Black Families, Kinship, and Genealogy in the Diaspora

Dear Colleagues,

“Black Families, Kinship, and Genealogy in the Diaspora” will present to its readership a collective of articles that address broad topics on the African American family. The current historiography on the Black family is substantial. This special edition will contribute to this tradition in both theme and methodological praxis. The articles accepted will be grouped under three subtitles: Genealogy: History, Method, and Archive; The Long History of the Family of the Enslaved: Historiography, Resistance, and Conflict; and The Modern Black Family: Identity, Sexuality and Politics. These three groupings will allow work, temporally, from the early modern period to contemporary society. While particularly centered on persons of African descent in North America, articles may link these subjects with African antecedents or African diasporic comparisons. A wide variety of topics will be considered, including those that address debates in method and archival sources; the discourse on the Black family’s structure, function, and viability across time and place; demographic characteristics; gendered experiential differences and other variabilities; the results of micro, local and macro studies; and, broadly, LGBTQ+ family and kinship histories. We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution.  Please send it to the guest editors (both) via Email (see above) or to the Genealogy editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Prof. Dr. Brenda Stevenson
Dr. Jessica Millward
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.

• family
• Black family
• African American family
• historical archives
• historical methodology
• slavery
• LGBTQ family experiences