Guest Editors

• Dasha A. Chapman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Dance, Kennesaw State University
• Mamyrah Dougé-Prosper, Ph.D. Assistant Professor,Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine
• Mario LaMothe, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Black Studies and Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago

As queer Haitian photographer Josué Azor states, “my work is militant because I live in a place where my existence is extraordinary. Living as we are and as we please is a militant act.” The Rights to Live Creatively seeks responses, contexts, and frameworks that help us understand the complex ways Haitians live, love, create, and commune despite and amongst oppressive structures of power, neo/colonial ideologies, and exclusionary social relations in their homeland and abroad. This special issue emerges from the Sexualities Working Group of the Haitian Studies Association, a group of Haitian and U.S. American scholars and practitioners who have, since 2015 in different configurations, mobilized in coalition toward the rights to live creatively for Haitian LGBTQ/M-community, Vodouyizan, and all those who do not conform to sexual/gendered norms. Responding to a call made by our Haitian activist interlocutors to support their on-the-ground endeavors through increased dissemination of research on the construction and performance of genders and sexualities in Haiti, the editorial collective hopes this special issue will document, share, and collectivize mutual commitments to bolstering the work of queer crusaders and all those who dare to live creatively in Haiti and its diasporas.

Through multiple modalities, languages, and forms of knowledge production, The Rights to Live Creatively volume will assemble around forms of creativity across arts and activisms, political and cultural expressions, history-making and future-birthing. We are interested in different domains of knowledge production and activism that might register, resist, and/or repair the dire impacts on gendered/sexual formations caused by systemic violence, cis-hetero-patriarchy, homophobia/transphobia, religious vitriol, and neoliberal policies. We ask, what does the framework of “rights” open up and what does it preclude? How does close attention to the lived body and embodied expression illuminate gender/sexuality as foundational to a capacious sense of the rights to live creatively? What pedagogies and praxes have served to either forward or derail the possibilities for life in Haiti? In what ways do Haitian people seize joy, create pleasures, and rest amidst confinement?

We invite academic articles across disciplinary fields, as well as literary or creative prose, interviews, artistic productions with or without accompanying commentary, testimonies, and provocatory manifestos. We welcome writing of all formats as well as visual and performance art. An online component will accompany the printed issue.

Possible topics could include:

• Gender creativities and/or sexualities
• Haitian feminisms
• Gender/sexuality and nation-making, gender/sexuality and empire
• Literary or historical accounts of creative genders/sexualities and related social practices
• Speculative fictions
• Stages, screens, and spaces of performance
• Arts produced from queer or feminist perspectives
• Narratives of allyship and advocacy in Haitian social life across differences
• Activism
• Pleasure and joy, leisure and rest
• Religions and spiritualities
• Role of education and pedagogy in sustaining or diminishing creative lives
• Lesson plans for teaching about Haitian sexualities or creative activism
• Public health and psychosocial support
• NGOization and sovereignty
• Mutual aid economies and modes of solidarity

Submission Guidelines

We welcome original contributions in English, Kreyòl, French, and Spanish. For the purposes of expanding access in Haiti on these understudied topics, we encourage submissions in French and Kreyòl.

• Full length articles, ranging between 5,000 to 8,000 words.
• Literary or creative prose, interviews, oral histories, interviews, lesson plans, etc. of up to 3,000 words.
• Art, photo-essays, and other creative modes of knowledge diffusion; lengths, and/or format will be determined upon acceptance.

Abstract: In an effort to ensure that new ideas circulate productively between Haiti, the United States, and the other countries represented by our readership, JOHS now requires that all published articles include abstracts of approximately 150 words in at least two of the journal’s primary languages (English, French, and Kreyòl). An article submitted with only a single abstract will still go through the review process, but if it is accepted, the author must provide an abstract in the second language before the article is printed.

Contributors should prepare manuscripts and submissions in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. APA styles will be accepted for specialized articles. Please consult the JOHS Style Guide, which has complete guidelines for manuscript preparation.

How to Apply

For full consideration, submissions should be emailed to JOHS@haitianstudies.ucsb.edu by April 15, 2023. Text-based contributions should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents. All other formats incompatible with MS Word may be submitted in PDFs.

All questions are welcomed and should be addressed to JOHS@haitianstudies.ucsb.edu.