CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Book project: Sinners Reader: The Blues, Black Horror, and the Jim Crow South Editor, DuEwa M. Frazier (editor of Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts)

Abstracts: Abstracts of 300-500 words are due by May 15, 2026. Please submit an abstract of your essay with a short bio and current affiliation using the Google Drive form. Please use the following link to submit: https://tinyurl.com/Sinnersreadercfp. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by June 1. 

The 2025 award-winning film Sinners,  written and directed by Ryan Coogler, was more than a Black horror film. Presenting themes connected to the blues and Black music, Black life in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow, and Black spirituality, the movie is a guide map to Black life in the South after slavery. The film illuminates the richness of Black music, particularly the blues, and references its history and contributions to American culture. Specifically, the blues musical genre addresses questions about Black life and spirituality and reveals a narrative of times past and present, of sacrifice and sin, of beauty and wretchedness, of love and survival, much like the plot of the film Sinners (2025). Sinners (2025) places the spotlight on religion and Black spirituality, whether in the Black church or within rituals and beliefs akin to African religions. Themes of good vs. evil are ever-present in the film, with good sometimes crossing over into evil. Sinners (2025) presentation of Black horror makes statements about the realities of Black lives in the South during the 1930s Jim Crow era, and reflects some present-day circumstances for Black Americans. 

This is a call for abstracts for Sinners Reader: The Blues, Black Horror, and the Jim Crow South, an edited volume with contributed essays focused on topics including but not limited to: 

Blues music, Black dance, and performance arts, Black history, Jim Crow-era and life in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, Black horror, Southern Gothic horror, Southern Black folklore, Black migrations, Black spirituality and religion, Black love, Black film, and Ryan Coogler’s style of filmmaking. 

Sinners Reader seeks to explore and answer the following research questions, including but not limited to:

• How does Sinners (2025) conform to Southern Gothic Horror? What other works in this genre does the film allude to?

• How is the history of Black people in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s interwoven into this work?

• How does Sinners (2025) portray racial barriers in the Jim Crow South?

• How is Sinners (2025) a representative work of Black culture, drama, and performance, as seen in earlier film works by Black filmmakers?

• What is Black rhetoric and Black Southern vernacular, and how does Sinners (2025) portray it?

• How does the Sinners (2025) film depict Black religion and African spirituality?

• What statements does Sinners (2025) make about the history and contributions of blues music to American culture?

• How are the vampires in Sinners (2025) seeking to kill Black souls a metaphor for current racial, economic, and social justice issues facing Black Americans today?

• How does Sinners tell historical truths about the lives of Black people (ie, migrations, sharecropping, racial oppression)?

• What tropes, themes, and cultural symbolism in Black literature, past and present, are reflected in Sinners (2025)?

• How is Ryan Coogler’s style of filmmaking and storytelling representative of Afrofuturism?

• What statements does the film make about gender, feminisms, and masculinities?

• How is the theme of Black Power represented in Sinners (2025)?

• What can students of creative writing learn from Sinners (2025) as a screenplay?

• In what ways is Sinners (2025) a classic work of horror? And in what ways does it not conform to the horror genre?

• How are the traditions of Black drama and performance on display in Sinners (2025) in consideration of earlier Black drama and theatrical works?

• What statements does Sinners (2025) make about Black love and community?

• How does Sinners (2025) convey Black herbalists, connections to nature, and rootwork?

Subjects/disciplines: Black and Africana studies, humanities, history, popular culture, music studies, American South, film and cinema studies, creative writing, Mississippi history, migrations, religion and spirituality, Southern gothic, Black rhetoric, Black literature, race and ethnicity, Black dance, Black drama and performance