*CFP* "LATINX REPRESENTATION IN POPULAR CULTURE AND NEW MEDIA", EDITED VOLUME

We invite chapter proposals from scholars based in Europe whose work delves into the issues, configurations, and manifestations of the representation of Latinxs and the Latinx experience in popular culture and new media. The aim of the volume is to collect research on the diverse sociocultural, contextual, and aesthetic aspects intertwining in the production of Latinx self/representation. Issues related to the expression and depiction of Latinx subjectivity have entered the public sphere with renewed force in recent years. On the one hand, grassroots and online campaigns have organized against whitewashing, colorism, stereotypes, anti-immigrant nativism, racist policing, Black/Brownface practices, and cultural commodification. On the other hand, a lively, powerful, stimulating, and diverse popular culture has been flourishing as Latinx popular culture has progressively spanned genres and media, reconfiguring them from a more inclusive perspective. 

Moreover, mainstream production compan+ies have attempted to expand their reach by targeting the Latinx audience, albeit with mixed results. We are looking for essays that consider these broader contexts while focusing on the Latinx presence in popular culture—both as creators involved in the production process and as narrative subjects—in film, (web) TV series, genre fiction, comics and graphic narratives, popular music, and new media. We expect proposals to cover matters related to minority heritage, such as resistance to assimilation, loss and reinvention of cultural roots, and the creation of cultural safe spaces.

 Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Latinx popular culture creators and their legacies
• Afro-Latinx, Indigenous, and mestizo narratives and experiences
• Brown bodies and the biopolitics of representation
• Identity (re)construction and heritage resilience
• Latinx representation in mainstream or Anglo-American popular culture
• Young adult and children’s literature created by and aimed at Latinxs
• The queering of Latinx spaces
• Latinx voices and the use of new media for self-representation
• Ethnicity and utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic scenarios
• Latinx horror, gothic, and weird fiction
• Latinxs seen from Europe/Latinx representation in European popular culture

Final essays should be 6000-7000 words long, including references, footnotes, and citations. The volume will be submitted to the editors of Brill’s collection European Perspectives in American Studies, promoted by the European Association for American Studies. This project is supported by the research group AMICUSS (American Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies) based at the Instituto Franklin–UAH.

Please send your abstract proposal (400-500 words) and short bio (max. 200 words, including author’s academic affiliation) to latinx.popculture@gmail.com by February 1, 2021.

Notification of acceptance: February 22, 2021.

Deadline for essay submission: July 5, 2021.

For any inquiries, please contact Anna Marta Marini at annamarta.marini@institutofranklin.net.