Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies - LACES
A Routledge journal

Special Issue on Afro-Latin Americans of West Indian Descent

Guest Editor: Ifeoma C.K. Nwankwo (Vanderbilt University)

LACES Editors: Peter Wade (University of Manchester) and Rhoda Reddock (University of the West Indies, St. Augustine)

Race and ethnicity are not just identity categories, but also tools used by states to mete out rewards or punishments and factors that determine the paradigms scholars use to study populations as well as the issues to which they choose to be attentive. This special issue will argue for the significance of the literatures, cultures, and lives of Afro-Latin Americans of British Caribbean origin for scholars? attempts to fully comprehend the past, present, and future dynamics of ethnic, racial, national, and transnational identification and relation in the Americas. Existing between overlapping, linked, and often conflicting histories and realities, these populations work generation by generation to carve out spaces for themselves, producing intellectual work, popular cultures, social movements, institutions, ways of speaking, and approaches to self-definition and articulation. As such, their struggles to balance Old World inheritances with the creations of the New, to make sense of systems of relationality within the ?New World? itself, and to envision a future while not forgetting the past constitute a microcosm of the challenges faced and decisions made by all the peoples of the Atlantic World in the wake of Columbus? fateful journeys.

We invite submissions of original work from any discipline that advances the prevailing discourses on Afro-Latin Americans of British Caribbean origin and the relevant dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity in the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. We are especially interested in articles, shorter research essays, and book reviews. Questions authors may wish to consider include:

• How does work on and by these communities implicitly interrogate the conventional boundaries of Latino Studies, Latin American Studies, Caribbean Studies, post-colonial studies, and African American Studies and how do they help us to think critically about the future structure and orientation of these fields?
• As the products of multiple colonial mother countries (England and Spain), multiple national imaginaries (e.g. Panama, the United States, Barbados), and multiple popular cultures and political movements (e.g. Hip-hop, U.S. civil rights), to what extent do Afro-Latin Americans of West Indian descent differ from other communities such as U.S. African Americans and Black Britons that have been more frequently the subject of scholarly discourse?
• How do they represent a distinctive departure point for rethinking the meanings of theoretical and conceptual frameworks such as the Black Atlantic, transculturation, mestizaje, and creolization?
• How have relations between Afro-Latin Americans of British Caribbean origin and other Afro-Latin Americans shaped these communities? social and political possibilities?
• What is the nature and impact of women?s movements arising from within these communities and how have they affected these populations? international visibility and engagement?

One- page abstracts should be sent to [email protected] by May 28, 2007. Confirmed contributors will be required to submit completed manuscripts by December 1, 2007.

The field-leading journals Journalism Practice and Journalism Studies are launching a biennial conference, sponsored by Routledge, Taylor & Francis and hosted by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC). The inaugural conference in September 2007 will focus on the highly contested future of newspapers with contributions from the international community of academics, along with newspaper executives, trade unionists, journalists and regulators.

Newspapers around the globe confront particular difficulties and highly variable prospects reflecting their location in different market sectors, countries and journalism cultures. Despite this diversity, newspapers face similar challenges in responding to the increased competition from expansive local and national radio; 24-hour television news channels; the emergence of free "Metro" papers; the delivery of news services on billboards, pod casts and mobile telephony; the development of online editions, as well as the burgeoning of blogs, citizen journalists and User Generated Content (UGC). Newspapers' revenue streams are also under attack as advertising increasingly migrates online. Pessimistic pundits predict the end of newspapers, while others see the future of newspapers online and yet others argue for an investment "in journalism" and "quality", rather than cart loads of free gift offers and DVDs, as the necessary cure for the current parlous state of print news media.

The opening plenary exploring "Newspapers in the 21st Century; Trends and Developments" will be delivered by Peter Preston, ex-Editor of the UK Guardian and Observer and media commentator for the Observer. Jane Singer, University of Iowa and Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism, University of Central Lancashire, will lead discussion of newspapers and new media.

Papers are invited on the following broad themes:

• The future of Newspapers: An overview from five continents (Africa; Asia; Europe; Australia and North and South America);
• The Future of Newspapers; New media, Blogs, Citizen journalism and UGC;
• The Future of Newspapers as Business Enterprises - Ownership, Advertising, sales, marketing, labour costs, the free newspaper model.
• The Future of Newspaper Editorial Contents; Dumbing up or down?
• The Future of Community, Local and Regional Newspapers

Titles and abstracts for papers should be emailed (by 31 March 2007) to Bob Franklin, the Editor at [email protected] All papers will be reviewed by a panel of specialists and members of the Editorial Board. If you are interested in advertising at this event, please contact [email protected]

The Radical History Review is currently seeking submissions for an issue exploring reconceptualizations of the African Diaspora. The past thirty years has seen a burst of scholarly interest in relationships among African descended people in the New World. Concerted intellectual effort has been devoted to the cultural forms, politics, and history of African Diaspora populations in Europe and the Americas, and has even moved beyond these models to include black populations in Africa. The field has generated essays outlining its early history within black studies, its relationship to other new and emerging fields in transnational and transatlantic studies, and its possible directions for future scholarship.

We believe the time is ripe for interrogating current conceptualizations of African Diaspora studies, revising paradigms and revealing alternate experiences.

Has the field gone far enough in exploring non-US-centric approaches to black diasporic identity, both generally and alongside historical interventions about the African descended in the United States? Has enough attention been paid to diaspora movements within Africa, and contemporary transnational relations amongst continental Africans in addition to those between various African populations and Diaspora communities?

How can we historicize contemporary events that have created new African diasporas, such as East African immigration; recent events in Paris or the notion of a "black Paris; and neo-liberal economic policies?

Finally, have scholars sufficiently explored the gendered underpinning of African Diaspora politics, both in theory and in practice?

For this issue we seek essays examining the following clusters of topics and queries, either directly or by exploring specific cases, events, figures, communities and texts:

• Can we de-centralize the United States in African Diaspora studies? How has Europe, and constructions of the "West" and "Africa" been conceptualized in diaspora scholarship thus far? How does the African diaspora reach beyond the Americas and how do the politics and constructions of "the West" influence diasporan communities?
• How can the diaspora framework be used to historicize contemporary immigration and upheaval in various parts of the world? What are the relationships between Diaspora, race, and "the local"? How do African Diaspora studies contribute to understandings of less mobile histories, places,and communities? Are Diaspora identities alwaysmigratory?
• What is the relationship between "Diaspora" and "African Diaspora"? What is the relationship between "Transnational" and "African Diaspora"? How do these fields' major debates and lines of intellectual inquiry converge and diverge? How are idiosyncratic geographies in dialogue, such as the "Black Pacific" and the "Black Atlantic"?
• In what ways do current conceptualizations of African Diaspora history and politics challenge or reiterate other normative identities, including political masculinities, heterosexuality, ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, and nationalism? Is the notion of a "black community," often locally, regionally, or even nationally bounded, relevant to the African Diaspora? What are gendered reframings of African Diaspora history? How might queer studies enable deeper understandings of the African Diaspora?
• In what ways should we rethink, reinterpret, or complicate the relationship between race and the politics of racial identity, and even political identity? Does the field of African Diaspora studies encourage or discourage the assumption of race as the primary political axis for the African descended? How have politics in the African Diaspora included "identities" or political alliances that cross racial boundaries and/or racial categorization? What African Diaspora cases exist that explore intra-racial identities and categories?(gendered, class-bound, regional, phenotypic, etc.)
• Does the "Diaspora" as it is frequently conceptualized highlight change or continuity? What is the relationship of the African Diaspora to modernity, beyond the 20th and 21st centuries?

By March 15, 2007 please submit a 1 to 2 page abstract that summarizes your article to [email protected]. By April 15, 2007 authors will be notified whether they should submit their article in full. The due date for solicited, complete articles is September 1, 2007. All articles will then be subject to peer review. Those articles selected for publication after the peer review process will be included in issue 103 of the Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in winter 2009.

Abstracts should be submitted electronically, as an attachment, to [email protected] with "Issue 103 submission" in the subject line. For artwork, please send images as high resolution digital files (each image as a separate file). For preliminary e-mail inquiries, please include "Issue 103" in the subject line.

Abstract Deadline: March 15, 2007
Email: [email protected]

LOCUS SUSPECTUS MAGAZINE is a non-profit organization that was founded in Montreal in 2005. Within its first publishing-year, Suspectus has increased its readership and cultivated a circulation and subscription-base across Canada and abroad.

Currently planning for our fourth issue, we are seeking submissions from writers and artists on the topic of 'technology and nature'. The pervasive presence of new and increasingly sophisticated technology in our society has affected our relationship to the natural world and to our own bodies. The editors are interested in exploring these issues through both the visual arts and articles, which address broader social concerns.

Artist Guidelines
Artist submissions will be considered for profiles, feature interviews and the gallery section (an exhibition on paper). We only accept digital submissions. Please include a maximum of 20 images (jpg, psd, bmp, tiff format), image list, artist statement and cv. In addition to the above digital formats, we will also accept short video submissions for electronic publication in our "Featured Artist" section on www.lsmagazine.ca .

Writer Guidelines
We are interested in the following: profiles of artists whose work addresses this topic, or articles which address the socio-economic and/or historical aspects of the changing relationship between nature and technology. We accept digital submissions in the following formats: a) near to complete draft (500-3000 words), with a 50 word bio OR b) proposal of no more than 500 words, accompanied by a publishing resume.

Send To
Email your submissions to [email protected] , with "Nature and Technology - Your Name" in the subject heading.

On 7 September 1907 in Vancouver, British Columbia, the local white population targeted Asian immigrants in a violent, racist protest, which later resulted in systematic federal restrictions against Asian immigration. The riot's roots lay deep in anti-Asian sentiment among white migrants fanned by media accounts of an "Asian Invasion" in BC. Around the same time in other parts of the British Empire and the United States, similar race-inspired "race riots" ensued. Faced with anti-imperial and anti-racist resistance at home and abroad, the Empires of the 20th century grew more repressive until the end of the Second World War, when despite the continuation of imperialist practices around the world, decolonization and anti-discrimination struggles finally led to important changes. In Canada, for example, the 1947 Citizenship Act and changes to immigration laws in 1967 were significant milestones in the quest for justice. What has the legacy of colonialism and imperialism taught us about the pursuit of justice and equality?

Much has changed in the past 100 years, yet today we face a global climate of fear and a "war on terror" that feeds off racial and religious profiling. Indigenous and minority peoples around the world continue to live the reality of colonialism, foreign occupation and ethnic discrimination, not to mention the conceptual, spatial and geo-political barriers set in place against migrant workers and refugees. New forms of territorial belonging and identification have arisen in the form of "displaced communities". On the one hand these diasporas offer the potential to transcend boundaries, while on the other they re-affirm and re-legitimize notions of "boundaries" and "borders." Furthermore, gender inequality and discrimination based on sexual orientation still pervade societies at all levels. How do we evaluate our contemporary, modern era of Empire and imperialism? Can we achieve a world without prejudice and without Empire(s)?

On 15-16 June 2007, graduate students from across Canada will come together to grapple with these questions at the University of Victoria, BC. This symposium will highlight the diverse work of students who examine "local" and "global" issues and topics such as racism, segregation and ethnocentrism, integral elements to the continuation of imperialism and Empire. This symposium builds on the success of the June 2006 Deconstructing Empire gathering, which focused on World Peace.

We invite graduate researchers from all disciplines to submit paper and poster proposals for this two-day symposium. We also hope to have a selection of papers published in a faculty-reviewed e-journal. Examples of related research topics include: global migration patterns; historical and legal dimensions of war and peace; reform, revolution, and conflict resolution; analyses of government, institutional and academic policy; examples of alternate economies; global education and social movements; and the interconnectedness of racism with heterosexism, ablism, anthropocentrism, sexism and so on.

First-time presenters are welcome and encouraged to attend. Please send a maximum 200 word abstract to [email protected] by 28 February 2007. You will be notified of your confirmation no later than 1 April 2007. We look forward to discussing these issues, and working collaboratively to deconstruct the imperialist Empires of our time.

The Canadian Association of Cultural Studies invites submissions for its national conference to be held at the University of Alberta, October 25-28, 2007. Submissions may be addressed to either cultural studies in general or to the embedded conference theme for 2007: "What's the Matter? Cultural Studies and The Question of Urgency".

For those interested in submitting to the embedded conference theme, we particularly seek submissions that turn themselves toward issues of intellectual and political urgency both outside and inside the university. Broad questions that might be considered include, but are not limited to: how do theoretical, political, methodological, pedagogical, ethical, you-fill-in-the-ical insights of cultural studies assist us in facing what is urgent, what presses on us for thinking otherwise? How are such insights productive for thinking about who and what matters (and drawing attention to who and what is constituted as not-mattering)? What is the now that matters? Where is the here? Who speaks "as" cultural studies, making claims on whom, about whom, and with what effects? What might be urgent for cultural studies to face, in this moment of its institutionalized histories? Organizers particularly encourage submissions that approach such questions in a creative, unorthodox and/or provocative manner.

In addition to papers that speak to the embedded theme, we invite submissions that more broadly take-up cultural studies modes of inquiry and relevance.

For both the open call and the embedded theme, please provide:

A 250 word abstract and paper title

An indication as to whether you are submitting to the open call or embedded theme

And, on a separate sheet:

3. Your paper title (again)

4. Your name and contact information (email, mailing address and phone number)

5. Institutional affiliation, if any

6. Specific AV needs, if any

Please separate your abstract from the other required information to ensure a blind review process.

Please note:

Submissions can be made only to the open call OR the embedded theme. Submissions to both will not be accepted; nor will multiple submissions be accepted to either call.

Pre-constituted panels of no more than three presenters per panel and alternative format sessions will be considered by the conference organizers, on their merits and according to the restrictions of time and space. If you are submitting a pre-constituted panel, please provide: a panel title with a 100 word panel abstract, and individual paper titles each with a 250 word abstract. Ensure that contact etc information is provided for all participants on the panel and that one person is designated as the chair and key contact person for conference organizers.

Les soumissions en français sont bienvenues.

Submissions from outside of Canada are welcome.

Sessions will be organized to allow for 20 minutes per paper.

All submissions will be subject to a blind, peer review process.

Submissions may be sent via mail (please send 2 copies) to:

CACS - Conference 2007
Department of Educational Policy Studies
7-104 Education North
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
CANADA
T6G 2G5

Or, submissions may be sent by email attachment (WORD only please) to [email protected] ; please ensure your subject line indicates Conference Submission.

Please address any inquiries to the above or email us at [email protected] or call (Canada) 780-492-0773.

In order to present at the conference, presenters need to be fully-paid members of CACS and registered at the conference. Please check our website for information concerning membership forms and, as the conference approaches, the registration process.

Further information about keynotes, local tours, book tables and other enticing conference events will be circulated as they become available. Please ensure you are on the CACS listserv to receive updates (check the website for details).

CACS website: http://www.culturalstudies.ca/index.html

The editorial staff for the new peer-reviewed journal Ethnoscapes: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Race and Ethnicity in the Global Context invites submissions for its inaugural issue on the subject of "Race and Coalition." Ethnoscapes maps the development of important themes in the field of race and ethnic studies by using a "classic" piece as a point of departure for a reconsideration of critical issues within the contemporary economic, political, and cultural terrain.

While the classic piece establishes the thematic parameters of each issue, authors are under no obligation to actively engage the arguments posed by that work.

Issue one explores the subject of "Race and Coalition," with consideration of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton's "The Myths of Coalition" from the 1967 text Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. In this seminal essay, the authors question the viability of coalitions that do not seek radical changes in racial hierarchy, include partners with disparate amounts of economic and political power, and rely on sentimentality and good will to build and maintain cohesiveness.

The authors argue instead that viable and productive coalitions must:

1) Recognize the self-interests of the groups involved in the relationship;
2) Have the capacity for realizing the self-interests of each group;
3) Articulate their own "independent base of power";
4) Have specific goals.

Proceeding from this articulation of coalition politics, Ethnoscapes seeks manuscripts that investigate the dynamics of "Race and Coalition" with particular attention to one or more of the following themes:

A) Theoretical Foundations of Coalition. If organizing is no longer forged on the basis of shared identity or "unity," what serves as the "foundation" for political mobilization? What new forms of coalition, alliance, or issue-based organizing have emerged in the current political, economic, and cultural context? Can these convergences operate only temporarily or can they be more sustained? How can/must/do coalitions negotiate differences along the lines of gender, sexuality, nation, religion, and class in articulating a shared platform? What productive alliances have been or can be forged between different marginalized groups? What makes these coalitions cohere? How do these projects (re)shape experiences of race and ethnicity?

B) The Multicultural Terrain of Organizing in the United States. With the rise of Asian/Pacific American and Latino/a social movements, how is "coalition" being rearticulated today? Does the "people of color" construct, expressing the common bonds of non-white groups, make continuing sense? What new challenges to coalition-building emerge in the context of the variable power relations of nation, economic operations, and discourse that characterize the contemporary multiracial terrain of US organizing? What strategies can be mobilized to negotiate these differences? What roles are available to whites in multiracial coalitions and in coalitions for racial justice?

C) The Global Context. What challenges and possibilities do new communications and other technologies linking people across the globe offer for multiracial coalitions? How do the ties of nation, state, and culture complicate efforts to organize pan-ethnically? How can models of organizing around race throughout the world, or on behalf of racially identified groups and concerns, usefully inform organizing strategies in the US context, or vice versa? What is at stake and where are we headed?

The deadline for manuscript submission is February 16, 2007. Please send submissions to [email protected] and [email protected]. See http://www.kirwaninstitute.org/ethnoscapes/styleguide.html to prepare your document in accordance with the style guidelines of Ethnoscapes.

Abstracts and manuscripts is being solicited for a book on Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa: Intertwined and Contested Histories.

The volume aims explore the cultural role of colonial architecture and urbanism in the production of meanings, in the inscription of power and discipline, as well as in the dynamic construction of identities. Like other colonial institutions such as the courts, police, prisons, and schools that were crucial in establishing and maintaining political domination, colonial architecture and urban planning played pivotal roles in shaping the spatial and social structures of African cities during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The study of architecture and urbanism in the historiography of colonial Africa with few exceptions has received scant attention partly because historians tend to minimize the relationship between built environment and colonialism. Even when architecture and urban planning has been the focus of inquiry, the relationship between architecture and urbanism on one hand and colonialism on the other has not clearly delineated and carefully studied.

Historically, the literature on the subject treats colonial architecture and urbanism as a reflection of economic interests of imperial powers. These approaches emanate from the assumption that colonialism was essentially an economic project. Thus, culture as a dynamic of that process largely remains unexamined. The large body of work that has appeared in the past two decades provides a framework, upon which this edited volume will be based, begins from quite different assumptions: that is, it is precisely the cultural dimension of colonialism that evinces its centrality in the development of imperial identity and nationhood. As Dirks Nicholas (1992:1)) has suggested, "colonialism not only has had cultural effects that have too often been either ignored or displaced into the inexorable logics of modernization and world capitalism, it was itself a cultural project of control." Colonial knowledge both enabled colonial conquest and was produced by it; in certain ways culture was what colonialism was all about". In a similar vein, Edward Said (1993:11-12) has argued that the critical element of the cultural sphere in the "process of imperialism" which occur by predisposition, by the authority of recognizable cultural formations, by continuing consolidation within education, literature, and visual and musical arts." While acknowledging the importance of culture, Cooper and Stoler (1997:18) emphasize that, "cultural work in which states engage and the moralizing mission in which they invest are discursive fields both grounded and constitutive of specific relations of production and exchange." These scholars also caution us that the category of colonial project itself includes a multitude of different practices, that colonial power is never monolithic and changes over time, and that the resistance of colonized subjects must always seen as part of the story.

Social historians of Africa have now begun to study the complex ways in which colonial subjects contested the intricate workings of colonial power, particularly in language, identity and in the reorganization of space (Fabian 1986). By moving away from identifying discrete epochs of economic changes, this new approach to inquiry examines the creation and recreation of social boundaries, places of contest and their cultural representations, as well as the process by which knowledge emerges as a particular "type of power" (Foucault, 1980; Camoroff and Camoroff, 1991, Dirks, 1992). Thus the new inquiry suggests a more complex way of considering colonialism and its intricate modalities of power, the multilayered channels of its operation, its disciplinary methods, the hierarchy of surveillance, inspection and punishment by which its power has been inscribed in both time and space.

We welcome contributions that examine colonial architecture and urbanism in Africa in a single region, social or historical context. Throughout colonial Africa as it was true elsewhere, colonial architecture and urbanism assumed different trajectories revealing important tensions, competing agendas of settlers and metropolitan powers, doubts about the legitimacy of projects and unpredictable responses from "unruly natives" which complicated the original intention.

As a working hypothesis, colonial architecture and urbanism in Africa created a built environment that fit discursively, into the administrative apparatus of the empire: architecture and urbanism sought to project the authority of the European powers at the same time stabilized the fragile European identity at the colonial frontier; the intentional and semiotic function of architecture and urbanism in the colonies made them an appropriate sites for imperial projects; the production of buildings and plans are themselves the outcome of social production and these 'texts' reproduced the contradictions and limitations of the empire. Since Africans were subjects of these architectural and urban planning schemes, they responded in a variety of ways, which emerged out of their material and historical circumstances. Subversion, accommodation, appropriation, neglect and destruction were hidden transcripts to contest the hegemony of colonial architecture and urban planning schemes.

In setting out to explore the connections, contributors are encouraged to explore colonial architecture and urbanism as discursive cultural projects in Africa. Like writing which was widely used by colonial powers to appropriate people through the medium of writing and regulate their lives through the world of writing (Hawkins, 2002), architecture and urban planning also functioned in a similar way. More than other material instruments of the empire, architecture and urbanism made the empire visible and tangible. As "black mark on white paper" or "the world of drawing on paper" architecture and urbanism sought to regulate the daily lives, habits and desires of the indigenous people as well as European settlers. Indeed, it was the cultural destination of architecture and urbanism and the connection between them and colonialism that the volume seeks to broaden the discussion.

Our goal is to assemble 12 to 14 chapters for this volume that cover a wide range of colonial cities and urbanism in Africa. Final submission should be 25-30 double-spaced pages. Drawing, maps and photographs are welcome. The deadline for submission of title and abstract of proposed paper is June 15, 2005. Abstract of proposal should be 200 words. Completed manuscript, February 15, 2006.

The University of South Africa Press has agreed to publish the volume. The edited book on colonial architecture and urbanism will be of critical importance to scholars and students of colonialism. It will also participate in the ongoing debate on architectural, urban and postcolonial studies, which seeks, in part to reconfigure modes of cultural analysis and academic disciplines which focus on the operations of power and its deployment within the field of architecture and urban planning in Africa and elsewhere in the world. If you are interested in contributing to this volume, please contact:

Fassil Demissie
Public Policy Studies
DePaul University
2352 N. Clifton Ave, Suite 150
Chicago, IL 60614
[email protected]