Africana Families and Kinship Formations in the Diaspora

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites authors to submit essays on the topic of “Africana Families and Kinship Formations in the Diaspora”. Over the years, the academy has paid a great deal of attention to the formation and structure of Africana families, especially in the US. This Special Issue recognizes the inroads made by this body of scholarship and aims to extends them beyond the geographic boundaries of the United States. We invite contributors to examine the range of traditional and contemporary conceptions of family, roles, structures, dynamics, and relationships as they have evolved in the context of enslavement, legacies of oppression, and Africana resistance among Afrodiasporic communities. We define family and kinship formations broadly, keeping a keen eye on the nuanced and unique ways Africana communities come together to create community, sustain cultural continuity, act as a buffer for societal pressures, and prioritize Africana agency, lifeways, and futures. Such definitions may include straight, queer, single-parent, two-parent, grandparent, extended, and adoptive family formations. Our approach to diaspora is equally expansive and includes a variety of underlying structures such as empire, trade, and conflicts—both past and present—that facilitate diasporization. This Special Issue questions family life and kinship formations found among Afrodiasporic communities across the globe in their articulations of family, community, and nation. We invite scholars in Africana/Black studies as well as other closely related fields (such as ethnic studies, American studies, area studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, and humanities, etc.) to consider the manifestations of Africana family life in the context of diasporization.

Some potential areas of focus the following areas, although other submissions are welcomed:

• Family and migration;
• Spirituality and family health;
• The influence of cultural dynamics on family relationships; 
• Rites and rituals;
• Parenting styles and priorities in the context of political climate;
• Resilience in Africana families;
• Education and schooling choices;
• Identity and racial socialization;
• Racial, national, and transnational identity/ies;
• Pan-African politics and the family;
• Sexual, gendered relations;
• Queer kinship;
• Mental health;
• Cultural transformation and continuity.

All papers submitted to this Special Issue will be published free of charge.

Dr. Sureshi M. Jayawardene
Dr. Serie McDougal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Africana families
• Afrodiasporic families
• Africana kinship in diaspora