About this Elements series

Elements in Race in American Literature and Culture will feature groundbreaking research that promotes reconsiderations of the role of race in US literature and culture-challenging assumptions about what race is and how it operates, exploring marginalized literary forms and traditions, and reconsidering the means by which we locate and define US literature and culture. How does literature and expressive culture participate in the creation and shaping of historical understanding? How is citizenship defined or (re)negotiated through print culture? How does race shape the possibilities and trajectories of individual and national narratives? How are linguistic practices influenced by race, and how do different audiences read words, poetic lines, or narrative tropes differently? How are narrative descriptions of US identity are manipulated or deployed in US political culture? What is the role of central historical moments (Reconstruction, for example, or the era of Japanese Internment Camps) or pivotal legal decisions (the Indian Removal Act, or the Chinese Exclusion Act) in shaping or (re)defining the development of different but related literary traditions? How should we understand the interplay, or lack thereof, among the various literary and cultural traditions formed by the history of race in the United States?

All proposals are welcome. Additionally, the editors are keen to receive proposals on the following topics:

Latinx Studies 
African American Studies 
Native American Studies 
Asian American Studies 
African American Studies 
Whiteness Studies 
Citizenship, Immigration and Assimilation 
International and Transnational Studies 
Race Theory 
Race History 
Structural Racism