CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue on Latinx Detective Fiction

A Browner Shade of Noir: Latinx Detective and Mystery Narratives in Literature
and Popular Culture
Diálogo journal invites authors to submit manuscripts for a special issue dedicated to Latinx Detective
Fiction. We are looking for essays exploring the ways in which detective, noir, hardboiled, and mystery
narratives add to a range of questions about power in relation to Latinx identities and cultures in the 21st
century. At the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, national identity, and ability, this special
issue will feature analyses of works that challenge, rewrite, and sometimes ignore completely the popular
scripts of white, heteromasculine anti/heroism in which these genres are often grounded. For many
Latinx authors, detective narratives appear to offer an outsider perspective (what Ralph E. Rodriguez
refers to as "alienated eyes") from which to imagine and articulate more inclusive forms of belonging and
political agency. With this in mind, contributors to this special issue are encouraged (but not required) to
consider the following questions:
• Why do writers and filmmakers continue to produce works in these genres and why do they remain so
popular with audiences? How do these genres change (or do they change?) to accommodate Latinx
narratives?
• What is at stake when Latinx narratives of alienation move from focusing on “private eyes/I’s” to
imagining “collective we’s”?

• When and to what extent do Latinx detective narratives offer audiences a glimpse through “collective
eyes” (or from “collectivized” perspectives)?
• Do representations of power and violence in these genres resonate differently in the hands of Latinx
characters, authors, directors, etc.? If so, why?
• What do we gain and what might we lose when we read Latinx authors as disruptive voices within these
genres?

We are interested in essays on Latinx authors and Latin American authors who write in and on the
boundaries of these genres. We are also interested in essays about detective/noir films, television shows,
graphic novels, and/or video games.
Timeline: Please submit a 250-500 word proposal by January 1, 2020. If accepted, final text of the
article length piece will be expected in late April 2020, for publication in the Spring 2021 issue. Please
submit proposals directly to all editors of the special issue: Jose Navarro (jnavar17@calpoly.edu), Michael
Cucher (cucher.michael@gmail.com), and William Arce (warce@csufresno.edu).