CFP: Race, Blackness, and the Dominican Republic

raj chetty Discussion

DEADLINE EXTENDED for Special Issue of The Black Scholar on Race, Blackness, and the Dominican Republic

The editors of The Black Scholar welcome essays for a special issue examining the complexity of black cultural politics and identity in the Dominican Republic. This special issue seeks to analyze Dominican racial relations against the grain of the cross-disciplinary consensus, primarily U.S.-based, that focuses on Dominicans’ “negrophobia,” “anti-Haitianism,” and “self-hatred.” In this way, the issue inserts itself into a globally comparative Black Studies, including the articulations and disarticulations between blackness in the US, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.

Aiming to include a cross-disciplinary group of writers, scholars, and activists from the Dominican Republic and Dominicanists from abroad, the issue invites essays on the following topics:

  • Methodologies of studying blackness and Africanness in the Dominican Republic

  • Archives/archaeologies of Dominican blackness

  • Imperialism, blackness, and U.S.-Dominican relations

  • Dominican Black transnationalisms: intra-Caribbean, inter-American, and African-Dominican

  • Critical histories of antihaitianismo, Haitian-Dominican cultural relations, and/or Haitian-Dominican solidarity

  • Race and blackness in Dominican popular cultural production

  • Political economy of blackness vis-à-vis the Dominican Republic

  • Racism, colorism, and white supremacy in Dominican social structures

  • Perceptions of Dominicans by U.S. Blacks, Caribbeans, and/or Africans

  • Dominican conceptualizations of diaspora: la diáspora in Dominican migration, African diaspora in a Dominican sense, diaspora in an Afro-dominican sense

The issue anticipates that the suggested topics in the list above, or relevant topics not listed, will engage scholars in Black/Africana Studies, Caribbean & Latin American Studies, Psychology, Literary Studies, Theater & Performance Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, Media Studies, Ethnomusicology, and History.

The issue will also feature poetry, art, and fiction by black- and Afro-affirming Dominican writers and artists, in English translation.

EXTENDED DEADLINE: Abstracts should be submitted by July 31, 2014, and full articles will be expected by December 15, 2014 to special guest editors, Raj Chetty (chettyr@stjohns.edu) and Amaury Rodríguez (arodrig02@citymail.cuny.edu). Publication of the special issue is slated for late 2015. When preparing manuscripts, please follow The Black Scholar Submission Guidelines.

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THE BLACK SCHOLAR is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal providing cogent articles that help the understanding of issues of social concern to black Americans and other peoples of African descent across the world. To provide full range for the development of black thought in a climate where fora are still limited, we emphasize writings by black authors. The journal was launched in 1969 with the premise that black authors, scholars, artists and activists could participate in dialogue within its pages, “uniting the academy and the street.” Its editors have been dedicated to finding and developing new talent and continuing to publish established authors. TBS is now a refereed journal published with Routledge. Nonetheless, it retains its policy of publishing non-academic organic intellectuals from a variety of vocations and avocations.

For more on the journal’s history and philosophy, please visit its website.