Deadline: February 1, 2023
Contact: Sarah Wald
Email: recreation-special-theme@googlegroups.com

Special Theme on Latinx Recreation in Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Studies Journal

Co-edited by Gabriela Nuñez, David Vázquez, Priscilla Solis Ybarra, and Sarah D. Wald

Abstracts Due: February 1, 2023

This special theme brings together two overlapping areas: Latinx environmentalisms and Latinx leisure and outdoor recreation. Latinx communities’ and cultures’ relationships to natural history and outdoor recreation is a growing area of interest in Latinx studies and in the environmental humanities. We aim to provide cultural and historic context to contemporary efforts to diversify conservation and outdoor recreation in the twenty-first century, paying particular attention to questions of environmental justice, labor, racial capitalism, colonialism, and migration. Latinxs are underrepresented as outdoor recreators, as visitors to public lands, and as employees of land management agencies and conservation organizations. Industry surveys and trade presses often focus on understanding Latinxs as lacking something that limits outdoor participation. Our work seeks to collectively denaturalize this discourse by demonstrating how white supremacy, ongoing forms of colonialism, and colorblind racism interfere with Latinx participation in outdoor recreation and in the professional class of outdoor labor. Moreover, we’re interested in the ways that Latinx communities use recreation as sites of resistance, pleasure, community-building, and social activism.

We are excited about papers that think creatively and expansively about what Latinx recreation is or push the boundaries about outdoor recreation and leisure. We particularly invite papers that address Afro-Latinx and Indigenous Latinx experiences. Papers that critique or complicate the term or identity Latinx are welcome. We encourage contributions from the humanities and the humanistic social sciences, including auto-ethnographic approaches.

Proposals may include scholarly articles (8,000 words or less), interviews with or personal essays by Latinx recreation practitioners, artists, and activists (6,000 words or less), and proposed reviews (1,300 words or less) of books, art exhibits, digital projects, etc.

To be considered, please submit an abstract (300-500 words) and a biography (up to 250 words) to recreation-special-theme@googlegroups.com by February 1, 2023. Contributors will be invited to discuss works-in-progress at an optional workshop at the Association for Literature and Environment Conference July 9th-12, 2023 in Portland Oregon, and a Latinx Lab symposium at California State University, Fullerton during fall 2023. Initial drafts will be due in Fall 2023 with final drafts due in February 2024 for publication in a forthcoming issue of Diálogo: an Interdisciplinary Studies Journal.

Posted on November 30, 2022