[Many thanks to Mary Ann Gosser Esquilín (FAU) for bringing this item to our attention.] The Journal of West Indian Literature (JWIL) has sent out a call for papers for a special issue on “Caribbean Health Humanities,” edited by Jarrel De Matas and April Shemak, to be published in November 2027. This forthcoming issue will explore the connections between Caribbean literature, culture, and health. Abstracts are due on May 31, 2026.
Description / Guidelines: We invite submissions for a special issue on Caribbean Health Humanities that will explore the connections between Caribbean literature, culture, and health. Although the health humanities are only beginning to crystallize as a formal area of inquiry within Caribbean literary studies, its thematic preoccupations—illness, care, embodiment, and the medicalized subject—have long been present in the region’s intellectual and literary traditions. Foundational thinkers such as Erna Brodber and Sylvia Wynter have laid critical groundwork for interrogating the intersections of health, identity, and colonial modernity, offering points of departure for new scholarship in this emergent field. We welcome papers examining how literary narratives shape and challenge traditional notions of health and care in the region and its diasporas. Articles applying literary methodologies to engage with health concerns as well as historical, contemporary, and speculative engagements with healing are also welcome.
This special issue aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary bridge between literature and health outcomes to expand our understanding of the socio-cultural and historical dimensions of health and medicine in the Caribbean. We look forward to contributions that expand the parameters of Caribbean health humanities and offer perspectives on the relationship between literature and health.
Possible topics and themes might include:
- Representations of colonial and postcolonial health outcomes
- Narrative medicine
- Representations of disability, mental health, and trauma
- Racialized health practices
- Natural and environmental disasters and pandemics
- Spiritual, community, and folk/lore healing traditions
- Gender, sexuality, and reproductive justice
- Futuristic narratives and health futures
- Migration, diaspora, and health practices
- Care and community healing in Caribbean literary traditions
- Writing disability and the (un)fit body
- Climate, health, and environmental illness in Caribbean literature
Submission Guidelines:
Prospective contributors should submit 300–500 word abstracts by 31 May 2026. Responses to abstract submissions will be sent by 30 July 2026; final versions of accepted papers will be due 20 November 2026. Scholarly essays should be between 6000 and 8000 words. Writers’, artists’, or practitioners’ statements or essays may be considerably shorter.
Please submit abstracts through the JWIL submission page at www.jwilonline.org/submission-guidelines/article-guidelines/
For queries about the issue, please contact JWIL guest editors Jarrel De Matas at jkdemata@utmb.edu and April Shemak at aas004@shsu.edu
Jarrel De Matas is an assistant professor in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas, Medical Branch at Galveston. Jarrel received his BA and MA from The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research bridges science fiction studies and narrative medicine. His latest book is titled Caribbean Futurism and Beyond: Conversations with Writers of Folklore, Fantasy, Speculative, and Science Fiction.
April Shemak is a professor in the Department of English at Sam Houston State University and the author of Asylum Speakers: Caribbean Refugees and Testimonial Discourse (Fordham University Press). Her research focuses on Caribbean and postcolonial literature, refugee and asylum narratives, and the cultural politics of care. She is an associate editor of The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (Wiley-Blackwell).
Please see here for more information about the Journal of West Indian Literature | JWIL
Also see https://www.cfplist.com/CFP/47103
[Unrelated photo above by Alvin Baez / REUTERS. See https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/hurricane-irma/32/]
[Many thanks to Mary Ann Gosser Esquilín (FAU) for bringing this item to our attention.] The Journal of West Indian Literature (JWIL) has sent out a call for papers for a special issue on “Caribbean Health Humanities,” edited by Jarrel De Matas and April Shemak, to be published in November 2027. This forthcoming issue will explore
