JWIL Special Issue on George Lamming
Call for papers for special issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature on George Lamming (Fall 2024):
This special issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature seeks essays and reflections on the work of George Lamming. When Lamming passed away in 2022, the Caribbean lost one of its great authors and public intellectuals. Beginning with his poetry published in BIM and his first novel In the Castle of My Skin (1953), to the influential essays in The Pleasures of Exile (1960), to his later interviews and speeches, Lamming helped shape Caribbean writing and thought for more than fifty years.
We invite scholarly articles that address different aspects of Lamming’s work, including his interrogation of sovereignty; his engagements with gender and class; his theorizing of Caribbean modernity; the use of allegory in his fiction; his work at the BBC or with BIM; his place within the Windrush generation; his connections to other parts of the region (to Cuba, Grenada, Haiti, or elsewhere) or to the larger African diaspora (his time in Ghana or the US, for example); his reflections on Caribbean humanity and/or the possibilities for decolonization; and how his work imagines the role of the writer in Caribbean society. Articles might also focus on work that has been influenced by Lamming, such as Curdella Forbes’ A Tall History of Sugar or Esther Phillips’ Leaving Atlantis. We also welcome non-traditional academic submissions, such as creative reflections on Lamming’s work and influences.
We welcome a variety of contributions, including scholarly essays (6,000 to 8,000 words), fiction and nonfiction (2,000 to 5,000 words), poetry (2 to 3 poems), visual art, and book reviews (1,000 to 1,500 words).
Prospective contributors should submit 300- to 500-word abstracts by November 15, 2023. Responses to abstract submissions will be sent by December 15, 2023, and final versions of accepted papers will be due March 1, 2024. Inquiries can be sent to Raphael Dalleo (prdalleo@gmail.com).
Please submit abstracts through the JWIL submission page: https://www.jwilonline.org/submission-guidelines/article-guidelines/
About the special issue editor: Raphael Dalleo is Professor of English at Bucknell University. His book, American Imperialism’s Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anticolonialism, won the Caribbean Studies Association’s 2017 Gordon K. and Sibyl Lewis Award for best book. American Imperialism’s Undead was completed with the support of an NEH-sponsored residency at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His other books are Caribbean Literature and the Public Sphere, Bourdieu and Postcolonial Studies (editor), Haiti and the Americas (coeditor), Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1920-1970 and The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (coauthor).
About the Journal: The Journal of West Indian Literature has been published twice-yearly by Literatures in English, University of the West Indies since 1986. JWIL reflects a continued commitment to provide a regional and international forum for the dissemination and discussion of Caribbean literary and artistic culture.
