Call for Book Chapters: "Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature"

Vernon Press invites book chapters for an edited volume on the subject of "Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature."

Editor: Carlos A. González (Harvard University)

Monsters have always played an important role in the literature of Latin America, and have managed to persist in the national imaginations from which hispano- and lusophone writers draw their own source material. Dictators, strongmen, and organized crime roam the peripheries of language and history side by side with monsters, specters, and creatures horrible to behold.
This edited volume will draw together scholarship exploring the ways in which monsters, of the imagination and of history, persist in the literature, politics, language, and culture of Latin America, drawing from a wide array of sources and disciplines. It will also explore the role of literature in ensuring, processing, and reimagining the ongoing survival of the monstrous, with perhaps surprising results. It aims to explore the several manifestations of monsters and monstrosity in literature, arts, film and other Latin American media, by investigating the ever-changing forms they assume from early modernity to the present.
We welcome submissions that examine the ways in which monsters and monstrosity have been, and continue to be, depicted across temporal and geographical lines.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
● Monsters and monstrosity in myth and folk-lore
● The literary and artistic representation of monsters through time
● The subversion of the monster trope in contemporary art and literature
● The representation of monstrous Others
● The intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender in the representation of
monsters and monstrosity
● The ethics of monsters or monstrous others

We encourage submissions from scholars of all backgrounds and levels of experience. Particularly welcome are interdisciplinary and transcultural contributions which highlight the subversive power of monsters, as well as challenging the category of monstrosity as a whole.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief biography to Carlos A. González, cgonzalez@g.harvard.edu, by July 30th, 2023.

Full papers should be no longer than 8.000 words and will be due by Nov 30th, 2023. All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and engaging in a rich and thought-provoking exchange on the topic of monstrosity and monsters in Latin American culture, literature, and the arts.