“Caribbean Literary Crossings, Critical Crossroads and Cross-Disciplinary Conversations”

13-15th November 2019
Bridgetown, Barbados

CFP Deadline: 15 July 2019 

From the recent treatment of the Windrush generation in Britain to the growing interest in the environmental humanities and the plantationocene, Caribbean literary arts continue to provide insights relevant to our lived experiences. From créolité to cross-cultural dialogue, the boundary-blurring aesthetic of the region is instrumental in throwing into relief fruitful connections important to our understandings of, for example, cultural and socio-political relationships.

Attentive to a region characterised by metaphors of change and interstices, the 19th International Conference on Caribbean Literature seeks to explore how crossroads, crossings and cross-fertilisations continue to be used to figure Caribbean futures. The main aim is to examine the kinds of connections to be developed between, for example, literature and law, speculative fiction and ethics, drama and medicine, poetry and marketing with a view to how these connections can be used to benefit Caribbean development and foster a productive commitment to literature, specifically, and the humanities in general. To this end, papers are therefore invited on topics related, but not limited, to: Continue reading 19th International Conference on Caribbean Literature

“HINTERLANDS : Journeys of the Imagination”

17-20th October 2019
University of Guyana, Turkeyen Campus
Georgetown, Guyana

CFP Deadline: 20 June 2019 

Image: “Palace of the Peacock – Homage to Wilson Harris”,
George Simon, Phibert Gajadhar, Anil Roberts,
University of Guyana (2009)

Among the most significant origins of West Indian Literature is The Discovery of Guiana (1597) by one of the “ancestral murderers and poets” (Walcott), Sir Walter Ralegh. The quest for gold, the dream of wealth and power inspired centuries of “history, fable and myth” (Harris), which saw Ralegh himself, and generations of West Indian writers in pursuit of the elusive El Dorado, hidden in the mysteries of the Guianese Hinterland. The “Interiors” (McWatt), the “heartland”, the rainforests – the “hinterland”, is that vast unfathomable region that is largely unexplored, untamed, dynamic; whose definition is yet incomplete and the subject of a continuing journey of exploration and of the imagination.

That is West Indian literature at this time. That is what this conference seeks to interrogate. It is the subject of the conference and a concept of Guyana – the country in which the 38th Annual West Indian Literature Conference will be held.
Continue reading *UPDATED* 38th Annual West Indian Literature Conference

CFP Deadline: 1 August 2019

This Call For Papers is for an amazing Louise Bennett anthology that will be published end of 2019 to honor the 100th birthday of Jamaica’s folk icon. The anthology is seeking to gather 100 submissions from as many writers/ poets/ critics/ artists as possible. Questions should be sent to the email address on the flyer ([email protected]) or to Isis Semaj-Hall directly at [email protected]

Above text and image adapted from email.

CFP Deadline: 1 August 2019

Fall/Winter 2019 Issue
Theme: “Life at a Crossroads”

CFP Deadline:  19 July 2019

Overview of the Journal:

For the Fall 2019 issue of the Killens Review of Arts & Letters, we seek submissions of creative nonfiction, fiction, essays, interviews, book reviews, poetry, memoir, photography, and visual artwork by writers and artists of the African diaspora that mediate on facing a challenging decision or a life-changing moment that has made an impact on future generations or contributed to the legacy of the Black experience throughout the African diaspora.

THEME DESCRIPTION: “Life at a Crossroads”

In the 1941 book 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States, a combination of text and photographs that present a commentary on the hardships and aspirations of Blacks in America in the early 1900s, writer Richard Wright ends his prose with: “We are with the new tide. We stand at the crossroads. We watch each new procession. The hot wires carry urgent appeals. Print compels us. Voices are speaking. Men are moving! And we shall be with them.”

Since the publication of 12 Million Black Voices more than 74 years ago, there have been cultural, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical changes in America that have had a dramatic impact on the perspectives, beliefs, and livelihoods of people of the Black community. They have also left an indelible mark on American and world culture. Today, people of the Africa diaspora still stand at a crossroads, a time in which significant change and decision making are crucial to making a contribution to future generations and leaving a legacy to Black culture.

Please submit to only one category at a time:
essay, fiction, interview, poetry, prose, and art.
We aim to respond to your submission within two months time.

Submission Guidelines Continue reading Killens Review of Arts & Letters

CFP Deadline: 15 June 2019

Label Me Latina/o is an online, refereed international e-journal that focuses on Latino Literary Production in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The journal invites scholarly essays focusing on these writers for its biannual publication.

Scholarly submissions should be between 12-30 pages, double-spaced, 12 point font and should follow the MLA Style Manual. Please use End Notes rather than Footnotes and place page numbers in the upper right hand corner. Original, unpublished submissions in Microsoft Word (PC compatible format) should be sent electronically to both of the co-directors: Kathryn Quinn-Sánchez [email protected] and Michele Shaul [email protected]
Continue reading Label Me Latina/o

CFP Deadline: 15 June 2019

The Editors of African and Black Diaspora announce a Call for Papers on Black Intellectuals and the Making of the Atlantic World for a special issue of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal.

During the three decades between the end of World War I and 1950, Black intellectuals (from Africa, Caribbean, the United States), cultural workers, students, artists and political activists forged new conceptions of self beyond the confines of the colonial matrix and forged anti-colonial political and cultural organizations, as well as journals and newspapers, and created wider solidarity networks with progressive organizations and movements in the center of Empire. The new spaces they developed in London, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin etc. … increased the interactions among Black intellectuals in the colonial metropole which functioned as a site of anti-colonial resistance against racism and colonialism. In the process, Black intellectuals and artists, created a dynamic and transnational spaces in which “cultural exchange, production and belonging” (Gilroy 1993) were forged across space and time in the making of the modern Black Atlantic world. Indeed, Black intellectuals during the period and since used a wide variety of cultural productions, and artistic works as a form of language artfully interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance as a rich continuum of cultural exchange that imaginatively reinvented, re-created, and restored the centrality of African diaspora in the making of the modern Black Atlantic world.

The Editors of African and Black Diaspora are seeking papers that examine the development of Black intellectual movements and the various political and cultural networks they developed in the colonial metropolis and how these networks were activated, nurtured to conveyed transnational dialogue among people of the African descent. In what ways have these networks both real and imagined become spaces of knowledge and memory? What cultural resources and political practices were deployed to “improvising new lives…, creating new possibilities … and decolonizing” the metropolis itself (Schwarz, 2003). What political discourse and cultural resources were developed to resist the colonial empire both at home and abroad?

Continue reading Black Intellectuals and the Making of the Atlantic World

Haitian Studies in Changing Climates

17-19th October 2019
Gainesville, Florida

Plenary Deadline: 15 April 2019
CFP Deadline: 1 May 2019

Philippe Dodard 48”x48” Untitiled 2014. Acrylic on canvas.

Haitian Studies has evolved over the past thirty years from a small group of dedicated scholars, mostly in the humanities, to a robust interdisciplinary association ready to broaden its horizons, address unique challenges and embrace new opportunities.  This year we will go to the largest public university in the Sunshine State, home to the largest Haitian Diaspora.  We envision a large scope of discussions that will allow us not only to reflect on these important historical Diasporic ties and their socio-economic implications but also explore the tracks of tropical storms and hurricanes that bind our destinies.   Continue reading Haitian Studies Association 31st Annual Conference

CFP Deadline: 31 March 2019

Born in the Dominican Republic, decolonial scholar, curator, author, journalist, and friend, Alanna Lockward passed away tragically on Monday, January 7, 2019. With her passing, the world has lost a dedicated trailblazer in the fight against anti-Haitian, anti-black racism in the Dominican Republic and an ally to decolonial movements throughout the world.

In honor of Alanna Lockward, the Haiti-Dominican Republic section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), together with other friends of the deceased, will celebrate Alanna Lockward’s life and legacy at the 2019 LASA Conference, hosted in Boston, MA, May 25-27, 2019.

We are calling for submissions to help us create a video memorial collage in which Alanna’s colleagues and friends will reflect upon her life and work. We will collect self-recorded digital submissions throughout March. We will then edit the submissions, and present the video collage at the “Alanna Lockward Memorial” hosted by the LASA Haiti-DR section. The memorial will be held during the 2019 LASA conference on May 25, at 8pm, location TBA.

If you would like to participate, please follow the instructions below: Continue reading Video Memorial for Alanna Lockward

Remembrance, Renaissance, Revolution:
The Meaning of Freedom in the African World Over Time and Space

5-9th November 2019
The College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia

*EXTENDED* CFP Deadline: 1 March 2019

The year 2019 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the origins of slavery in what became the United States with the arrival of approximately twenty Africans in modern-day Jamestown, Virginia in August 1619. Described in English records as “twenty and odd” Negroes, these captive Africans from West-Central Africa reflected the growing intensity of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the world’s largest forced migration that connected Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Asia. This global system of migration, enslavement, and oppression was critical to the making of the modern world. Throughout the Black world, unfortunately, the emancipation of enslaved people did not result in full freedom. Moreover, decades of European worldwide colonial domination, especially within the African continent, further obstructed people of African descent in the global political economy, with a continued impact in the present day.

Africa is the birthplace of humankind, and under a multiplicity of circumstances, African descendants have dispersed and migrated to every corner of the globe. These numerous African diasporas are marked variously by (in)voluntary movement, servitude, trade, military/imperial objectives, and cultural, academic, and professional ambition. This broader understanding provides new opportunities to fully appreciate the complex histories and creative cultures of today’s many African diasporas. Despite vast differences across and within contemporary African diasporas around the globe, there remain broad commonalities of marginalization, exclusion and relative material deprivation for African-descended people in their respective societies. The contemporary world has seen a resurgence of blatant racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance directed towards the African-descended and other communities racially constructed as “others”. But despite past and present horrors, African-descended peoples across the globe have survived and thrived, remembering their pasts and re-envisioning their futures in ways that continue to lead to and strive for renaissance, freedom, and revolution in the contemporary world.

ASWAD invites panel and individual paper proposal submissions for its 10th biennial conference to be held in Williamsburg, VA (USA), November 5 to 9, 2019 on the campus of the College of William and Mary to discuss, examine, and reflect on the legacies of enslavement and the meaning(s) of freedom for people of African descent nationally and globally on the four hundredth anniversary of the origins of slavery in what became the United States. We also seek papers that interrogate the many other diasporas that began (and continue) in Africa, and continue to flourish in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America, the Caribbean and the Pacific/Indian Ocean basins. We are particularly interested in panels and papers on the conference themes of remembrance, renaissance, and revolution in the many African diasporas across time and space. However, we encourage papers from any time period and topic related to the study of the African-descended.  Continue reading *UPDATED* Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora 10th Biennial Conference

Black Studies – Sankofa Past, Present, and Future 

12-13th April 2019
York College, City University of New York

CFP Deadline: 21 December 2018

Black Studies grew into an academic discipline in the wake of student protest at San Francisco State University in late 1968. By 1969, the wave that started in the Bay Area had spread throughout the nation’s State Colleges, Universities, and private Universities and Colleges with many creating their own Black Studies Departments. In that same year, the major Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) added their names to the list of institutions creating Black Studies departments. In the intervening years, various breakthroughs and challenges – both internal and external – marked the growth and shape of the discipline. As disinvestment in public education and higher education continues, it bears remembering why we have Black Studies and why it remains important in 21st Century America.

The New York African Studies Association wishes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Black Studies as an academic discipline by exploring its glorious past, present, and future. We invite scholars and both graduate and undergraduate students to submit individual papers, entire panels, or creative works/performances that focus on Black Studies specifically, as well as the theory, research, methodology, teaching, and public education issues that broadly address the theme of the conference and related aspects of the Black Global experience.

Continue reading 2019 New York African Studies Association (NYASA) Annual Conference

Guest Editors:
Maria Rice Bellamy, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
Karen Weingarten, Queens College, City University of New York

CFP Deadline: 1 March 2019

To inherit is to receive, to gain, to be left with more. The term “inheritance” first brings to mind the bequeathing of property by a parent to a child. The exclusion of women from this form of inheritance has been a contested issue for millennia and figured prominently in the earliest feminist causes in the United States and other Western nations. Remarkably, women in many parts of the United States won the right to own and control property (inherited or purchased, be she single, married, or divorced) before they earned the rights of citizenship, particularly the right to vote. While this call for papers begins with these most conventional understandings of inheritance, the goal of the Inheritance issue of WSQ is to facilitate a conversation on the many meanings and complications of the term “inheritance” and of the processes and experiences of inheriting, including the multiplicity of things that can be inherited and the varied ways these things can be transmitted and received across generations.

We are seeking papers that take a critical and transgressive approach to any and all aspects of inheritance, which in its most basic form involves one who bequeaths, items passed down, and one who receives. Our consideration of inheritance then questions first who has the power to decide what is worthy to be passed down and who is worthy to receive? How is this power granted, questioned, and subverted? How do people divested of this power find alternative ways of leaving a legacy? Second, what gets passed down and what gets left out of the process of inheritance? What forms of inheritance are recognized—given significance—or not? What histories or memories are remembered—preserved, passed down—or not? What inheritances are lost and how do we reckon those losses? Finally, who receives and who is excluded from inheriting? Who are the winners and losers in generational transfers? What economic and social repercussions are experienced by persons excluded from inheritance, particularly women, people of color, immigrants, people without property, and persons with disabilities? How do these losses continue to be felt over the generations? How do we reckon the immaterial losses, such as names never recorded, art never created, writing never published? Continue reading Women’s Studies Quarterly: Spring 2020 Issue

The Caribbean in times of Tempest. Ethnicities, Territorial Resistances and Epistemic Poetics

3rd to 7th June 2019
Santa Marta, Colombia

*EXTENDED* CFP Deadline: 15 December 2018

As if amidst a great marine storm, the Caribbean endures times of Tempest. We seem to be the target of ever-growing devastating hurricanes from the south; sacking and pillage from the extractivism of the global north; measures of austerity derived from the neoliberal agenda of the financial “north”; natural and social disasters; drug dealing; and ongoing forms of human trafficking, slavery and feminicide. Expressions of racism, patriarchy, homophobia and xenophobia worsen. In response to such times of Tempest, it is necessary to give visibility to the diversity of the Caribbean world, its ways to imagine liberation; and to think and understand its life experiences from its own narratives and arguments. In addition, to analyze and apprehend the multiple resistances that take place at the local level against policies of plunder and death. Following our Caribbean tradition, the Tempest invites us to poeticize the future, producing critical theories that allow us to think of models of society that give priority to life.

Major themes of the conference:

Continue reading *UPDATED* 44th Annual Conference, Caribbean Studies Association (CSA)

Black Internationalism and New York City

2nd to 3rd May 2019
New York University

CFP Deadline: 14 January 2019

This conference seeks to promote mechanisms by which academics, activists, policymakers, and other stakeholders enter into greater dialogue and collaboration in areas of conjoined interest. In partnership with the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) – for which NYU serves as the institutional home – NYU’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD) will convene every two years, alternating with ASWAD’s biennial conference.

(ASWAD’s 10th Biennial Conference will be held from 5-10 November, 2019 at the College of William & Mary. For more information, please consult the website.)

CSAAD welcomes the participation of communities, organizations, and individuals from across the whole of Africa and its Diaspora, in seeking to foster cross-cultural and cross-spatial engagement. The CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting endeavors to serve as a venue within which communities hailing from the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia might continue to explore connections and identify mutual projects.

To this end, CSAAD issues a Call-For-Proposals, from all interested parties, to participate in the CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting, May 2-3, 2019, on the campus of NYU. The CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting will be on a smaller scale than the biennial ASWAD gathering, and will therefore be much more selective.

We welcome scholarship and presentations on topics that may address, but are not limited to: Continue reading CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting