Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Due Date: 11-15-2025
This forthcoming special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing (coedited by Sunayani Bhattacharya, Saint Mary’s Coll., CA, and Lanya Lamouria, Missouri State Univ.) situates the postcolonial novel, broadly construed, at the juncture of two distinct yet related fields: transoceanic studies and archival studies. The transoceanic paradigm connecting Europe and its former colonies has been integral not only to the dissemination of the novel but to the contours of the genre itself: nowhere is this history of engagement better documented than in colonial archives. By juxtaposing the transoceanic and archival frameworks, we hope to understand what happens to the generic form of the novel as it travels across the seas and encounters official and unofficial archives, and the extent to which the novel itself takes on the task of archiving these transoceanic journeys.
We welcome contributions that explore exemplary texts, literary-historical inflection points, historical trajectories, or transnational dynamics in Anglophone and Anglophone-adjacent novelistic traditions. We particularly look forward to submissions that place these questions within the context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In challenging Eurocentrism, this special issue will prioritize contributions from and about the Global South, which we define as encompassing the indigenous North.
Abstracts should be submitted by 15 November 2025. Full CFP and submission guidelines can be found here.