Submissions

Author Guidelines

Focus:

• The editorial committee welcomes submissions from a broad range of disciplines. Its members are particularly eager to receive work that takes on a multi- or interdisciplinary perspective on theatrical creation in African and diasporic contexts.
• Considering the journal’s interdisciplinary interests and audience, texts must be accessible to a broad scholarly readership. Debates or terms specific to a single field should be contextualized and made legible and relevant for readers from other disciplines.
• The committee takes the term “theater” in its broadest sense. Its members invite submissions that examine stage performance in the form of scripted theater, dance, music, ritual or any combination thereof. We also welcome submissions that take a theater-based approach to socially or politically situated forms of performance. The journal has an additional interest in studies that explore behind-the-scenes aspects of African theater and performance, including the economic, political, or social conditions that make theatrical creation possible.

Submission policies:

• All submissions must be original work that has not been published elsewhere and is not up for consideration with another journal.
• Submissions must be anonymous. The author will remove all self-identifying information, including references to previously published work.

Scholarly articles:

• Articles should fall between 5,000 and 6,000 words including bibliographic material.
• The text of the article should be single-spaced and written in Times New Roman 12-point font without any special text formatting or spacing.
• Files should be submitted in Word format.
• For texts written in English, American spelling and punctuation should be used except when citing a source that uses British style.
• Texts written in French should use standard French punctuation.
• Each article should be preceded by an abstract of no more than 150 words. This should be followed by a list of 5-10 key words. Neither the abstract nor the key words are included in the overall article word count.

Citation style:

• References should be aligned with Chicago style, 17^th edition, using the author-date method.
• A guide in English for the author-date style can be found here.
• The University of Montréal has produced a guide in French with a general introduction to Chicago style, as well as specific guidelines for the author-date method. Authors with more detailed questions can refer to this longer citational guide in French or contact the editor.

Illustrations, supplementary files:

• Any supplementary files, including illustrations (format JPEG), charts, sound recordings, or video should be submitted separately from the text file via the journal website. Contact the editor for large files, which can be sent through a file-sharing platform.
• The desired placement of supplementary material should be indicated within the text (e.g. “Figure 1”).
• If supplementary materials are used, the author must include a list of submitted files that indicates the name of each file (listed in order of appearance in the text), a short description of the file’s content, and any required credit or copyright information.
• It will be the author’s responsibility to acquire necessary permission to publish any supplementary material or images along with the text.

Languages:

• The journal accepts submissions in French, English, and Portuguese.

Formatting:

• Bibliographic references should be listed at the end of the main text.
• Footnotes are permitted but should be used sparingly if at all.
• Indicate references within the text of the article through a parenthetical citation that includes the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page number for any quote. The parenthetical citation should come at the end of the sentence just before the punctuation mark.
• Place quotations of five lines or more in block quote format. Block quotes, which do not include quotation marks, should be indented (0.5’’ from the margin, or the same as a paragraph indent) and written in 12-point font like the rest of the text. They should be preceded and followed by one space which sets them apart from the rest of the text. Parenthetical citations are placed at the end of the block quote after the period and include the author’s name and the page number but not the year.
• Headings are permitted but should be used sparingly. Only first-level headings are to be used, placed in bold and flushed left without any numeration.
• Leave only one space between sentences.
• Italics should only be used for book titles and words in a foreign language.
• Boldface type should be reserved for the manuscript title, the word “abstract,” and headings if used.
• Indent at the start of each paragraph but do not separate paragraphs by a space.