The African Diaspora: Literature and Culture

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to a Special Issue of Literature focused on The African Diaspora: Literature and Culture. As the suggested research areas indicate, this field of study encompasses a wide range of historical, geographical, and theoretical contexts. The Middle Passage and the Door of No Return mark the beginnings of the Atlantic World, establishing systems that continue to structure relations and institutions, particularly in the Americas. In A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes on Belonging, Dionne Brand writes, "There are maps to the Door of No Return. The physical door. [...] But to the Door of No Return which is illuminated in the consciousness of Blacks in the Diaspora there are no maps. This door is not mere physicality. It is a spiritual location. It is also perhaps a psychic destination" (np). That absence or negation opens up paths to intellectual exploration, creative formation, and potential liberation, as theorized by Brand, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, Paul Gilroy, Simone Browne, Christina Sharpe, and others. The literature and culture of the African Diaspora engage with what Katherine McKittirck terms "[...] the ongoing labor of aesthetically refusing unfreedom", that is, "the work of liberation" (Dear Science and Other Stories 61).  In her recent book Dear Science, McKittrick provides a vision to which this Special Issue of Literature will ideally contribute: "Part of our intellectual task, then, is to work out how different kinds and types of texts, voices, and geographies relate to each other and open up unexpected and surprising ways to talk about liberation, knowledge, history, race, gender, narrative, and blackness" (121, original italics). In this same vein, Édouard Glissant states, "We are the roots of a cross-cultural relationship. Submarine roots: that is floating free, not fixed in one position in some primordial spot, but extending in all directions in our world through its network of branches" (Caribbean Discourse 67). This research area thus offers a multifaceted space for invention, exploration, and the process of liberation. As Rinaldo Walcott asks, "For what is Black life if not constant, unceasing invention in the time of this long emancipation" (The Long Emancipation 109)?

This Special Issue will bring together current scholarship focused on the African Diaspora, centered on literature but also incorporating interdisciplinary approaches. Both traditional and emerging perspectives provide lenses for understanding the evolving significance of the African Diaspora, in fields including but not limited to the following: Black studies; studies in gender and sexuality; environmental studies; trauma studies; archipelagic studies; speculative fiction and Afrofuturism; movements for abolition; queer studies; Black and Indigenous intersections in the Americas; and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The suggested topics/areas listed below indicate the wide scope of the study of literature by people of African descent over the centuries since the beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the establishment of colonialism in the Americas.

For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The Middle Passage and the Door of No Return;
• Geographies of the African Diaspora;
• Ecology, the environment, and the African Diaspora;
• Afrofuturism and speculative literature;
• Gender and sexuality in the African Diaspora;
• Queer Diasporas;
• The Haitian Diaspora or other similar diasporas that extend from the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas;
• Indigenous and Black convergences in the African Diaspora;
• Theorists of the African Diaspora, such as Édouard Glissant, Dionne Brand, Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittirck, Saidiya Hartman, Kamau Brathwaite, Frantz Fanon, and Paul Gilroy;
• Decolonial studies and movements;
• Archipelagic studies;
• Plantation logic and colonialism;
• Resistance, marooning, and revolution;
• Trauma studies, including generational trauma;
• Abolition movements;
• Interdisciplinary approaches to any of the areas above, including philosophy, religion, theatre, film, music, the visual arts such as painting, material arts such as quilts, etc.

Please note that each area assumes a central focus on literature (which could include fiction, poetry, memoir, essay, creative non-fiction) that has emerged from the African Diaspora. Comparative studies are especially welcome, as are interdisciplinary approaches.

We hope that this Special Issue will stimulate new research in the suggested areas (above). While analyzing literature by well-recognized authors, they will also draw attention to emerging writers who engage with some aspect of the African Diaspora, from depictions of the Middle Passage and narratives of experiences of enslavement in locations throughout the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas to the multifaceted resistance, liberation, and abolition movements across the Diaspora. The papers in this Special Issue will ideally examine challenges to geographies rooted in colonialism; further the analysis of Relation as theorized by Glissant and others; explore and apply Sylvia Wynter's theories of the Human; provide new insights on Afrofuturism and other forms of speculative fiction that play with genre, move beyond conventional boundaries and forms, and experiment with time and space. Reviews of recently published books that engage with the African Diaspora are also welcome. Ideally, this Special Issue will illuminate new paths for scholarship in a wide range of areas engaging with the literature and culture of the African Diaspora.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, Dr. Johanna X. K. Garvey (JKGarvey@fairfield.edu), and CC the Assistant Editor of Literature, Ms. Joyce Xi (joyce.xi@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Johanna Garvey
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Literature 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 1000 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.

• African diaspora
• Afrofuturism
• geographies and cartographies
• resistance and revolution
• abolition
• environment and ecology
• Glissant
• Brand
• Wynter
• Fanon, Black and indigenous convergences
• Atlantic world