (think move-meant). This term also invokes social justice movements and the resilience, flexibility, and connections necessary to sustain them. In contrast, generation is a concept that shifts our attention to a body of people, usually organized around age alongside other demographic markers. The term can signal something shared (e.g., generational aesthetics), stark departures from what was before, overlapping interests, cross-generational exchanges, and challenges to the status quo. Its root word emphasizes processes of bringing something into being or existence. Taken together, these two keywords can also speak to the creation of change in relation to time, place, and people, moving collectively and yet across differences, whether through social media or bodies on the ground.

As a mini-conference, this one-day event will be part of a week-long festival. Show & Prove will take place on Saturday, December 13, 2025. S&P seeks papers and especially whole panel proposals, or other proposal ideas that resonate with these keywords.

Submit proposals in the following format: individual proposals consist of 300-word descriptions of papers/ ideas; panel proposals should include a 300-word panel description and up to 200-word descriptions of each part/ paper/ person in the panel. Do not include CVs or sample papers. All proposals should include contact information, affiliations, and relevant a/v needs. Your name and contact information.

NOTE: This is a live gathering and we do not seek proposals for virtual participation (though a portion of a proposed panel may be online). Proposals are due September 15th via email to showproveconf@gmail.com.

For questions about the festival, please write Mazi@wblinc.org for inquiries. For questions about S&P and to submit proposals, write Imani Kai Johnson at showproveconf@gmail.com. Final accepted proposals will be notified by late-September.