The first global history of African linguistics as an emerging autonomous academic discipline, covering Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Since the 1960s, Afro-Hispanic linguistics has produced vital knowledge at the intersection of African diaspora studies and Spanish sociolinguistics – yet many misconceptions persist in research literature. To challenge those biased assumptions, the contributions gathered in this volume present current research on Afro-Hispanic varieties from both sides of the Atlantic (Equatorial Guinean Spanish, Palenquero, Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish from Loíza, San Andrean [Colombia] Raizal Spanish) and address the influence of Portuguese-based Creoles on Afro-Hispanic varieties during the early colonial era. Conceived in cooperation with students, activists, social workers, civil servants, and researchers who work with Afro-Hispanic languages and communities (as well as with other languages and communities who suffer linguistic, social, and racial marginalization), this volume adopts a social justice framework that seeks tangible, material, and quality-of-life improvements for the speech communities in which it investigates. It includes best practices for empirical research, recruitment of respondents and informants, fieldwork and archival work, and pedagogical and community-facing applications of research.

Diasporic Identities within Afro-Hispanic and African Contexts explores the complexities underlying the identity formation of peoples of African ancestry in the Spanish-speaking world and of expatriate immigrants who inhabit colonized territories in Africa. Although current diaspora studies provide provocative perspectives on migration that have various cultural, national, political and economic implications, any engagement of the subject readily runs into theoretical and practical challenges. At stake here is the question of finding an ideal conceptualization of diaspora. Should the term be limited to migration that is purely voluntary or to a traumatic exile? What about generational differences that, invariably, impact the imagining of diaspora? How does diaspora relate to creolization, hybridity and transculturation? This volume does not argue for what constitutes a proper diaspora, but rather re-contextualizes the concept of diaspora from the point of view of identity formation on the basis of voluntary and non-voluntary migration. The essays gathered together here engage with the unified topic of identity, but radiate a stimulating variety in geographic coverage – examining countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Morocco, Angola, and Spain – and in thematic approach – from religion to a poetics of self-affirmation to issues of political conflict, subalternity and migration.

The book series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, founded by Gustav Gröber in 1905, is among the most renowned publications in Romance Studies. It covers the entire field of Romance linguistics, including the national languages as well as the lesser studied Romance languages. The editors welcome submissions of high-quality monographs and collected volumes on all areas of linguistic research, on medieval literature and on textual criticism. The publication languages of the series are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian as well as German and English. Each collected volume should be as uniform as possible in its contents and in the choice of languages.

Antonio Olliz Boyd is an emeritus professor of Latin American literature at Temple University. He holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MS from Grorgetown University, and a BA from Long Island University. Dr. Olliz Boyd has published various essays on Afro Latino aesthetics in literature in volumes, such as the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern Latin-American Fiction Writers; Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejon; Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity; Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays among others, as well as articles on Afro Latino literary criticism in various refereed journals. --Book Jacket.