Call for Papers

Special Issue: 2010

Women & National Political Struggles in the Caribbean

Kumari Jayawardena’s examination of feminism and nationalism in the Third World in the mid-1980s clearly demonstrated that far from being merely symbolic of, or subject to, patriarchal constructions of nation, women were actively and variously invested in anti-colonial and national political movements. In this vein, MaComère invites contributions for a special issue on Women and National Political Struggles in the Caribbean. In what ways were women caught up in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, nationalist and revolutionary struggles in the Caribbean, and what did their participation mean? How do various social relations intersect to shape specific iterations of resistance? Where might women be found in the regonal and diasporic networks that inflected various nationalisms? How might we track those legacies across the contemporary Caribbean and what are the current modalities of women’s participation in the political process? While this special issue responds to a sense that we know relatively little about women’s own experiences in relation to these processes, we want to move beyond the addition or recovery of women’s voices to consider the epistemological implications of this endeavour for questions of sovereignty, self-determination, state formation.

We are seeking longer scholarly articles (approximately 5000 words) as well as poems (no more than 3 per person) and short stories (no more than 3000 words and 1 submission per person). We also welcome short biographies of women about whom little is documented, and whose example illuminates the theme of this special issue, for a ‘Recovered Lives’ Section (a maximum of 2500 words).

Some examples of possible themes include:

Women and the anti-colonial movement
Diasporic contributions and Caribbean politics
Literary traditions and national consciousness
Revolutionary struggles, anti-dictatorial movements
Women, labour and the state
Reconsidering gender and sovereignty in the non-independent Caribbean
Women’s movements

We seek to achieve a broad regional coverage spanning the main linguistic areas of the Caribbean, highlighting the diverse experiences and socio-political contexts of the Anglophone, Hispanic, Francophone and Dutch Caribbean from the small islands of the archipelago to the mainland Caribbean territories of Central and South America. We especially encourage submissions with a comparative focus. MaComère is a multi-disciplinary journal and as such welcomes historical and contemporary contributions from across the humanities and social sciences as well as contributions from creative writers.

Submission process:

If you are interested in making a submission to this special issue, please send a 300 word abstract to the Guest Editors, Alissa Trotz, University of Toronto (da.trotz@utoronto.ca) and Kate Quinn, Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London (kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk). The due date for abstracts is November 30, 2009. After review of the abstracts, selected potential contributors will be invited in to submit their full papers later in 2010 for peer review.