CFP: Articles for The Black Scholar journal on "Post-Soul Afro-Latinidades"

Benjamin Wendorf Announcement
Location
United States
Subject Fields
African American History / Studies, Atlantic History / Studies, Black History / Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History / Studies, Race / Ethnic Studies

The Black Scholar is a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal published through Taylor & Francis with a primary mission to chronicle, analyze, and debate the conditions and the emancipatory efforts of Black people, across class, nationality, gender, generation, sexuality, and ideology. 

The editors of The Black Scholar welcome essays for a themed issue examining post-soul Afro-Latinidad literature, culture, and politics. 

As we enter the last years of the United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent, it is important to recall that bonds between African Americans and Afro-descendants from and in Latin America and the hispanophone Caribbean Basin have existed since the 1870s. “Post-Soul Afro-Latinidades” is a response to the increasing interest in and need for critical discussions of Afro-Latina/o/x subjectivity and culture in the post-segregation era. This issue addresses Vera M. Kutzkinski’s 1996 contention that the “authenticating rhetoric” of “Afro-Hispanic American” literary criticism is shaped by the Black Power, Black Arts, and Négritude movements. This issue also engages Agustin Lao-Montes’s call for interdisciplinary collaboration in his 2007 article “Afro-Latinidades: Bridging Black and Latina/o Studies.” Motivated by the theories of Kutzkinski and Lao-Montes, the guest editors seek articles that investigate the relationship between afro-latinidad and the post-soul aesthetic, a critical concept in African American studies. Are the post-soul aesthetic and afro-latinidad interdependent or categorically discrete? Can afro-latinidad be examined in ways that deepen and expand what we think we know about Afroethnic identity formation in the U.S? This special issue of The Black Scholar seeks to answer these questions in ways that challenge conventional notions of Afro-Latina/o/x radicalism, nationalism, and interculturalism from the end of the Civil Rights movement to the present.

The issue invites essays on the relationship between afro-latinidad and the following topics:

  • Theory and methodology
  • Literary and cultural production
  • Diplomacy and empire
  • The global Afro-Latina/o/x diaspora, especially in Africa
  • Afro-Latina/o/x heritage tourism in African and the U.S.
  • African American missionaries, diplomats, and immigrants in Latin America and the hispanophone Caribbean
  • Intraracial solidarities and tensions with communities of African descent in the U.S.
  • Gender, sexuality, and queer identity 
  • The Civil Rights, Black Art, and Black Power movements
  • Speculative narratives and art
  • The Afro-Latina/o/x presence at HBCUs
  • The Afro-Latina/o/x presence in African American mutual aid and fraternal societies
  • Popular films and television series
  • Popular forms of music and dance (e.g. bachata, salsa, merengue, kizomba, reggaeton, etc.)
  • Social media networks, born-digital art, digital archives, and other forms of new media
  • Contemporary political, cultural, and spiritual mobilizations of afro-latinidad 

The guest editors seek to engage scholars in Black/Africana Studies, Literary Studies, History, Area Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Science, Diplomacy Studies, Ethnomusicology, Dance Studies, and Media Studies.  

For full consideration, complete articles must be submitted to TBS‘s homepage on Taylor & Francis no later than March 1st 2021.  Manuscripts must not exceed 4,000 words (inclusive of endnotes and images). When preparing manuscripts, adhere to The Black Scholar Submission Guidelines. Any submissions that do not may be rejected. The anticipated publication of the issue is Spring of 2022.

Contact Information

Editors of the issue are Dr. Trent Masiki (Boston University; masiki@bu.edu) and Dr. Regina Mills (Texas A&M; rmills@tamu.edu). 

Contact Email
masiki@bu.edu