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Call for Papers
Updated September 10, 2026
Atlantis is has ONE current call for submissions. See "Language, Belonging, and Identity: Black Feminisms in the Diaspora" below.
We are not open for submission outside this themed call.
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“Language, Belonging, and Identity: Black Feminisms in the Diaspora”
Co-editors:
Djeneba Sarah Dagnogo, Professor, School of Social Work, Université de Saint-Boniface;
Kharoll-Ann Souffrant, Professor, School of Social Work, Université de Saint-Boniface
Due date for full papers: March 31, 2027
In Belonging: A Culture of Place, Black feminist intellectual bell hooks (2009) asks: “What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? Where can we say that we truly belong?” In a Canadian context, Dionne Brand (2002) and Christina Sharpe (2016; 2023) have also addressed the quest for identity and belonging for Black people who have immigrated to or been born in the diaspora. Given the “afterlife of slavery” (Hartman 2007), there is often no clear roadmap for them to return to the land of their ancestors. These interrogations are also tied to elements of colonization and national languages.
Many Black and racialized writers in the “Global North” have theorized about what it means to master a language that is not their “true” mother tongue, and about how this affects their relationship to the cultural heritage of their immigrant parents and grandparents (Harchi 2016; Madibbo 2021; Philip [1989] 2014; Souffrant forthcoming; Soumahoro 2020). They have emphasized the ambivalence and opportunities that arise from speaking a “colonial language” and what it brings to their artistic, scientific, and intellectual work. In this context, translation and languages are pressing political issues that play a significant role in the concept of transnational solidarity and the (in)visibility of works produced by Black women writers in Africa and in the Caribbean (Angone 2020; Malena 2018).
We are seeking submissions that include but are not limited to the following questions:
• How can we identify the ways in which colonial dynamics are reproduced within transnational Black feminist activism? How can these power dynamics between Black women in the “Global North” and “Global South” be avoided or diminished?
• How do we define transnational Black feminist activism?
• What role does creolization, hybridity, or métissage play in transnational Black feminism?
• How can “colonial” languages (e.g., French or English) be used to serve transnational Black feminist activism? In what ways do they perpetuate invisibility and erasure for Black women?
• What are the politics of translating the works of Black women writers, thinkers, and intellectuals?
• What are the implications and dilemmas of transnational Black feminist activism between the “Global North” and “Global South”?
• How does diglossia (a situation in which two languages used in community are not viewed, valued, or seen with the same prestige within that same community negatively impact national and cultural identity and language politics for Black women?
• How have languages become tools of oppression or empowerment for Black women and Black queer people?
• For Black women, what are the implications of not speaking one’s mother tongue for cultural transmission and community/personal identity?
• What relationships do Black women have with their mother tongues and/or “colonial” languages?
• How can Black women break and complicate the dichotomy between “mother tongue” and “colonial languages”?
• How do language politics come into play within families of the first, second, or third generation of immigrants? What does this mean for Black women who have been adopted and entirely dispossessed of their roots?
Submission Guidelines
Before submitting work, please read Atlantis’ mandate and scope, and consult our full submission guidelines.
We invite submissions in English as well as English submissions along with translations into a second language. Submissions should examine interdisciplinary and discipline-based feminist interventions on the above questions and themes through original research papers, position papers (commentary and reflections), interviews, and original creative works, including short essay analyses of your own visual, aural, or spoken creative work. Research papers will be sent for anonymous peer review and must not exceed 7,000 words including references.
Submit work directly to Atlantis’ Open Journal System: atlantisjournal.ca. Please include “Black Feminisms in the Diaspora” on your title page.
For substantive questions about this CFP, please contact in one email Djeneba Sarah Dagnogo (ddagnogo@ustboniface.ca) and Kharoll-Ann Souffrant (ksouffrant@ustboniface.ca) with Atlantis – Black Feminisms in the Diaspora as a subject line.
For questions about the submission and publication process or general inquiries about Atlantis, please contact Katherine Barrett (Managing Editor): atlantis.journal@msvu.ca
Works Cited
Angone, O. 2020. Femmes noires francophones : Une réflexion sur le patriarcat et le racisme aux XXe-XXIe siècles. Hermann.
Brand, D. 2001. A Map to the Door of No Return : Notes to Belonging. Random House.
Harchi, K. 2016. Je n’ai qu’une langue et ce n’est pas la mienne—Des écrivains à l’épreuve. Pauvert.
Hartman, S. 2007. Lose Your Mother—A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
hooks, b. 2009. Belonging : A culture of place. Routledge.
Madibbo, A. 2021. Blackness and la Francophonie : Anti-Black Racism, Linguicism and the Construction and Negotiation of Multiple Minority Identities. Presses de l’Université Laval.
Malena, A. 2018. Politics of translation in the ‘French’ Caribbean. In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (p. 480‑493). Routledge.
Philip, M. N. (avec Shockley, E.). (1989) 2014. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (2e éd.). Wesleyan University Press.
Sharpe, C. 2016. In the Wake : On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press.
_____. 2023. Ordinary Notes. Knopf Canada.
Souffrant, K.-A. (Forthcoming). La langue de ma mère. Une relecture afroféministe du nationalisme québécois. Les éditions du remue-ménage.
Soumahoro, M. 2020. Le Triangle et l’Hexagone : Réflexions sur une identité noire. La Découverte.
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Forthcoming Issues (submissions now closed)
MIGRATION AND THE WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA
Co-editors: Tatjana Takševa and Nancy Annan
DISABILITY, DIVERGENCE AND CREATIVE EXPRESSION
Co-editors Jordana Greenblatt and Drew Danielle Belsky
GENERATION: A CRITICAL FEMININITIES ISSUE
Co-editors Hannah Maitland, Andi Schwartz and Laura Brightwell
REVOLUTION AND RESURGENCE: CELEBRATING FEMINIST PUBLISHING
Co-editors Michelle Meagher and Jana Smith Elford
