Afro-Digital Connections: Afro-Latino and Afro-Descendant Cultural Production in the Digital Age
An edited collection
CFP deadline: Abstracts due 1 May 2016
Editors: Eduard Arriaga and Andrés Villar (Western University, Ontario)
Two decades ago, scholars in fields such as communication and information studies questioned the way social relations would be adapted to the increasing importance of global digital networks and to the tools used for digital communication. Maizies (1999) has inquired whether universal access, if granted, to processes of communication and representation that incorporate other processes of production, distribution, and consumption within global digital networks will be negotiated or imposed. This issue remains current because of the ubiquity of paradigms such as those of Big-Data, Cultural Analytics, and the Digital Humanities. These paradigms are fuelled by the increasing importance of digital networks (for example, social networks, financial corporations, etc.) and the centrality of their users as sources of information.
In the Americas (North, Central and South) and the Caribbean, the issue becomes more nuanced due to the central role played by race and ethnicity in the construction of political and social relations that are reflected in people’s daily lives. Over the last two decades or so, the region has witnessed the emergence of ‘minority’ artists, activists, and organizations that take advantage of digital tools that are now more accessible: mobile technologies and social media tools increasingly allow these actors to supply their own images and self-representations. This edited book will explore the way Afro-Latin@, Afro-Latin American and Afro-Caribbean writers, artists, activists and organizations – NGO’s, grassroots communities, etc.- have adopted online digital tools and mobile technologies to create self-representations, question traditional images, and connect with communities around the globe that share similar ethno-social perspectives. This book also seeks to shed light on contemporary processes of memory creation, artistic representation, ethnic connection, digital cultural production and resistance/reparation in order to understand how ethnic communities -particularly Afro-descendant ones- are adapting these tools to their own cultural and political practices. To that end, we invite manuscripts that address Afro-Digital Connections topics including the following:
* African and Afro-descendant digital activism
* African and Afro-descendant digital art, digital performance, and digital literature
* Digital humanities and reparations for Afro-descendant communities
* Oral histories and digital archives
* Theoretical interventions exploring ethnicity/race and digital technologies
* Digital interventions that reconfigure African and Afro-descendant symbolic imaginaries.
* Critical perspectives on digital inclusion
* Digital actions against police brutality and government violence
Submission Guidelines: If interested, please submit proposals in Spanish, English or Portuguese (300-500 words) and (one-page) CVs to Eduard Arriaga (earriag@uwo.ca or earriaga@alumni.uwo.ca) or Andrés Villar (avillar2@uwo.ca) by 1 May 2016. When submitting your abstract, please use “Contribution Volume Afro-Digital Connections” as the subject line.
Above adapted from ASWAD email announcement.
