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Countless critical works engage abolition, and endless creative works invoke the arts. This anthology is animated by the intersection of both. It emerges at the junction of drama and decarceration, where digital media merges with decolonization, and music sparks -- and is
The Arts & Abolition book series, with this first book in particular, is designed to make these junctures visible, to articulate radical trends in abolitionist arts practice and education, and to forge connections across movements for co-liberation. In each book of this series, abolitionist arts practitioners, theoreticians, and culture workers critique carceral power, carceral logics of state and social formation, and continuities of carceral state violence while imagining futures free of prisons, borders and war.
We view abolition as not only critical of existing systems of power, but also as constructive of new realities yet unimagined. This generative understanding is one we inherit from movements that built the foundation for works like this — drawing on the powerful intersection of the arts and abolitionist praxis. As such, we argue that artists and culture workers are well situated to contribute new scholarship around these practices. We recognize the tensions in publishing this series with an academic press, and that many potential contributors to (and indeed, many of the editors of) this series are employed by academic, philanthropic, and cultural institutions that are deeply invested in the very carceral, colonial, and state structures we dream of abolishing. We hope to contend with and struggle against this reality in each book in the series.
The first book in this series – Another World is Possible, will explore radical imagination, freedom dreaming, and the prophetic conjuring of alternative futures through a range of creative practices. Recognizing that creativity transcends the artificial disciplinary boundaries upheld by the academy, the book will foreground the diverse perspectives of system-impaired artists and comrades who disrupt disciplinary boundaries in order to remake worlds. Drawing on legacies of liberation poetics from the Black radical tradition and other freedom movements, this book will consider a range of complex ways in which artistic practice can function as both a locus for political critique and an imaginative engine for epistemic, environmental, and economic justice in a fractured world.
We envision the book bringing into conversation those working in and across creative studies, cultural geography, critical future studies, critical studies in improvisation, transformative justice, and community arts in a variety of fields of practice. The co-editors are open to developing the themes of the book in dialogue with contributors. As such, the following list of keywords should be read as a starting point rather than an exhaustive thematic mapping.
Liberation, Freedom Dreaming, Radical Imagination, Just Transformation, Community, Possibility, Making Worlds, and New Horizons, Futurity.
We are inviting a variety of contributions including manifestos, essays, reflections, research papers, journals, interviews, conversation transcripts, field notes, poetry, fables, creative interludes, visual art pieces, and hybrid or experimental forms. Because the call is so broad, we are not specifying lengths; instead we are asking for authors to submit proposed word counts (or alternative lengths in the case of lyrical, photographic or visual art) with their abstracts. We seek submissions that are accessible to artists, educators, organizers, and activists, as well as to a diverse and global academic audience.
We are keen for this book to foreground voices of people who have first-hand experience of detention, as well as the perspectives of musicians, artists, researchers, and facilitators working at the nexus of arts and abolition. If you are interested in co-authoring your contribution with one or more others from a non-academic background, or if you would like to suggest a solo contributor from a non-academic background, we would be keen to discuss this.
April 5, 2024 Submission of Abstracts
May 15, 2024 Initial responses from the Editors
December 1, 2024 First draft chapters to be submitted to the Editors, after submission of the book proposal
March 15, 2025 Chapters returned with feedback
May 1, 2025 Final draft chapters submitted to the Editors
Fall 2026 Book published & launch party
We invite you to send us the following information by April 5, 2024:
1. Working title for submission
2. Abstract or Description of 300-400 words
3. Proposed Project Length
4. Co-writers
5. Brief bio (150 words)
Bryonn, André, Emilie & Wayland
Bryonn Bain, University of California Los Angeles, bryonnrollybain@gmail.com
André de Quadros, Boston University, adq@bu.edu
Emilie Amrein, University of San Diego, amrein@sandiego.edu
Wayland X. Coleman, independent scholar
We are inviting authors, artists, activists, poets and other cultural workers to contribute material to an edited book that will explore the role of imagination, dreaming, dialogue, and action in bringing new worlds into being.
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