Calls for Papers 

South Atlantic Review Special Issue on Puerto Rican-born and Latina Writer Judith Ortiz Cofer (Deadline June 1, 2017)
Judith Ortiz Cofer (1952-2016) was a literary pioneer; in the early eighties, she headed the first generation of Latina writers to attract the attention of university and commercial publishing houses in the United States. Her work spans literary genres: poetry, fiction (both the novel and the short story), the essay and creative non-fiction essay, and children’s literature.

This special issue will trace Ortiz Cofer’s literary legacy. A writer who broke new literary and critical grounds and an acclaimed poet and prose writer solidly rooted in a bi-cultural background, Ortiz Cofer proudly claimed, “I have earned the right to call myself a Southern Latina writer.” We seek essays that examine the geographical and cultural convergences within Ortiz Cofer’s work and that reflect upon her life, both as a Puerto Rican-born author, who drew from her childhood memories growing in Hormigueros, and as a full-fledged Latina activist and professor of English at the University of Georgia, who was committed to gender and economic issues affecting Latino communities.

Submission deadline: June 1st
Length: Manuscripts should be between 6,500 and 8,000 words
Format: 8th edition of the MLA Handbook. For more details, please see the “SAR Style Sheet for Authors of Manuscripts.”

Submit your essays or address any questions to co-editors Lorraine M. López, Vanderbilt University, at lorraine.lopez@vanderbilt.edu and Rafael Ocasio, Agnes Scott College, at rocasio@agnesscott.edu.

South Atlantic Review Special Issue: Political Literature (Deadline June 1, 2017)
As creators and curators of culture, writers chronicle their reality, envision alternate realities, or offer escapes from reality. They have their fingers on the pulse of every political issue, every movement, every crisis, every alliance, every act of oppression and resistance. Literature, never created in a vacuum, is both shaped by and shapes the political life of its own time and place—and, in the finest of works, other times and places. Whether compelled by moral duty or intellectual interest, authors in every milieu have challenged or celebrated the status quo in their works. As Chinua Achebe writes in “The Novelist as Teacher” (New Statesman, 29 Jan. 1965), “The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of reeducation and regeneration that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front.” Novelists, playwrights, poets, essayists, and filmmakers have crafted discourse that explores the meaning of being a social actor—ways of being, thinking, acting, and speaking within structures of power and privilege.

We are seeking essays for a special issue of South Atlantic Review that will investigate the ways in which authors, texts, and critics have engaged questions of power, identity, equality, freedom, economy, patriotism, dissidence, violence, and ideology in public life. 

CULTURE IN FOCUS: "Culture Matters: 'The State of Cultural Studies'" (Deadline November 15, 2017)
Never before has culture been so important. Culture, after all, matters! So for our first issue of Culture in Focus we are setting our sights on nothing less than the state of cultural studies as it is being practiced throughout the realms of language and literature, and indeed, in all the relevant areas that fall within the scope of this journal. What is new in critical analysis? What is being reassessed or reinterpreted? What are cultural specialists doing and saying now? Please submit full papers following the instructions under the Submission Guidelines link by November 15, 2017.