Edited Collection: Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women's Literature (Deadline May 31, 2010)
Submissions are invited for an edited collection of scholarly essays on Indo-Caribbean women's literature. This is the first collection to focus specifically on the literature produced by Indo-Caribbean women, and it aims to offer critical and theoretical perspectives on novels, short-fiction, poetry, autobiography and memoir.
In the field of Caribbean Studies, scholarship has been devoted to mainly male Indo-Caribbean writers or has explored Indo-Caribbean culture from multi-disciplinary perspectives. The emergence of several Indo-Caribbean women writers in the late twentieth century opened up a vibrant field of literary production that significantly transformed Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean Studies. This period ushered in the publication of full-length poetry collections by writers such as Mahadai Das and Ramabai Espinet as well as the publication of first novels by writers including Lakshmi Persaud, Jan Shinebourne and Shani Mootoo. Since the publication of these pioneering works, Indo-Caribbean women writers from Trinidad, Guyana, the diaspora and other parts of the Caribbean region have come to produce a significant new body of writing, providing new conceptualizations of Caribbean and diasporic cultural forms and literary aesthetics. This collection will examine the continued development of Indo-Caribbean women's writing as a flourishing genre in Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean literature.
Contributors are invited to explore the literature produced by individual authors including but not limited to Lakshmi Persaud, Mahadai Das, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Jan Shinebourne, Oonya Kempadoo, Peggy Mohan, Ismene Krishnadath, Ryhaan Shah, Narmala Shewcharan, Rajandaye Ramkissoon-Chen, Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming.
Areas of inquiry may include:
•Minority Identities in Caribbean (Belize, Cuba, St Vincent, St. Lucia etc.)
•Kala Pani Poetics
•Indo-Caribbean Women in the Diaspora (Canada, US, Europe)
•Representations of Chutney, Soca, Calypso, Dancehall
•Representations of Ramleela, Hosay, Phagwah, Matikor, Carnival
•Representations of visual culture / cultural artifacts (Bollywood films, jewelry, traditional dress, etc.)
•Gender and Sexuality
•Feminist Politics and Poetics
•Ethnicity and Nationalism
•Class and Class Struggle
Contributors are asked to send a 300-500 word abstract, working title, contact information and a brief biographical statement in an MS Word attachment to the editors (firstname.lastname@example.org and email@example.com) on or before May 31, 2010.