e-misférica welcomes submissions of essays, artist presentations, and reviews. Please consult the guidelines in the right menu for more information. Submissions are understood to be original, unpublished, and should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The journal issues calls for papers two times per year (below) that outline themes and deadlines.
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If you are interested in contributing to e-misférica's Reviews section, comprising reviews of books, performances, films, videos, and/or other materials related to performance in the Americas, please send your proposal to hemi.reviews@nyu.edu. Proposals should include a brief description of the work and the author's approach to it (150 words); a short author bio (100 words); and a link to a previously published writing sample, or an unpublished writing sample as an attachment. Reviews are 800 words (up to 1500 for pieces covering more than one book, performance, or film). Please note that the review section is scholarly in nature and does not accept proposals from artists to write about their own work. Contributions that do not follow the editorial guidelines of the journal will not be considered for publication. Check the right column of this page for our guidelines, style sheet, and a selection of books open for review for the forthcoming issue of e-misférica. We welcome additional suggestions as well as advanced queries.
Rasanblaj (n)
Resist the impulse to translate, pronounce it first. Think consciously of the sound. Let the arch of the r roll over the ah that automatically depresses the tongue; allow the hiss in the s that will culminate at the front of the teeth to entice the jaw to drop for the an sound while un-smacking the lips will propel the bl surrounding the depressed ah again ending with j. Play with its contours. Know what this word feels like in your mouth. In Haitian Kreyòl. 3 syllables. Ra-San-Blaj.
Defined as assembly, compilation, enlisting, regrouping, (of ideas, things, people, spirits. For example, fè yon rasanblaj, do a gathering, a ceremony, a protest), rasanblaj’s very linguistic formation subverted and resisted colonial oppression (M.Condé). << Consider that Article 16 of the 1685 French Code Noir forbade slaves of different masters to gather at any time under any circumstances >>. Its etymology and significations index the histories through which it emerged.
Rasanblaj: Catalyst. Keyword. Method. Practice. Project.
Rasanblaj issues a provocation to reframe discursive and expressive practices in the Caribbean (and its diasporas). Rasanblaj requires communal presence from the engaged to the radical, and is inter-active from the grassroots level rather than imposed from above. Considering the embodied visceral in the structural, it invokes Audre Lorde’s feminist erotic knowledge in its fullest dimensions from the political, to the sensual and spiritual (M. Sheller). It calls upon us to think through Caribbean performance and politics, recognizing the crossroads not as destination, but as point of encounter from which to move beyond. Indeed, with unequivocal evidence that the past and the future exist in the present (C.L.R. James, M-R. Trouillot), rasanblaj not only presupposes intent and method but also offers possibilities for other modalities and narratives. Thus, it allows us to contemplate the performative in subjectivity, agency, communities and citizenship that constitute Caribbean futures (B. Meeks), with the Marvelous and utopias imagined as possible realities (S. Césaire, J. Muñoz). An explicitly decolonial project, rasanblaj demands that we consider the limited scope of segregated frameworks to explore what remains excluded in this landscape full of life, yet ridden with inequities and dangerous memories (M. J. Alexander).
Please submit completed essays by March 15, 2014; advance queries and abstracts are most welcome. To submit multimedia presentations and reviews, please contact the editors with proposals not later than February 15, with texts and materials due March 15.
For this issue, e-misférica will accept submissions in English, Spanish, Creole, French and Portuguese. All contributions, proposals, and consultations should be sent to the editors at hemi.ejournal@nyu.edu. Our guidelines and style sheet can be found at http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/participate.