"Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries"
RIAS Vol. 21, Fall-Winter (2/2028)
Edited by Lisa Buchegger and Liliia Makala
Executive Editor: Nathaniel R. Racine
(By Guest Editors' request, call open until December 30th, 2026)

This issue of RIAS invites contributions on the theme of “Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries.” Engaging ongoing debates in global American Studies on power, representation, dissent, and cultural transformation, the issue seeks contributions that examine how American cultural, political, and social imaginaries are challenged, reworked, and reclaimed across diverse historical and geographical contexts. It invites interdisciplinary perspectives from the global field of American Studies and welcomes submissions from scholars worldwide.

The issue will trace how American cultural production “makes trouble” through formal innovation, moral ambiguity, and radical redefinitions of kinship and care. Thereby, it will highlight “trouble” as an ethical and aesthetic stance within American studies—one that values fracture and contradiction as generative sites of thought and belonging. In keeping with the mission of the International American Studies Association and RIAS, the issue encourages transnational, interdisciplinary, and theoretically informed approaches to the study of the Americas and their global entanglements. (Read the whole CFP)

[Versión en español a continuación]

"Archipelagic Imaginaries and the Americas: Islands - Narratives - Mythologies"
RIAS Vol. 20, Fall-Winter (2/2027)
Edited by Marta Silvera Roig and Asunción López-Varela Azcárate
Executive Editor: Paweł Jędrzejko
(Call open until Oct. 30th, 2026)

Throughout the history of the Americas and the wider Atlantic world, islands have occupied a unique place in cultural imagination. From Indigenous cosmologies and Caribbean creation narratives to the transatlantic mythologies of the Canary Islands, colonial fantasies of paradise, maritime frontiers, prison islands, and contemporary environmental anxieties, islands have served as privileged sites for the production of myth, memory, and cultural meaning. Whether understood as spaces of refuge or confinement, utopia or catastrophe, rootedness or mobility, islands continue to function as laboratories of imagination through which societies negotiate questions of identity, sovereignty, ecology, and belonging. (Read the whole CFP)

[Versión en español]

"Imaginarios Archipelágicos y las Américas: Islas – Narrativas – Mitologías"
RIAS Vol. 20, Otoño–Invierno (2/2027)
Editado por Marta Silvera Roig y Asunción López-Varela Azcárate
Editor Ejecutivo: Paweł Jędrzejko
(Convocatoria abierta hasta el 30 de octubre de 2026)

A lo largo de la historia de las Américas y del mundo atlántico en sentido amplio, las islas han ocupado un lugar singular en la imaginación cultural. Desde las cosmologías indígenas y los relatos fundacionales caribeños hasta las mitologías transatlánticas de las Islas Canarias, las fantasías coloniales del paraíso, las fronteras marítimas, las islas-prisión y las inquietudes medioambientales contemporáneas, las islas han funcionado como espacios privilegiados para la producción de mitos, memorias y significados culturales. Ya sean concebidas como lugares de refugio o de confinamiento, de utopía o de catástrofe, de arraigo o de movilidad, las islas continúan actuando como laboratorios de la imaginación a través de los cuales las sociedades negocian cuestiones de identidad, soberanía, ecología y pertenencia. (Lea la convocatoria completa)

Eastern Thought in the Americas
Edited by Anjali Singh and Anita Patterson
Staff Editors: Gabriela Vargas Cetina and Paweł Jędrzejko
RIAS Vol. 21, Fall-Winter (1/2028)
(Call open until December 30th, 2026)

Eastern philosophies, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, have profoundly influenced various facets of life in the Americas. The intersections of Eastern thought with North American, Latin American, Caribbean, and Pacific Islands philosophy, and letters, have a rich and varied history, beginning with the influence of Eastern philosophies on Herman Melville and the Transcendentalists. Melville’s “Buddhist” fascinations gave rise to poems, such as “Buddha”, while his earlier insights into Zoroastrianism and Hinduism permeate many of his sea-locked novels. Emerson’s exploration of Hindu and Buddhist texts is evident in his essays, where he extolled the virtues of self-reliance and the interconnectedness of all life. This legacy continued through the Modernist movement, with poets like T.S. Eliot, who incorporated themes from the Upanishads into his seminal work, The Waste Land. The Beat Generation further cemented the presence of Eastern thought in American literature, with figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg drawing heavily on Buddhist practices and philosophies, and its teachings on spontaneity and mindfulness (Click here to read the whole CFP)