ALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize*‍ ‍

Call for Nominations for the 2027 ALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize 

Deadline: August 1, 2026 

The Association for Latin American Art (ALAA), an affiliate of the College Art Association (CAA), and the Visual Culture Section of the Latin American Studies Association (VCS-LASA), are pleased to sponsor the Annual ALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for an especially distinguished scholarly essay published on a topic related to Afro-Latinx and/or Afro-Latin American Art and Visual Culture, broadly defined. We will consider scholarly essays published in a peer-reviewed journal, edited volume, or exhibition catalogue during the previous year, on any aspect of Afro Latin American and Afro-Latinx art, architecture, or visual culture in Latin America and the diaspora, covering any period from the colonial era to the present. The award consists of a $500 honorarium and will be presented at the ALAA business meeting at the annual conference of the College Art Association in New York, February 3-6, 2027, as well as the LASA Visual Culture Studies Section business meeting at the Latin American Studies Association conference. The name of the recipient will appear in the newsletters of both ALAA and LASA.  

 

For the 2027 award, we will evaluate essays on Afro-Latinx Art and Afro-Latin American Art that meet the following criteria:

·      Publication date between August 1, 2025 and July 31, 2026

·      Essays may be written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese

 

The essays will be evaluated by a three-person committee of accomplished scholars in the field, each with expertise in a wide geographical and temporal range. 

 

Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize Committee

Carlos Rivas, Chair, rivas.91@osu.edu

Rosita Scerbo, rscerbo@gsu.edu

Kency Cornejo, kcornejo@g.ucla.edu

*Authors may not submit the same material for two award categories. If, for example, a major essay from an exhibition catalogue is submitted for the Article Award, the catalogue itself may not be submitted for the Exhibition Catalogue Award or vice versa. It is the responsibility of the author to determine which category best fits the submission.

2026 WINNER‍ ‍

ALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize

Paul Niell, “Following the Footsteps of Juana Agripina: Slavery, Memory, and the Architecture of Invisibility in Ponce, Puerto Rico,” in Architectures of Slavery: Ruins and Reconstructions, edited by Nathaniel Robert Walker and Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2025), 94–115

2026 Honorable Mention‍ ‍

AwardALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize

Sofia Vindas Solano, “Eulalia Bernard Little y La ‘Obeah Woman’: Su aporte a la performance Afroamericana y las prácticas artísticas contemporáneas Latinoamericanas,” Perspectivas Afroamericanas: Revista de Estudios Afrolatinoamericanos y Afrocaribeños 3, no. 2 (2024): 250–273

2025 WINNER‍ ‍

ALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize

Tatiana Flores, “The We Within: Oceanic Imaginaries of Caribbean Art, “La Escuela_Journal, No. 1: ‘Hydrocommons Cultures: Art, Pedagogy, and Care Practices across the Americas,’ (eds) Lisa Blackmore and Alejandro Ponce de León (2024), 278–304.

2025 Honorable Mention

AwardALAA/LASA-VCS Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize

Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa, “Michael Richards: Performance as Ritual and Black-Indigenous Haptic Visuality,” The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, (eds) Tatiana Flores, Florencia San Martín, and Charlene Villaseñor-Black (2024), 544–554.

previous award recipients and honorable mentions

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previous award recipients and honorable mentions ____________________________