CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for contributors for Hip Hop Around the World: An Encyclopedia, a
two-volume reference set under contract with Greenwood Press. This
collection will consist of 10,000-word essays on the most important hip hop
scenes around the world. I am currently seeking contributors interested in
writing chapters on the following countries and themes:

(Proposals due April 15th, 2008)

* North America
1. Aztlan/Chicano
2. Mexico
3. Native (North) America

* The Caribbean
4. Puerto Rico
5. Haiti
6. Cuba
7. Dominican Republic

* Europe
8. The U.K.
9. France
10. Germany
11. Italy

* Africa
12. South Africa
13. Senegal
14. Zimbabwe
15. Nigeria

* Latin America
16. Colombia
17. Venezuela
18. Brazil
19. Argentina

* The Middle East
20. Palestine
21. Israel
22. Iran

* Asia and Oceania
23. Philippines
24. Japan
25. China
26. Korea
27. Australia and New Zealand

*** This list is far from exhaustive. If a contributor has expertise in a
country or region not represented here, I urge you to send a proposal
explaining how the chapter would add to the volume. ***

Recent years have witnessed the explosion of hip-hop as a global
phenomenon. While many U.S-based rappers are nearly three decades into the
scene and wondering aloud if hip-hop is finally dead, little heed is paid
internationally to such claims of an early death. Outside the United
States, rap music and hip-hop culture are blowing up, to such a degree that
you could probably find a rap scene in any country on earth if you look
hard enough. But what questions are raised by this explosion? The
popularization of hip-hop on the international level has called into
question the very nature of the genre itself. If hip-hop is a culture that
emerged from Blacks and Latinos in the South Bronx, and if it finds its
central coordinates in what Robin Kelley deems "ghettocentricity"—the
intersection of racial discrimination and economic poverty—what does it
mean to speak of "Japanese hip-hop"? This volume will seek to account for
the historical dissemination of hip-hop and rap as cultural forms, while
maintaining the historical origins of hip-hop as a constant reference-point.

About the Editor: George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in
political theory at the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarship
on hip hop has been published in Journal of Black Studies, Icons of Hip Hop
(Greenwood, 2007), and Represent Where I'm From (Greenwood, forthcoming).

Submitting a Proposal:
By April 15th 2008, submit an outline of your proposed 10,000-word
essay, a CV or other documentation indicating your expertise, and a writing
sample as Microsoft Word documents to George Ciccariello-Maher at
hiphoparoundtheworld_at_gmail.com. Your outline should make clear how and when
hip hop arrived in the country in question, how it developed and innovated,
and its convergences with or divergences from hip hop in the United States.
You should also include a list of 5 or more possible sidebars for your
essay (300-500 word text boxes drawing attention to a specific historical
figures, areas or locations, or stylistic innovations that set the country
in question apart).



-- 
Iain Robert Smith
Institute of Film and Television
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
NG7 2RD