Guest Editor: Naya Jones, University of California Santa Cruz
Submission Deadline Extended to October 1, 2022

Dreaming emerges again and again in Black expressive culture and social movements. Dreams surface in the biographies and testimonies of Black artists, medicine-makers, and visionaries. Dreams circulate in affirmations: I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams!¹

This special issue of The Arrow Journal is inspired by the transformative possibilities of Black dreaming in many senses of the word. An expansive understanding of dreams, along with insights from the field of Black geographies, inspires this call for submissions – which attends to the connections between dreaming, liberation, and spiritual practice.²

This issue takes dream-inspired art, scholarship, and activism as its point of departure. The celebrated play A Raisin in the Sun (1958) by Lorraine Hansberry is thick with dreams in the shape of personal aspirations and dreams of freedom.³ Robin D.G. Kelley (2003) traces “freedom dreams,” or how Black artists and intellectuals have imagined freedom in art, manifestos, and movement.⁴ Cara Page (2010) writes how collective memories, dreams, and imagination can inspire “new models of healing and justice” within movements.⁵ adrienne marie brown references dreams in the title of her latest book, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice; her call to reframe cancel culture is grounded in a Black, queer, and feminist framework made possible through radical, collective dreaming. 

In most of these examples, dream is synonymous with imagination or aspiration. Often, these dreams are invoked or co-created, while literally and figuratively awake. Still other modes of Black dreaming are less-charted, like dreams received while sleeping or prophetic dreams. We remember how Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, and other ancestors traced their dreams to God or the Divine. How Tubman mobilized her prophetic dreams to both map out and carry out the Underground Railroad is perhaps most well-known in Black/African-American context. Alexis Pauline Gumbs (2014) invites us to consider what remembering Tubman’s prophetic dreams means for how freedom, dreaming, and the relationship between them are understood.⁶ Attending to dreams sourced to the Divine, ancestors, or the metaphysical, opens up Black cosmologies or philosophies of the Universe, leading to other epistemologies or ways of knowing. 

Along with these works, this issue builds on a previously-published piece called “Prologue: On Black Dream Geographies” (2021) by the Guest Editor.⁷ As an expansive field of study, Black geographies offers vital assumptions for work with Black dreaming. Among these, oppressive legacies are spatial and Black space-making persists. Legacies of colonialism and white supremacy, among others, shape present-day power dynamics in ways that are profoundly spatialized, from uneven access to resources across neighborhoods, to mass incarceration, to the inordinate impact of intersecting crises like climate change, environmental injustice, and COVID-19 on Black communities worldwide. At the same time, Black space- and world-making has involved marronage and movements; expressive culture; social and cultural institutions; and more. These have been sites of resistance and thriving.⁸

At its heart, this Special Issue is about how dreaming has been integral to Black thriving. What is Black dreaming made of, and how does this dreaming matter now? For this peer-reviewed issue, we seek essays, including photo essays and descriptions of practices; scholarly articles; book reviews; and poetry. We welcome works that defy – or refuse! – genre.  Activists, scholars, artists, practitioners, and those who blur the lines between these, we invite your contributions. The Guest Editor especially seeks pieces on less-charted Black dreaming, such as sleeping dreams, prophecy, dreams invoked by contemplative or spiritual practice, or how these relate to activism and movement work. And while the field of Black geographies inspires this call, we welcome work from across and beyond disciplines. 

Furthermore, this Special Issue seeks to contribute to the collective archiving and analysis of Black dreaming, by centering the work of Black contributors. The Guest Editor especially invites Black, African, and Black diaspora contributors to submit their work, including but not limited to  Black folks living outside of the Americas and contributors who identify as Afro-Latinx, Afro-Indigenous, Afro-Asian, and/or Afro-Arab. 

Possible topics include but are not limited to: 

• Black dreaming and spiritual or contemplative practice  
• Landscapes of Black dreaming: literal, figurative, imaginative
• Black dream rituals 
• Dreaming and movements, e.g. the global Black Lives Matter Movement, Tricia Hersey’s The Nap Ministry and Black rest, Healing Justice, Restorative Justice
• Dreaming in Black Indigenous and African Traditional Religions 
• Rootwork, conjure, and Black dreaming
• Nature and Black dreaming
• Black feminism, womanism, and dreaming
• Lives of dream-inspired activists, artists, scholars, cultural workers
• Black herbalism and dreaming
• Collective healing, recovery, and Black dreaming
• Dreams in Afrofuturism, Black Sci-Fi, and/or Black Fantasy
• Reflections on writing, teaching, and/or researching Black dreaming

Please direct inquiries to our editing team at shahnoor@arrow-journal.org. Submissions are open via the Google Form below and will close on September 12, 2022 for review.

Please read our Submission Guidelines prior to submitting your manuscript. If you plan to submit a book review, please also review our guidelines for book reviews.

When you’re ready to submit your manuscript, please use this Submission Form.

About the publication: The Arrow Journal explores the relationship among contemplative practice, politics, and activism. The Arrow welcomes the insights of multiple contemplative lineages for achieving a kinder, healthier, and more compassionate world. We encourage dialogue on wisdom and knowledge arising from methods of contemplative inquiry, ways of embodied knowing, and intellectual disciplines. In doing so, The Arrow provides a critical and much needed space for investigating the meeting point of contemplative wisdom and pressing social, political, and environmental challenges.

Submission Deadline Extended to September 1, 2022

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh passed away on January 22, 2022. The global response to his death was immediate and vast, with thousands of people watching live online or attending in person the ceremonies honoring his life and transition. Those who had benefited from his teachings–from world leaders to citizens of nearly every nation–expressed an outpouring of gratitude and love for his life’s offerings.

Thich Nhat Hanh founded the school of Engaged Buddhism, whose philosophical roots grew out of his early anti-war activism during the Vietnam War. Today, his teachings on Engaged Buddhism encompass the many threats to our social, economic, and existential health, including racial and environmental justice as well as continued peace activism. These teachings are reflective of The Arrow’s mission to more explicitly draw out the connections between contemplative practice and working toward a more socially just world.

Thay—as he was known to his students—taught us that a cloud never dies. His students have embodied this teaching in the wake of his death as they continue his legacy through spiritual practice and social activism. The Arrow Journal is seeking submissions for a special issue on Engaged Buddhism that will examine the legacy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and teachings. Prompts you may consider for a submission include (but are not limited to):

How can Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching and activism serve as a model for transforming systemic suffering in our world? What insights from his life’s work are most needed now?

Where is Thich Nhat Hanh’s message showing up “off the meditation cushion” and in society? How can scholars, activists, and practitioners take inspiration from his influence as we work to address social, ecological, and political challenges?

How does your practice of Engaged Buddhism affect your activism? How do you connect your own contemplative practices with your work to create a more peaceful, healthy, and inclusive world?

We invite the work of authors from multiple traditions, representative especially of Thich Nhat Hanh’s diverse lay and monastic student body. We also welcome a variety of formats, including scholarly articles, essays, and book reviews. We are eager to review new or previously unpublished work reflective of these themes and The Arrow’s mission.

Please direct inquiries to our editing team at ashley@arrow-journal.org. Submissions are open via the Google Form below and will close on September 1, 2022 for review.

Please read our Submission Guidelines prior to submitting your manuscript. If you plan to submit a book review, please also review our guidelines for book reviews.

When you’re ready to submit your manuscript, please use this Submission Form.

About the publication: The Arrow Journal explores the relationship among contemplative practice, politics, and activism. The Arrow welcomes the insights of multiple contemplative lineages for achieving a kinder, healthier, and more compassionate world. We encourage dialogue on wisdom and knowledge arising from methods of contemplative inquiry, ways of embodied knowing, and intellectual disciplines. In doing so, The Arrow provides a critical and much needed space for investigating the meeting point of contemplative wisdom and pressing social, political, and environmental challenges.

Submission Deadline (extended!): January 31, 2022

The Arrow welcomes submissions for a forum on rest, creativity, and suppleness in our Winter 2022 General Issue. We seek reflective short essay submissions that address how contemplative practice can support creativity and resilience in confronting systemic injustices and preventing burnout. As we move into winter in the Northern Hemisphere and welcome the accompanying energy of rest, reflection, and retreat, we are inspired to ask contributors to consider:

What insights arise when you rest, reflect, and recuperate? What wisdom bubbles to the surface when you slow down?

How do practices like non-doing, or simply being, help you re-imagine the world, your work, or your role in transforming systemic suffering?

What forms of being or engaging the world arise naturally in the space in between the demands of capitalist production, academic “publish-or-perish” culture, or burnout-inducing approaches to activism? (Or, if such in-between spaces don’t appear accessible in your experience, what would it take to create them? What is your vision for such space?)

We welcome new or previously unpublished work reflective of these themes and The Arrow’s mission. Additionally, The Arrow is now accepting book reviews! Please see the announcement here: Book Review Submissions. We invite authors to review books that connect to the prompts above and beyond. Open to all authors, book reviews can be a generative opportunity for graduate students and emerging scholars.

Guest Editor: Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls, St. John’s University
Submission Deadline: May 31, 2021 (now extended!)

In the last three decades, Black voices from across the African diaspora have begun to take up prominent space in both Western and Eastern Buddhist, Dharma, and Meditation spaces and communities. Though Black/Afrikan practitioners, teachers, and scholars are a small percentage of the global Buddhist populations, their influence and integration of mindfulness and meditation has invigorated many communities and peoples who have felt left out of or turned off from mainstream meditation communities and teachers.

From early Black Buddhist pioneers like Dr. Jan Willis, Dr. Larry Ward, Ralph Steele, Gina Sharp, Dr. Gaylon Ferguson, Dr. Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, and many others to current dynamic Black Buddhist and meditation teachers like Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, Bhante Buddharakkhita, Sebene Selassie, Dr. Vimalasara Mason-John, and many others, Black Buddhists and meditation teachers are infusing dharma with cutting-edge scholarship, while addressing social movements, decolonization, anti-Black racism, community healing, sustainability, harmful hierarchies, and infusing Buddhist practice with traditional Black Indigenous cultural truthways.

This special issue of The Arrow Journal turns its attention to thinking critically, creatively, historically, and speculatively about the relation between Blackness, Afrikanness, and Meditation, Dharma, and Buddhism. In part inspired by the 2018 panel “Radical Black Dharma Strategies: Black Femmes and Black Queers on Living in the Dark Age,” featuring Black Buddhist practitioners across traditions and lineages, this peer-reviewed special issue of The Arrow seeks scholarly articles, long-form essays, interviews, book reviews, and other writing that foregrounds blackness, Afrikanness, and Black indigeneity in contemplative practice and contemplative communities.

Additionally, Black people’s stories, wisdom, experiences, and critical inquiry related to Buddhism, Dharma, meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative practices need to be spoken, read, heard, and archived. This special issue is part of a growing body of Black intellectual, spiritual, and communal work inside of Buddhist meditation practices and communities. The Special Issue Editor especially invites Black, Afrikan, Afrikan-descended, and other Black diasporic people to take up space in this issue. This invite is also doubly welcoming of Black voices from African countries, Caribbean nations, Asian/Pacific countries, and indigenous lands.

The following topics, themes, and prompts are exemplary, though not exhaustive, of potential essay topics:

• Black Buddhist/Dharma/meditation spaces
• Decolonizing practices
• Practicing in white-dominated spaces
• Black-Asian relations in dharma/meditation spaces
• Dharma and carcerality (prisons, jails, probation, other forms of State surveillance)
• Book reviews (new or old works)
• Personal critical essays
• Leaving dharma communities
• Remixing practices, liturgies, and lineages
• Black ancestors
• Ordination and training
• Blackness, Buddhism, and chattel slavery
• Blackness, Buddhism, and colonialism
• Blackness and Karma
• Patriarchy and misogyny
• Black Feminism and Womanism
• Racial justice
• Black queer, trans, and non-binary practices
• Black embodiment
• Forming communities
• Black traditional religions and Buddhism/meditation
• Anti-blackness and Dharma
• Western Buddhism and Blackness
• The Black Radical Tradition
• Black men and masculinities
• Black women and femininities
• Black rage
• Black economies
• Africa and dharma
• Lineages, traditions, and communities

Guest Editor: LaDawn Haglund
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2020

The social and environmental crises we face today are unprecedented: climate change, biodiversity loss, species extinction, deforestation, and air, water, and soil contamination. These material crises threaten the very basis of life and are indicative of what many believe to be a deeper spiritual crisis, rooted in misperceptions of our fundamental interconnectedness.

At this urgent and challenging time, The Arrow is seeking contributions for a special issue that explores this disconnection between nature and humanity, and among human beings themselves. The provocation is that ecological crisis and societal polarization emerge from a shared foundation: a dualistic logic of domination and exploitation. The objective of this special issue is to penetrate obstacles to our collective self-understanding in ways that could allow us to act with greater care toward one another and the planet.

The speed, atomization, and callous materialism of the modern world are grounded in systems of thinking and acting characterized by domination of nature and other human beings. These include colonialism and imperialism, with their logic of supremacy over land and “others;” capitalism, with its logic of materialism, selfishness, class superiority, and boundless exploitation of human and natural resources; racism, with its logic of white supremacy; patriarchy, with its logic of male superiority; and speciesism, with its anthropocentric logic of human superiority.

Though these may appear to be separate forms of domination and exploitation, they share an ontological root from which emerges a multitude of social and ecological crises. Living in the shadow of these systems, we adopt a narrow world view that foregrounds a sense of entitlement to take what is not offered, take more than one’s fair share, take more than can be replenished, and take until it causes hurt. These “takings” create vast inequities and threaten our collective ability for resilience, empathy, and interdependent flourishing.

We invite contributions from practitioners, scholars, and activists that explore these dynamics, as well as potential pathways toward healing and authentic community based on shared sentience. We particularly welcome work that advances inclusive dialogue on questions such as:

• How do dualistic perceptions of self/other enable domination and exploitation in our society? How does domination manifest in our bodies, lives, and communities? What are the personal, social, and environmental consequences of rewarding callous individualism, selfishness, or narcissism? How can we honestly examine and reject abusive relations when they are entrenched in our history, culture, politics, and economic systems?
• What guidance, practices, and experiences would lead us toward more sustainable collective forms of social and economic reproduction? How can we support human autonomy while valuing difference, building community, and enabling coexistence?
• How can we develop internal capacities to work with grief, powerlessness, fear, and other emotions as they arise in our efforts to confront ecological and/or social crises? What possibilities exist for collective action and imagination to overcome isolation and individual powerlessness?
• What can we learn from communities that refrain from exploitation, or from contemplative practices that work to dispel dualistic thinking? How can we create the conditions for empathy, connection, and acting from a deep understanding of interconnectedness? How might subaltern worldviews inform potential restorative and systemic transformations?
• How can we champion scientific and socioecological priorities based on more holistic perspectives?

In all of these topics we encourage an awareness of the multilayered ways in which race, gender, class, and other dimensions of social identity and oppression intersect.

Please read our Submission Guidelines prior to submitting. We invite the work of authors from diverse traditions, and we welcome a variety of formats, including scholarly articles, essays, and poetry. When submitting, please indicate whether the submission is a scholarly article, essay, comment, poem, or other. Scholarly articles will be peer reviewed. Submissions may be emailed as Microsoft Word Documents to editor@arrow-journal.org.