Rafia Zafar guest edits African American Review’s special issue on Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

This special issue of African American Review remembers, recharges, and reimagines the legacy of Afro-Borinqueño visionary Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.

Guest edited by Rafia Zafar and Laura E. Helton, it features essays by Margarita M. Castromán Soto, Adalaine Holton, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Lisa Sánchez González, and Vanessa K. Valdés; a roundtable with Melanie Chambliss, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Alexsandra Mitchell; and insights into Schomburg’s collection from Miranda Mims, Alice Adamczyk, and Matthew Murphy. These scholars, librarians, and archivists bring together the fields of African American and Puerto Rican studies to celebrate the life and work of the Black archive’s diasporic avatar.

African American Review (AAR) is a scholarly aggregation of insightful essays on African American literature, theatre, film, the visual arts, and culture; interviews; poetry; fiction; and book reviews. AAR has featured renowned writers and cultural critics including Trudier Harris, Arnold Rampersad, Hortense Spillers, Amiri Baraka, Cyrus Cassells, Rita Dove, Charles Johnson, Cheryl Wall, and Toni Morrison. The official publication of the Modern Language Association's Division on Black American Literature and Culture, AAR fosters a vigorous conversation among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.