[Commlist] CFP: Trans Political Visibilities in Latin America

CFP: Trans Political Visibilities: Innovations from Latin America
Call for Papers: Alternautas Special Issue
12 December 2025 -15 February 2026

Editors
Dr Helton Levy (London Metropolitan University, UK)
Prof Flora Rondón (Universidad Del Rosario, Colombia)
Dr Bru Pereira (Federal University of São Paulo,  Brazil)


Alternautas, a journal of multi-disciplinary Latin American studies, 
invites submissions for a special collection on Trans Political 
Visibilities: Innovations in/from Latin America. We seek critical, 
empirically grounded, and theoretically informed work that examines how 
trans, travesti, and transformista lives are made visible—and rendered 
(in)visible—across media, law, health, urban space, development policy, 
labour, activism, and everyday life with varying impacts.

Latin America has had a unique importance for recent trans scholarship, 
from classic ethnographies of travestidades to contemporary analyses of 
transfeminism, decoloniality, and policy change. Foundational works 
(e.g., Kulick, 1998; Ochoa, 2020) foreground embodiment, labour, beauty 
regimes, and national modernities as terrains where visibility is 
negotiated. Brazilian and Southern Cone scholarship has advanced trans 
feminist and decolonial critiques that problematize cisnormativity, 
medicalisation, and epistemic erasure (Bento, 2006; Pelucio, 2005; 
Vergueiro, 2019; de Jesus, 2019).  These debates situate trans 
visibility within racialised, classed, territorial, and colonial 
relations – key to any regional account of “development.”

Brazil’s recent cycles of electoral victories for trans candidates have 
seen unprecedented breakthroughs that may lay the groundwork for 
understanding ongoing changes in the region. In 2022, Duda Salabert and 
Erika Hilton became the first openly trans women elected to the federal 
Chamber of Deputies—milestones widely reported by national and 
international media, which framed their victories as historic firsts and 
signals of representational change (Vatiero & Carvalho, 2023; Rodrigues 
Fernandes & Soares da Costa, 2025). Organisations such as Vote LGBT+ 
have been crucial in raising the electorate’s awareness for trans 
candidates in the political sphere.

This special issue invites comparative, ethnographic, data-driven, and 
community-engaged studies that trace how trans visibility is constructed 
across media and social systems and at what price for trans 
representatives and their constituencies. This issue should answer 
questions such as, what is the framing of “historic firsts” to the 
“threat-driven” newsworthiness of trans political visibilities? Is 
visibility a para-social phenomenon or a platformed form of campaign for 
trans activists and candidates? What is the impact of gendered political 
violence and information disorder for building sustainable regimes of 
trans visibility? To what extent has movement-generated visibility 
benefitted trans activists or politicians beyond the main media centres 
in the region?

Suggested (but not exhaustive) areas of interest:

(In)visibility across news, reality TV, influencer cultures, and 
platform governance;
Archives and counter-archives; vernacular video and meme ecologies.
Law, Policy, and Bureaucracy: Effects and limits of recognition regimes; 
documentation, healthcare access, and welfare; comparative analyses
Urban Space and In(visibilities): Street economies, sex work, gig work; 
policing and zoning;
Displacement and gentrification; tourism and “pinkwashing.”
Health and Necropolitics: Public health pathways, depathologisation, 
harm reduction, and care infrastructures
Transfeminisms, Decoloniality, and Knowledge Production: Southern 
epistemologies; cisgeneridade as analytic;
Pedagogy and movement-university encounters.
Histories and Categories: Travesti, transformista, trans*, non-binary as 
situated categories; translation politics between 
Spanish/Portuguese/English.
Security, Violence, and Rights Claims: Transfemicide frameworks; 
activist documentation
Armed conflicts/non-state actors involved in violence (Colombia and 
other countries)
Anti-gender movements involving law change
Visibility and saturation
Trans men representation in politics
Intersectional trans-led politics
Intersections with media/environmental/territorial defense struggles

Formats

Research Articles (6,000–9,000 words)
Short Essays / Interventions (2,000–4,000 words)
Dialogues / Interviews / Dossiers (curated sets, 3–5 pieces)
Submissions should engage existing regional literature and, where 
relevant, draw comparative insights across Latin America and diasporas.
Submission & Review
Language: English

250-350-word abstracts should be sent to the email 
(transvisibilities /at/ outlook.com)
Alternautas is fully open access with no author fees: journals.warwick.ac.uk
Peer review: Double-blind.


Timeline

February 2026– Finalising call for papers
June-September 2026- Authors’ production and submission
November 2026- Final manuscripts due
December 2026-  Publication

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