Investigações Journal - Special Issue 2027 "Comparative Emergencies of the Literary Global South"

Call for contributions:

Investigações Journal - ISSN: 2175-294X

2027 Special Issue

"­Comparative Emergencies of the Literary Global South"

Guest Editors for the Special Issue
Carlos André Cordeiro de Oliveira (Federal Institute of Paraiba, Brazil)
Alfredo Adolfo Cordiviola (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Danielle Grace de Almeida (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)
Nishat Zaidi (Jamia Millia Islamia Central University, NewDelhi, India)
Paul Melo e Castro (University of Glasgow, Scotland)

Aim
The Special Issue COMPARATIVE EMERGENCIES OF THE LITERARY GLOBAL SOUTH sets out to investigate comparatively the Literatures of the Global South as aesthetic-epistemic-geopolitical crossroads of new emergencies of the Colonial Anthropocene, Modernity-Coloniality, Racial Capitalism, and Data Capitalism. We welcome comparative research on the complex phenomenon of Latin America, Caribbean, African, South Asian, and/or Indo-Oceanic literatures capable of illuminating, in a pluricentric, (trans)(inter)cultural, and (trans)(multi)lingual manner, the cartographies marked by colonizing dehumanization, aesthetic disobedience, and writing hope.

Scope
From the context of the radical dehumanization of Eurocentric colonization across the diverse geographies and biotas of the Southern Hemisphere since the sixteenth century, intersected with the context of the unequal and incomplete processes of de(s)colonization since the nineteenth century of the violated cartographies of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and their archipelagos, the body-territory geopolitically and contemporaneously historicized as the Global South demonstrates a singular fertility of literary creation in different literary genres, languages, and linguistic hybridisms.

At distinct moments of the twentieth century, the hegemonized literatures of the Global North exhausted themselves in self-referential creative movements, fed back by canonized intertextuality, placing into postmodern check the literary categories that sus tained centuries-old literary systems and traditions.

Academic and institutional circles situated comparative literature as a discipline in crisis in the face of the (un)conscious refusal to break with the colonial games of literary language. In parallel, writers as diverse as José Lezama Lima, Aimé Césaire, Alejo Carpentier, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Kamau Brathwaite, Flora Nwapa, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Chinua Achebe, Intizar Hussain, Sylvia Wynter, Nicolás Guillén, Clarice Lispector, Édouard Glissant, Guimarães Rosa, Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, José Luandino Vieira, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Néstor Perlongher, Copi, Buchi Emecheta, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Mia Couto, Gioconda Belli, Mahasweta Devi, Yanick Lahens, Arundhati Roy, Conceição Evaristo, Maryse Condé, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Pauline Chiz iane, Epeli Hau ʻofa, Pilar Quintana, Mahmoud Darwish, Ana Maria Gonçalves, Vandana Singh, Humberto Ak ’abal, Michael Roch, Natalia Toledo, Amitav Ghosh , Maria Val éria Rezende, among so many notable figures of the Global South, present the vibrancy and freshness of a literary spring capable of simultaneously engaging in dialogue with the literary traditions of (ex-)colonizers and intertextualizing cosmoperceptions specific to the literary emancipation of the imaginary.

In the face of this creative universe, deeply diverse geographically and historically interconnected by struggles for aesthetic emancipation, there is an urgent need to open new interpretive pathways for literature through investigations into the epistemological, historical, and methodological foundations of comparative criticism. We hope, therefore, to receive critical investigations on a comparative basis from the literary Global South that contribute to the epistemic and disciplinary refounding of Comparative Literature in light of a diverse, polycentric, translingual, and transcultural literary corpus.

Topics of Interest

– Comparative interrelations between aspects and authors of Brazilian literatures and the literatures of African, South Asian, and/or Indo-Oceanic nations.

– The literary Global South in a comparativist interface with other literary systems and projects: “Weltliteratur”, “world literature”, “third-world literature”, “littérature-monde”, literary Inter-Americanism, etc.

– Comparative formation of (trans)national literatures of the Global South: tradition, modernity, canon, and intertextualities.

– Orientalism and the geopolitics of comparative literary representations.

– Intersemiosis and intermediality under comparativist investigations of the colonial diaspora: literature, cinema, and photography.

– Literatures of the Global South in comparative translations: circulation, patronage, subalternity, and praxis.

– Comparative literatures and cultures of the Global South: cultural studies, cultural materialism, and trans/interculturality.

– Comparative writings of diaspora, displacement, migration, and borders of the Global South.

– Comparative poetics and narratives of intercontinental coloniality in its multiple effects.

– Comparative criticism of fluvial, maritime, transatlantic, telluric, etc., aspects of literary creation mediated by colonial history and/or geopolitics of the Global South.

– Comparative oceanic approaches to the literatures of the Global South.

– Comparative escrevivências, oraliteratures, and other forms of narrative from the Global South.

– Uprisings of the imaginary, Afrofuturisms, Indigenous Futurisms, and other comparative futurities.

– Feminist, intersectional, technofeminist, etc., approaches in comparative perspective.

– South-oriented ecocriticism and comparative literatures of ecological emergencies.

– Comparative writings of memory, trauma, ancestry, and retomada.

– Emerging pedagogical practices and comparativist approaches to teaching literatures of the Global South.

– Comparatist approaches to children's and young adult literature of the Global South.

How to submit proposal

Timeline
September 2026: Launch of the Call for Papers for the journal Investigações, Special Issue 2027.
December 20 2026: Submission deadline.
January 2027: Preliminary analysis (desk review) by the editors, selection of eligible manuscripts, and assignment of expert peer reviewers for a double-blind (or triple-blind, in case of a tie) evaluation process.
May 2027: Expected final decision by the guest editors and dispatch of acceptance notifications.
June 2027: Expected publication window for the Special Issue, subject to the final production and typesetting workflow of the Journal.

General Guidelines
Only articles with evidence of the use of literary comparative approach (theory, criticism, analysis, essay, methodology, or epistemology on a comparativist basis) and of literary corpus analysis from the Global South will be considered eligible for evaluation.Transnational, multilingual, interdisciplinary comparative approaches (intersemiotic, intercultural, intersectional, ecocritical, feminist, decolonial, or counter - colonial) areencouraged by the editors.

Formatting Guidelines for Manuscriptsfor authors are available at: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/index.php/INV/about/submissions
Submissions to Investigaçõesmust be sent electronically via the address: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/INV/login
Questions and specific guidance can be addressed via the email: [email protected]

Contact for futher information

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