UNTITLED/SIN TÍTULO/SAN TIT

Deadline: December 6, 2025

UNTITLED: Without a name or designation; undistinguished by honour or rank; deprived of a title; having no right or claim.

Title - in its various instantiations of name, identity, rank, ownership, or claim - has been used as a tool of imperialism, colonialism, and ongoing coloniality of power in the Americas. Title has moulded Latin American and Caribbean societies and impacted the lives of Latin American and Caribbean peoples in the region and diasporas. This themed issue of IYARIC aims to explore the metaphorical, legal, metaphysical and physical ways in which being or to be UNTITLED, historically and contemporarily, created, negated and transformed geographies, knowledge systems, and subjectivities in Latin America, the Caribbean and their diasporas. It also explores the politics of knowledge production about and in the region, engaging authors in the communal praxis of naming, building, contesting and deconstructing the intellectual and political projects that spaces and sites such as the IYARIC Journal represent.

We invite interdisciplinary proposals that probe “UNTITLED” as a site of colonial and imperial violence, a frame for creativity and resistance, and a category to make visible contemporary and ongoing vulnerabilities and dis/possessions. Possible themes and questions may include, but are not limited to:

• Colonial Epistemic Violence: How did and do colonial systems render Indigenous knowledge systems as ‘untitled’ or invalid? How do decolonial and anticolonial thought and praxis challenge colonial epistemic violence? What ethics and politics of knowledge production must we engage in to resist colonial and imperial epistemic violence?
• Afterlives of Indigenous dispossession, Slavery and Indentureship: What are the afterlives of dispossession, enslavement and indentureship which systematically removed, denied, and deprived "titles" to names, land, and personhood to Indigenous peoples, African- and Indian-descendants across the region? What are the politics of reclamation?
• Migration, Im/migration and Im/mobility: What are the contemporary and historical experiences, and push and pull factors of moving and movement across and outside of the region? What are the lived dimensions of being "without papers" (sin titulos/sin documentos/sin papeles) and navigating institutions of the state? How do “catastrophes” (e.g., natural disasters, social and political disruptions) impact im/migration and im/mobility? How do neoimperial logics impact im/migration and im/mobility?
• Diaspora/s: How are diasporic communities made, named, and renamed across time and space?
• Gendered and Raced Freedoms: How have titles been conferred or denied to different bodies and subjectivities? What are the historical and contemporary ways women, girls, queer, as well as raced and other marginalized groups have been denied belonging to the body politic/nation? How have the ‘untitled’ creatively constructed politics and geographies of desires and belonging?
• Rights to land, waterways, beaches, and territory: How have different groups been denied or dispossessed of title to land, waterways, and territories across the region? What are or have been movements to reclaim denied or dispossessed title? How are rights to land, waterways and territories contested?
• Radical Creative Imagination: How have creative works resisted easy categorization or "titles," challenging colonial and imperial poetic, aesthetic and cultural forms? How have Black, Indigenous and Caribbean artistic and cultural expressions given name and honour to Latin American and Caribbean life, living and ways of being?
• Knowledge Production: What are/should be the ethics and politics of knowledge production and exchange? How do we build sites and spaces of anticoloniality and/or decoloniality in the region and its diasporas? How do we produce and curate knowledge about Latin America, the Caribbean and its diasporas?

The Editors invite submissions of critical essays, field notes, roundtables, creative works (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art, photo-essays, music lyrics), interviews, and analyses of books, art, music, and film. We welcome submissions from graduate students, independent scholars, artists/writers working outside and beyond the university, activists and community workers. Please review the detailed submission guidelines at iyaric.journals.yorku.ca/

Submission Guidelines

Please review IYARIC’s scope and author guidelines at iyaric.journals.yorku.ca before submitting work.

Please follow the steps below to submit your abstract:

• Submit an abstract of 250-300 words, with a working title, by December 6, 2025. Abstracts must be submitted through IYARIC’s OJS platform (iyaric.journals.yorku.ca).
• Submit your abstract as an “article text.” Note that OJS has no provisions for submitting an abstract alone.
• Requests for full pieces will be sent by December 20, 2025.

Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit the final manuscript by March 15, 2026. Invitation to submit a full manuscript does not indicate or guarantee publication. All research papers will be sent for anonymous external peer review. Some sections are Editor reviewed.

If you require further guidance or have general questions, please email the Editors at iyaric@yorku.ca