Calls for Papers
Bank Street Occasional Paper Series Issue #54: Why Indigenous Children’s and Young Adult Literatures Matter
Deadline for Submissions: December 1, 2024
In this issue, we extend and honor Daniel Heath Justice’s pivotal work, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, to highlight and celebrate Indigenous Children’s and Young Adult Literature (ICYAL). We seek submissions that speak to the ways authors, teachers, librarians, students, and community members engage ICYAL as it changes the landscape of how Indigeneity is represented, speaking to and reimagining the diverse values, knowledges, dreams, and lives of Indigenous children, youth, adults, and communities.
We are interested in essays and manuscripts (no more than 5000 words) as well as short films, audio essays, photo essays, and small-scale artistic products.
Although not required, we invite those interested to reach out to the editors to pitch ideas and receive feedback and support. For more information or if you would like to discuss your ideas, please contact guest editors Joaquin Muñoz at joaquin.munoz@ubc.ca or Dawn Quigley at dawnquigleywriter@gmail.com.
SAIL Special Issue: Ethical Relations in Indigenous Literary Studies
This issue will ask contributors to engage the following questions: What does it mean to be a good relative? What is our ethical obligation in responding to conflict within identity politics, academia, and the practice of literary criticism, especially regarding predatory and extractive behaviors? How do we conscientiously talk about Indigenous worldviews in ways that are not reductive and objectifying in our teaching of Indigenous literatures? What do we do with representations of trauma in Indigenous literature, and how do we teach about it while not reproducing it?
Please submit an abstract (no more than 500 words) and list of keywords for consideration via email to:
SAIL.editors@gmail.com
ENSCAN Workshop and Edited Volume
Deadline for submissions: November 30, 2024.
Workshop date: April 3-5, 2025
We invite proposals for an upcoming transatlantic online workshop on the topic of “Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Indigenous Environmental Justice: Comparative Studies in Indigenous Literatures and Creative Arts from Northern Europe and North America.” Workshop presenters will have the opportunity to develop their presentations into chapters for an edited volume.
Contemporary Indigenous Horror
Deadline for submissions: May 30, 2025
Contact email: Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca) Dr. Krista Collier-Jarvis (Krista.Collier-Jarvis@msvu.ca)
Building on discussions in the edited volume, Global Indigenous Horror (University Press of Mississippi, 2025), this is a call for chapter proposal submissions focused on the topic of Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Beautiful, luminous and resonant moments of horror exist in the work of writers like Shane Hawk, Kim Scott, Tiffany Morris, Waubgeshig Rice, or Ambelin Kwaymullina. But Indigenous horror tales thrive in many narrative or storying forms—from fiction, plays, and music, to graphic novels, art installations, or experimental films fortified by sonic and oral manifestations.
Responding to the widening gap between Indigenous horror and academic responses to it, editors Naomi Simone Borwein and Krista Collier-Jarvis solicit contributions for Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Shane Hawk broadly defines horror as that which “prioritizes the fear factor, often using graphic depictions of violence, monstrous beings, or otherworldly threats to achieve its effect. The ultimate purpose of horror is to confront the reader with their deepest fears, creating an experience that is visceral and unsettling.” When taken up by Indigenous storytellers, horror often engages with a colonial past that has never really passed, and as such, it haunts contemporary Indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous horror thus often blends traditional stories as well as Indigenous ways of knowing and being with contemporary issues. In many cases, Indigenous horror is about our lived experiences, not as the victim of ongoing coloniality, but as resistance. According to Elizabeth Edwards and Brenna Duperron, “Indigeneity is a resistance — in the usual sense of opposition, repudiation, and refusal to comply [...but also] resistant to assimilation. Indigeneity is the lived and embodied experience of peoples who have participated in that resistance” (94). In many other cases, Indigenous horror is about what Scott Gordon calls “colonial whiplash,” where “white people who haven't turned into zombies [or other monsters] are at the mercy of the oppressed”—their Indigenous saviours. And in other cases, what Indigenous horror is has yet to be revealed.
Chapters (6,000-8,000 words including bibliography) may examine modern, contemporary representations of Indigenous Horror from a variety of perspectives. See the full CFP for examples.
Please send a 250-word abstract and a 100-word bio to editors Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca) and Krista Collier-Jarvis (Krista.Collier-Jarvis@msvu.ca) by May 30, 2025. Accepted chapters will be due June 30, 2026.
