(CfP) We are all Monsters/We are all Saints: Haunted Migrations and LatIndigenous Ghost Story

You still have two weeks to send in an abstract for this fantastic-looking edited collection, under contract with the new University Press of Mississippi’s Horror and Monstrosity Studies Series. The collection is edited by Dr Shantel Martinez.

Re-posted from the Latinx Studies Association website:

Deadline: June 30th, 2020
Email contact or weblink : weareallmonstersandsaints@gmail.com or shmartinez@csumb.edu
Since the foundational publication of Avery Gordon’s (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination to the Spectralities Reader by Peeren and Blanco (2013), the subject of hauntology and ‘the spectral’ is rapidly growing across academic disciplines such as communication, critical rhetoric, sociology, literary studies, photography, media studies, anthropology, diaspora studies, cultural theory, trauma studies, and philosophy. The ‘spectral turn’ is quickly shaping into an instrumental tool for deconstructing everyday practices and experiences. While issues of race, gender, and sexuality are frequently included in these conversations (e.g. Holland’s (2000) Raising the Dead and Cacho’s (2012) Social Death), they have yet to be sufficiently explored and addressed in Latinidad. And, although Latinx studies is comfortable discussing topics of death and haunting (e.g. Dia de los Muertos), it has yet to be fully analyzed as a theoretical and methodological framework.

Similarly, we acknowledge the history and presence of indigenous histories and storytelling practices as intimately connected to those of the Latinx community (e.g. La Llorona), and thus introduce the term “Latindigenous” to speak to this intersection. Latindigenous, then, is a term and concept we use to name indigenous people and people of indigenouns descent from Latin America or the Southwest US borderlands and their stories, hauntings, and spectrality. Conceptually, then, this book will explore how ghost stories foreground Latinindgenous peoples’ sense of belonging and home, that in return provide for a nuanced understanding of our intersectional and intergenerational lives, bodies, traumas, and experiences. As such, this research dislocates the concept of ‘home’ away from physical constructions and posits that it is our spectral stories and storytelling practices that actively configure these affective states and spaces of being, becoming, migration, displacement, and belonging.

Contributions to this edited collection represent an ongoing commitment to elucidating how bodies, identities, and stories are assigned meaning in society through illuminating, deconstructing, and questioning who is labeled societal monsters, saints, and ghosts in the ebbs and flows of global migration. For many marginalized and displaced peoples, a sense of belonging is always haunted through historical exclusion from an original homespace. This exclusion further manifests as limited control over their own bodies. By utilizing alternative storytelling practices and critical rhetorical studies to examine a variety of texts and sites, our aim is to expand current notions of spectrality, haunting, and belongingness in Latindigenous communities.

Chapter Guidelines The chapters in this collection will be comprised of writings of all kinds (essays, testimonios, poems) as well as visual artwork images. The writings and/or artwork should be grounded in the central themes of the book as well as may be inspired or respond to the following:

  • Intergenerational ‘ghost stories’– stories that have existed amongst and in-between generations
  • Border/migration saints and monsters
  • Family/community curses transcending generations and/or space
  • Moments of resistance, transformation, symbolism, or creation of myths, monsters, or ghosts
  • Specters of trauma
  • Historic and contemporary ghosts, monsters, or saints within marginalized communities/families
  • Racialized bodies as spectral beings in society; spectral body(ies) as text
  • Reconceptualizing testimonio as ghost story and/or myth
  • Locating haunted traumas and displacement
  • Intersectional ‘hauntings’–the spectralism of race, gender, sexuality, citizenship status, etc.
  • Immaterial ghostly forms of oppression, intimacy, and kinship
  • Other themes related to haunting, spectrality, and/or migrations

While submissions should be informed by a range of these themes, proposals should be written with accessibility in mind as this text is intended for a broad readership. The goal is to develop a collection that allows people from varied backgrounds to find peace and belonging with their monsters and saints.

Proposal Submission Format For authors proposing written work: a 500-word abstract and a chapter title. Please include contributor name(s), a 200-word bio and contact information (email, mailing address, and phone number). For artists proposing artwork: a 500-word (artist’s) statement to include the contributor’s intended artistic approach to the theme, a link to a personal/professional webpage (if applicable), and a selection of five images of your work with standard caption details (completed within the last 5-7 years; not necessarily in the same medium). Send high resolution images of each work to enable the editors to form as accurate an idea of the contributor’s practice. Please include: contributor’s name, 200-word author bio and contact information (email, mailing address, and phone number).

Submission Procedures and Timeline Submit proposals as .doc or .docx email attachments to weareallmonstersandsaints@gmail.com

Proposal Submission Due: June 30, 2020

Review Results Sent to Authors: August 31, 2020

Full Chapters Due: January 1, 2021

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