Call for Papers: Book Series: Afro-Latin@ Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan)

In recent decades, the fields of Black Studies, African Diaspora History, Afro-Latin American
Studies, and Afro-Latinx Studies have seen an explosion of research on transnational and
hemispheric Black Latin American communities. Yet, Black Central American knowledge
production remains understudied and undertheorized notwithstanding a rich genealogy of
scholarship that includes Armando Fortune’s early writings on the first Africans in Panama and
Myrna Manzanares’ campaign to preserve the Kriol language in Belize. Black Central América(s):
Ebbs and Flows of Hemispheric Blackness expands on the foundational work of these early
scholars while tapping into a robust and growing field of Black Central American Studies invested
in understanding socio-political and cultural links that stretch throughout the isthmus and to
various diasporic communities.

As a collective of Black Central American scholars, we propose to curate histories of Black
knowledge production on the isthmus that predate nineteenth-century independence movements
and take us into twenty-first-century discussions of equality, justice, citizenship, and belonging.
This edited volume will map out genealogies of Black Central American life in all of its modalities

and regional specificities, with particular attention given to gendered discourses of inclusion and
exclusion, how Black communities have created robust archival and memory keeping models,
generational shifts and convergences regarding LGBTQ+ visibility and activism, the place of
imperial, multinational, and neocapitalist practices and policies that both depend on and exclude
Black life, and the role of artists and cultural practitioners in imagining different forms of isthmian
and hemispheric belongings. In our articulations, we also remain attuned to the nation-state as a

geopolitical border of mestizo nationalism and colonial legacies grounded in ideologies of anti-
Black and anti-Indigenous racism, while recognizing that Black Central Americans have long-
battled to be included into and/or create alternative ways of citizenship and national belonging.

For this collection, the editors invite scholars from a wide array of disciplinary and
transdisciplinary approaches, creative non-fiction writers, journalists, community organizers, and
advocates to contribute original work that reflects on the meaning of Black Central Américas
today, including past and future links to hemispheric Blackness, and what it means to foreground
Central American Blackness within and beyond the isthmus.

Contributors are invited to, but not limited, to write on the following themes:

Contributors are invited to, but not limited, to write on the following themes:
• The building of community archives
• The centrality of Black communities in nation-building projects
• The labor of Black Central American women
• LGBTQ+ art, culture, and protest
• Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous living histories
• Black isthmians and environmental justice
• The legacies of cimarronaje/maroonage
• Transnational and diasporic activism
• Intergenerational allegiances and tensions
• Blackness, religion, and spiritual practices
• Negotiating diaspora and language
• Intellectual and political genealogy of Black Central Americans
• Black histories and activism in Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala
Submit your abstract no later than March 1, 2025, to the Editors at:

afrolatinxdiasporasbookseries@gmail.com.

Although publications are in English, we will consider abstracts in Spanish (subject to the author
securing resources for full manuscript translation into English). The abstract must be 250 words
and include your name, title, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and contact information.