THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED.

Special Issue Call for Papers:

Rebuilding the Ruins: Contemporary Performing Arts in the Caribbean and Latin America

Deadline for Abstracts: February 25, 2025

“The sigh of History rises over ruins, not landscapes, and in the Antilles, there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts.”

~ Derek Walcott

IYARIC is a graduate student-run journal at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, York University.

Our upcoming special issue, Rebuilding the Ruins: Contemporary Performing Arts in the Caribbean and Latin America, considers the rich landscape of contemporary performing arts in the region and its diasporas. We ask: how can the performing arts become a site of reclamation and reimagining of life in and across the region?

Our diverse peoples, their lands, and cultures have been a source of global extraction for centuries. The region’s cultural products like music, dance, and other art forms, like its raw materials, land, and labour, have long played a supporting role in the imaginary of the Global North. The sultry, syncopated “habanera” rhythm made popular in French composer George Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen traces its roots to Cuban dance forms. The bossa nova craze of the 1950s-60s was first popularized in Rio de Janeiro from the Afro-Brazilian genre samba and eventually became popular throughout North America. And most major urban centers in North America boasts a salsa dance scene – a dance form originating in Cuba in the early 20th century.

The vibrant culture of the region has been globalized in “highly uneven and hierarchical spaces yet manages to provide attractive options for social transformations that are full of historical agency” (Benavides, 2014). The ethos of resistance that animates Caribbean and Latin American art inspires artists elsewhere in the Global South. For example, reggae’s African roots come full circle in the music of Ethiopian singer-songwriter Teddy Afro, known for his revolutionary lyrics. This special issue explores the transformative potential of the performing arts to reclaim and reimagine a life in the region that resists commodification and continued extraction.

Guest editor Keisha Bell invites proposals from graduate students, independent scholars, activists, and creatives. We welcome original submissions of and about music, dance, poetry, theatre, and film in the Caribbean, Latin America, and their diasporas. Various formats will be considered, including:

• Critical Essays: Critical essays should aim to be between 1500 – 3500 words.
• Reviews: Of books, theatre performances, dance, films, visual and installation art, music, and sound art, etc. Priority will be given to work that resonates with the theme of the current issue, but this is not required. Reviews should be 500 – 850 words.
• Poetry, lyrics, sheet music: Maximum 3 pages. Poetry can consist of one long poem, or three separate poems so long as the entry fits within these limits.
• Creative Non-Fiction: Works of literary non-fiction should be between 1500 – 3000 words. Submissions must engage with IYARIC’s current theme in some way and can include work like auto theory and biblio-memoirs that cross the borders of criticism, non-fiction, and creative writing.
• Visual Art: We accept photography, graphic design, paintings, and drawings, as well as photos of sculpture or performance art. In the abstract section, please include a brief statement that speaks to how your submission responds to the current topic.
• Original recorded music (Max. 5 minutes. Mp3, WAV)
• Performance videos (Max 5 minutes. Mp3, WAV)
• Interviews (Max. 3 pages)
• Photographic or visual essays (Max. 3000 words–if relevant, including references)
• Commentaries and Reflections (Max. 3000 words, including references)

Some questions to consider include but are not limited to:

• How can/do the performing arts respond to multiple crises (environmental, social, economic, and political) facing the region?
• How do the performing arts serve as a site of reclamation and reimagining of life across the Caribbean and Latin America?
• How do our arts influence, shape, contribute to global and local resistance movements?
• How do artists navigate the tension between serving local versus global audiences?
• How can the performing arts be a source of resistance for the diaspora at large?

Submission guidelines:

Please submit proposals which include an abstract (250 words max.), working title, up to three keywords, and a short bio (150 words max.) by February 25, 2025. Proposals must be submitted to our online portal here.

Final pieces are due by Friday, May 9, 2025.

We invite submissions in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese (for submissions in Indigenous languages, please email the EIC*). IYARIC supports multimodal submissions.

If you require further guidance or have general questions, please email our guest editor Keisha Bell at kbkovacs@yorku.ca or our EIC at iyaric@yorku.ca.

_{Benavides, O. Hugo "Popular Culture and Globalization". In obo in Latin American Studies, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0129.xml (accessed 24 Jan. 2025).}