Call for Papers and Projects
Issue (8) | Special Issue on Papiamentu/o and the Dutch Caribbean
Papiamentu/o — the primary language of the Dutch Caribbean Leeward islands — was developed to be understood by all Creole speakers, whether of European, Jewish, or African descent. For centuries, it has been the primary language of literary and artistic production among all classes and ethnicities in Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, and their extensive diasporic communities. A most curious and interesting aspect of Papiamentu/o as archive is that the language is both vividly alive and productive, as well as under pressure. That is, the fact that the language is alive and productive does not mean that the knowledge produced in Papiamentu/o is valued and incorporated on equal terms with knowledge produced in Dutch, English, or Spanish.
This special issue of archipelagos journal invites submissions on Papiamentu/o as archive in all its rich Creole plurality — linguistic, visual, sonic, cartographic — as thought within the context of the digital. For this special issue, we are interested as well, and more broadly, in the legacies and history of the Dutch empire in the Caribbean region.
Essays
We welcome argumentative or descriptive essays that discuss, among else:
- digital humanities projects, digital collections, data visualizations, maps and other socio-technical assemblages pertinent to digital media related to Papiementu/o or the Dutch Caribbean;
- reflections on the use of technology in and outside of the Papiamentu/o classroom for pedagogical purposes;
- text or corpus analysis of Papiamentu/o sources;
- scholarship on digital archives and collections, and the continuing process of digitization, related to Papiamentu/o–Dutch Caribbean history and culture;
- critical interventions in our understanding of computational technology, media, and the digital writ-large as it relates to the Papiamentu/o–Dutch Caribbean cultural present and past;
- theoretical reflections on the impact of computational technology and network technologies on Papiamentu/o–Dutch Caribbean societies — diasporic or local
Argumentative essays will be double-blind reviewed and published on the first section of our journal. Descriptive essays will be single-blind reviewed and published on the second section of our journal. Additional guidelines for authors may be found on the journal website.
Digital Projects
We also welcome you to share your Papiamentu/o or Dutch Caribbean digital scholarship project to be evaluated by us as part of our public peer review process.
To be considered for Issue (8) the deadline for submission is December 15, 2023. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Accepted essays will be due on March 1, 2024.
For this special issue, archipelagos welcomes submissions in Dutch or Papiamentu/o in addition to English, Spanish, and French; accepted essays will be published in their original language with abstracts translated by editorial staff.
Want to learn more? We invite you to join an information session with our guest editor, Margo Groenewoud, on Thursday Nov 2, at 10 am AST.
We look forward to reading you!