Call for Papers for Special Series
on
Deportation and Coerced Return in the Américas
Editors: Perla M. Guerrero and Gretel H. Vera-Rosas
NEW Submission Deadline: September 1, 2023
Publication Date: April 2024
The online site Latinx Talk for research, commentary, and creativity invites your submission of 2000 words or less on deportation and coerced return.
Much U.S. scholarship on deportation has focused on the spread of deportation and policing beyond the border region; the federal, state, and local policies and practices that target and/or terrorize specific groups for detention and expulsion; and the growth of detention centers. Mainstream narratives focused on figures such as the “Dreamer” (a young undocumented person forced to return to a country of their birth because of opportunities foreclosed in the U.S.) or the “criminal” (an individual whose infractions led to incarceration, detention, or deportation) tend to obscure the complexity of undocumented people’s lives in the United States and in the countries of forced return. New research directions in deportation studies includes the examination of a growing call center industry in Mexico and Central America that uses younger deportees’ English language fluency as a marketable and exploitable skill as well as the challenges that children, families, and school systems in countries of origin face when English-dominant children are deported. Yet, there is much more to be considered.
We invite submissions to this special series on Latinx Talk that seeks to expand what we know about deportation and coerced return. We especially invite people who have been shaped by deportation and return to share their insights and perspectives with the Latinx Talk community. We welcome submissions addressing some of the following questions: How are children affected by deportation and coerced return of family and community members? How do race, gender, LGBTQ+ identity, and disability shape deportation and return? How does centering culture as a site of ongoing political and social struggle complicate our understanding of deportation, belonging, and social justice? What type of collectivities and unlikely alliances and organizing has this type of structural violence and displacement produced?
Please email the issue co-editors with any questions: guerrero@umd.edu and grosas@csudh.edu
Issue Co-Editors: Perla M. Guerrero and Gretel H. Vera-Rosas are co-authors of “Immigrant Identity is ‘Twin Skin’ to Linguistic Identity: Tracing the Afterlife of Deportation in Mexico City,” American Quarterly 73 (3): 1–28. doi:10.1353/aq.2021.0034. Perla M. Guerrero is Associate Professor of American Studies and U.S. Latina/o Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research and teaching interests include relational race and ethnicity with a focus on Latinxs and Asian Americans, space and place, immigration and legality, labor, U.S. and Mexican history. She has received multiple awards including a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and two from the Smithsonian Institution to be a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of American History (NMAH). She is the author of Nuevo South: Latinas/os, Asians, and Remaking of Place and is currently working on her second book, Deportation’s Aftermath: Displacement and Making a Life in Exile. She has published an interview with Maggie Loredo on deportation and coerced return, “To Belong Aquí y Allá” in Southern Cultures. Gretel H. Vera-Rosas is a mother-scholar, poet, and Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her poetry and work on visual culture, immigrant maternity, and displacement in the Américas has been published in The Acentos Review and The Chicana Motherwork Anthology, as well as scholarly journals such as e-misférica, Feminist Formations, Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, and American Quarterly. Vera-Rosas current research explores the limits and opportunities offered by visual cultural production to critically think about the social worlds destroyed and produced by the drug wars and security and immigration policies. She is working on a book manuscript that centers film, silk-screening, performance, and photography to analyze the visual economies of deportation, migration and the war on drugs in Mexico.
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General Call for Submissions
Spring to Fall 2023, Ongoing
The online site Latinx Talk for research, commentary, and creativity invites your submission of 2000 words or less on any topic related to Latinx Studies or Latinx communities.
We welcome all research, commentary, and reviews and are especially interested in the following topics:
Latinx Literatures of Migration 2023
Following our series in 2020, Latinx Talk invites submissions about migration in the literary imagination. The decades-long irresolution of U.S. domestic policy on immigration quotas and pathways to citizenship has led to an abundance of Latinx creative expression addressing the condition, situation, and experience of migration and immigration, the difficulties of incorporation into the U.S., and the ethical, moral, and philosophical questions this poses for the U.S. as a nation. This abundance has manifested in virtual reality installations such as Carne y Arena by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (2017), performances such as Teatro Vista’s production of Brian Quijada’s Somewhere Over the Border (2022), first-person accounts of migration, life in mixed-status families, or adaption to the U.S. such as Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the Land (2020), Myriam Gurba’s Mean (2017) and Reyna Grande’s A Distance Between Us (2012), Javier Zamora’s Solito (2022), as well as fictional portrayals such as Angie Cruz’s How Not to Drown in A Glass of Water (2022), Cristina Henríquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans (2014) or Manuel Muñoz’s The Consequences (2022). This wealth of literature in multiple genres and formats explores questions of belonging, sexuality, disability, labor exploitation, divided families and families divided by immigration policy or detention. We welcome pieces that analyze, unpack, critique, and reflect upon these and other literary and performative explorations of migration in Latinx communities.
Sustainability
A second topic on which we invite submissions is sustainability. The climate report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2023 sounds the alarm on the need for immediate changes in sustainability practices. In line with this new research we welcome submissions that address the following questions: How are Latinx communities responding to the climate crisis? What are Latinx responses to the varied diagnosis and proposed solutions? What knowledges do our communities hold that might be valuable in developing solutions to the climate crisis? How are Latinx communities particularly vulnerable to climate crisis? What is Latinx research showing us about our role?
Latina Reproductive Health Care
A December 13, 2022 policy paper by Josefina Flores Morales and Julia Hernandez Nierenberg for the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that “in abortion-restrictive states, a greater share of Latina women are of childbearing age compared to non-Hispanic white women,” making this denial of reproductive health care a dire situation for Latinx communities. How have Latinas organized and fought for reproductive rights in the U.S.? How have Latinas been harmed by the attacks of reproductive rights? What are the current experiences and situations of Latinas facing these new restrictions? How do these restrictions intersect with immigration status to delimit who has access to reproductive rights? Why are people in Latin America organizing toward the codification of full reproductive rights whereas in the U.S. we see movement toward restriction?
Latinx Media
In addition to several new and exciting series about Latinx life that have emerged on streaming platforms – some perhaps with too-short screen lives – we have noticed an increase in podcasts and radio programs geared toward Latinx audiences. In what new ways do streaming/television series imagine Latinx life? What accounts for the early cancellation of Latinx media productions in English? How is gender significant in these new series? Is Spanish-language media more appealing to Latinx audiences than English-language media? Radio and podcast programming has grown in both mainstream and independent sources in English, Spanish and indigenous languages. This has opened space for innovation and depth of coverage. With reference to radio and podcasts, beyond language preferences, how do the soundscapes of Latinidad and indigeneity shape a listening positionality? What can we learn about audiences, media productions, and digital storytelling by Latinx and indigenous creatives in radio and podcasting?
Submissions will be accepted throughout 2023 via email at latinxtalk@gmail.com. They will then be sent out for peer review and afterwards scheduled for publication. Please direct submission and/or any questions to latinxtalk@gmail.com.
Latinx Talk is an online, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and moderated forum for the circulation of original research, commentary, and creative work in brief and diverse formats ranging from 500-2,000 words. For more information about the genres in which we publish, please see our Submission Guidelines.
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Queer and Trans Latinx (or Queer and Trans Latinidad/es): A Special Forum
This CFP is closed. The Trans Latinx series was published in 2022. See main page for essays in this series.
Guest Editors: Maylei Blackwell, Francisco Galarte, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
Latinx Talk invites short (500-2,000 word) contributions on queer and trans or LGBTQIA+ Latinidad/es, or reflections that engage and challenge the concepts of queer, trans, and Latinx. We also welcome reflections on queer and/or trans Latinx identities, practices, or communities in and outside of the United States and Canada. What are the most pressing concerns at the intersection of queer, trans, and Latinx? How have these been addressed in activism, cultural production, and scholarship? How have they been transformed by electoral politics, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other local, national, or global situations? What happens if we think of queer and trans Latinx issues in a hemispheric framework? Or in relation to the queer of color and trans of color critique? Or in relation to queer and trans diaspora studies, or to specific ethnic studies fields? How are queer, trans, and Latinx being addressed in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and professional disciplines? What happens when we center queer, trans, and Latinx in academia, or outside of it?
We invite a variety of submissions including those focusing on:
- The meanings of queer and trans Latinx or Latinidad/es in 2021
- Queering Latinx/Queering Latinidad or Transing Latinx/Transing Latinidad
- Queering/Transing Afrolatinidades and Indigenous Latinidades
- Queering/Transing Chicanx studies, Puerto Rican studies, Cuban American studies, Dominican American studies, Central American-American studies, South American-American studies, and/or Latina/Latino/Latinx studies
- Intersections of queer and trans studies and activism with other fields and social identities
- S. queer/trans discourses and culture in a hemispheric framework and/or in tension with cuir, marica, jotx, travesti or other concepts
- Jotería, mariconería, patería, locura as conceptual, artistic, and/or activist terms and practices
- New developments in the field. Intersections of queer/trans studies and Latinx studies
- New and emerging queer/trans/nonbinary (or other) Latinx artists, writers, scholars
- Language and queer/trans Latinx or Latinidad/es
- Cultural productions: Pose, Legendary, RuPaul’s Drag Race and others
- Geographic specificities, migration, and queer/trans Latinidad/es
- Archival approaches, archival practices in Queer and Trans Latinx Studies
- Performance, Nightlife and queer/trans Latinx community
- Disability Studies, Fat Studies, and other approaches to embodiment, desire and access in Latinx Studies
- Antiracism and queer/trans Latinx activism and culture
Submissions will be accepted through September 1, 2021 via email. They will then be sent out for peer review and afterwards scheduled for publication in October 2021. Please direct submission and/or any questions to latinxtalk@gmail.com.
Latinx Talk is an online, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and moderated forum for the circulation of original research, commentary, and creative work in brief and diverse formats ranging from 500-2,000 words. For more information about the genres in which we publish, please see https://latinxtalk.org/submission-guidelines/.
Image (used with permission):
La Mas, Virgen
Artist: Martin Wannam, follow him on Instagram @martinwannamremix