proposals due April 5, 2021 In her 1942 autobiographical work, Dust Tracks on a Road, author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston openly declared her desire to expand the focus and direction of African-American literature, indicating not only that “I was and am thoroughly sick of the subject [of the race problem in the United States]” but that she was interested in exploring “what makes a man or a woman do such-and-so, regardless of his color” (713). And while discussions of race inherently pervade much of her work, this artistic and ideological perspective—the need to “tell a story the way I wanted, or rather the way the story told itself to me” (713)—played a significant role in shaping Hurston’s literary works throughout her storied career. Whether it was using dialect to construct the African-American voice in text, driving down the coast collecting stories from Black folk whose voices had long been ignored, or delving into the lives of a white married couple in what some described as her “whiteface novel,” Hurston pursued a brand of art that was uninhibited by twentieth-century expectations of African-American literary expression, gender norms, and socio-racial constraints constructed by Black and white society alike. Because of this, Zora Neale Hurston’s short stories, novels, plays, essays, collected songs, and more remain truly rich material for scholars across the disciplines to explore.