call for contributions to an edited volume
abstracts due: january 31, 2027
Black Horn x Black Canada
Horn of Africa Diasporas and
Blackness in the Making
Editors: Dr. Alpha Abebe x Dr. Sam Tecle x Dr. Nadiya Nur Ali
About the Volume
This volume will be submitted as a proposal to McGill-Queen’s University Press.
The Horn of Africa and its diasporas show up in Black Canada in meaningful and moving ways. Eritreans appear in the pages of Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For. Ethiopian tzita melodies shape The Weeknd’s R&B ballads. For over thirty years, Somali placemaking in West Toronto and Etobicoke has shaped both local and transnational institutions and shaped Black life. Within and across these diasporas, community solidarities have formed in response to issues such as police violence, Islamophobic attacks and refugee houselessness.
The Horn is visible in historical and contemporary migration and census data. Migration and memory from the Horn also surface across photography, screenprints, sculpture, moving images, sound and installation. Horn of Africa diasporas have made, mobilized and moved Black Canada through subversive imagery, iconic symbolism, critiques of the Canadian nation-state and ongoing freedom dreams.
This volume examines how Horn of Africa diasporas reshape understandings of race and ethnicity in Canada. It traces how their layered histories unsettle assumptions about Blackness, belonging and difference in Canadian social life. The Horn of Africa is conventionally defined through Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti. This volume also engages Sudan as a critical interlocutor, as its diasporic, cultural and political entanglements with the region are indispensable to understanding the making of Black Horn identities and communities in Canada. We also attend to contested borders and political identities, within and across states, that shape how Horn diasporas understand themselves and each other in, amongst and across other Black diasporas in Black Canada.
Public and scholarly discourse about Horn diasporas has tended to centre newcomer, integration and assimilation framings. Policy questions about economic integration, multiculturalism and settlement have dominated. While this work offers important context, its preoccupations often cast Horn diasporas as perpetual newcomers and obscured their foundational place in Black Canada and in Canada writ large. Drawing on cultural production and community practice, this volume situates Horn communities squarely within Black Canada, attending to their distinctive historical and political formations and to the ways Black Horn and Black Canada co-constitute each other.
Horn of Africa diasporas reconfigure Black Canada in ways that diversity and multicultural framings are too thin to capture. What is happening is generative, and the sum holds more to explore than its parts. As such, the x in our title signals this in two senses. It brings Black Horn and Black Canada together as heuristic concepts. It also marks the many ways the two multiply and generate new meaning. Horn diasporas arrive with their own cultural distinctiveness and formations, and they meet Black Canadas that are and have long been here. The volume traces what happens in the x: how Black Horn makes and moves Black Canada, and how Black Canada makes and moves Black Horn.
By foregrounding community knowledge, art and cultural production, the volume offers a critical intervention into academic debates. It is also a resource for scholars, students, artists, cultural critics, policymakers and community advocates engaged with Blackness, migration, memory, culture and belonging in Canada. The project builds on the 2025 Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS) roundtable East African Contributions, Criticisms and Necessary Interventions in the Making of Black Studies in Canada. The editors conceived and led that roundtable, and this collection extends its conversation.
Themes and Possible Contributions
The volume will bring together interdisciplinary contributions that reflect the breadth and specificity of Black Horn diasporic life in Canada. The collection will be shaped by the submissions received and will span a range of sites, forms, practices and disciplines. Possible contributions include:
- Theoretically driven work on how Horn diasporas encounter, embody and rework Blackness in Canada, unsettling dominant frameworks of multiculturalism and belonging
- Studies of placemaking that trace how Horn presences move through and reshape Canadian cities, memory, belonging and literature
- Analyses of sound, musical inheritance and remix
- Engagements with Black arts and popular culture, including how Horn figures and aesthetics circulate in music, film, creative practice, fashion and digital media
- Studies of coalition and relation across communities in Canada, including shared struggles against colonialism and dispossession
- Conversations among community organizers on responses to anti-Black policing, Islamophobia, xenophobia, displacement and economic precarity
- Work that brings gender and sexuality to bear on how Horn diasporas make/remake Black Canada
- Explorations of kinship, faith and intergenerational life, including second-generation experience and how identity is negotiated across households, languages and time
- Critical reflections on Black Studies in Canada and the place of the Horn within its histories and futures
These examples are illustrative. We welcome proposals on other topics that engage the volume’s central questions.
Who We Invite to Submit
- Scholars at all career stages, including graduate students and independent researchers
- Artists, curators, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, poets and writers
- Community organizers, cultural workers and practitioners
Collaborative submissions are welcome, including pairings between scholars, artists and community members.
We welcome contributors from within and beyond Horn of Africa communities whose work engages Horn diasporas in Canada.
Contribution Formats
The volume blends scholarly writing with reflective, conversational and arts-based work. Proposals may take one of the following forms.
Scholarly chapter
A research-based essay with a clear theoretical contribution
6,000 to 8,000 words, including notes and referencesShort essay or reflection
Critical, personal or reflective writing grounded in the volume’s themes
2,500 to 4,000 wordsConversation or interview
An edited dialogue among organizers, artists or scholars
3,000 to 5,000 wordsArts-based contribution
Visual art, photography, poetry, sound or other creative work
The work + an accompanying text of 1,000 to 2,000 wordsImages in the print edition may be limited in number and reproduced in greyscale (to be determined). Contributors are responsible for securing permissions for any images or media they include. Sound and moving-image work may be presented through a digital companion, pending discussion with the press.
Editorial Process
We are building this volume as a book whose contributions speak to one another. To support this, we plan to create opportunities for contributors to engage with each other’s work as it develops. This may include peer exchanges between contributors, online conversations organized by theme, and/or an in-person or hybrid authors’ workshop, subject to resources. The editors will provide feedback on each draft, and the full manuscript will undergo the press’s peer review. Final inclusion depends on both editorial review and the press’s peer review process.
How to Submit
Please send a single PDF or Word file named LastName_BlackHorn_ContributionTitle that includes:
- A working title for the contribution
- The proposed format, drawn from the formats above or a proposed alternative format
- An abstract of 300 to 500 words describing the contribution, its central question or argument, and its connection to the volume
- For arts-based contributions, a description of the work, up to 3 samples as images or links, and confirmation that you have secured permissions or hold copyrights necessary for reproduction
- A 100 to 150 word bio for each contributor, and institutional/organizational affiliation if relevant
- Contact information for each contributor
Should you have any questions before submission, please contact us at the email above.
Tentative Timeline
| Abstracts due | January 31, 2027 |
| Notification of acceptance | February 2027 |
| Full drafts due to editorial team | August 31, 2027 |
Subject to change. Later milestones, including feedback on full drafts, revisions, peer review and publication, will be set in conversation with the publisher and contributors as the project develops.
About the Editors
Dr. Alpha Abebe
McMaster University
Dr. Sam Tecle
Toronto Metropolitan University
Dr. Nadiya Nur Ali
Trent University
The editors will lead the call and curation process together and work closely with contributors to shape the volume’s direction and coherence. They will also co-author an introduction that sets out the project’s conceptual framework across Black, African, Diaspora, Canadian and Cultural Studies.
The project builds on years of collaboration among the editors within and beyond academic spaces. That work spans research, teaching, community-engaged initiatives and cultural programming. Together, the editors bring complementary scholarly expertise and sustained relationships within Horn of Africa and Black diasporic communities in Canada.
Read the Full Call
The complete call for contributions, with all themes, formats and submission details, as a 4-page PDF.
Download the Full Call (PDF)