Cambridge University Press and the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) are excited to announce that Cambridge University Press will publish the Society’s new Journal of Black Language and Culture (JBLAC) from 2027.

JBLAC fosters a transdisciplinary conversation on Black language and culture through a global, diasporic lens. Building on the momentum of previous LSA discussions, JBLAC provides an inclusive scholarly venue dedicated to centering Blackness as a framework of inquiry. The journal publishes original, high-quality research that explicitly engages Blackness as a social, cultural, and theoretical construct—examining the intersections of language, identity, and cultural practices across Black communities worldwide. Submissions that do not take Blackness as an explicit analytic framework fall outside the scope of the journal.

JBLAC welcomes contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including Black/Africana studies, African American Studies, Linguistics, English, Modern/World Languages, Rhetoric and Composition, Communication Studies, Education, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Feminist and Gender Studies, Disability Studies, Latine Studies, and American Studies. We particularly encourage scholarship that challenges traditional boundaries within linguistics and related fields while advancing new understandings of Black language and culture across the African diaspora.

Anne H. Charity Hudley, the Editor of JBLAC, said “We are delighted to partner with Cambridge University Press and the Linguistic Society of America to produce the Journal of Black Language and Culture. JBLAC will be a catalyst for language and culture research — not on, but with, Black communities across the world. JBLAC’s open-access model means that the journal will be accessible to all readers and authors, without financial barriers. As such, we are delighted that the Black communities who made the research in its pages possible will be able to read the information without hindrance. JBLAC has been over three generations in the making, and we are grateful to all of the scholars who made this journal possible. We look forward to your submissions to JBLAC!”

Cambridge University Press Publishing Director, Daniel Pearce, said “We are delighted to be extending our partnership with the Linguistic Society of America through the launch of JBLAC, which will provide a unique and vital venue for transdisciplinary work on Black language and culture. We share with the LSA a commitment to fostering a diversity of scholarship at the highest levels of excellence, and are proud to be supporting this new journal through an open access model that is both sustainable and equitable. We look forward to working with the LSA and the editorial team at JBLAC on the next phase of this project.”

LSA President Heidi Harley stated that “The introduction of JBLAC provides a scholarly home for a strand of disciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship that has animated the study of linguistics for over 50 years. When William Labov (1969) published his article, ‘Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula,’ he showed that the language patterns of the African American communities he was studying were rule-bound and consistent, although they differed from those of ‘standard’ English. Thus was launched an entire subfield of linguistic investigation. JBLAC will provide a much-needed focal point for the continuation and expansion of scholarly work on the language of Black communities across the globe, including Black English, Caribbean Creoles, and other Afro-diasporic varieties.”

LSA Executive Director Margaret Weigers Vitullo commented, “JBLAC is poised to continue and extend the high standards of the LSA’s suite of scholarly journals, which it complements with its unique transdisciplinary approach to the scholarship on Black language and culture. The launch of JBLAC also advances the LSA’s strategic goals, including fostering inclusiveness and a ‘big tent LSA’ that recognizes, supports, and celebrates scholarly excellence across the full range of disciplinary speciality areas, employment sectors, and demographic groups. LSA’s commitment to this strategic goal is reflected in many of its recent initiatives, including its work advancing seven initiatives in honor of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, launching the First Generation Access and Equity Special Interest Group, and initiating a new symposium strand within the LSA Annual Meeting called LEXING: Linguistics in Industry, Non-profits, and Government.”

Learn more at the Introduction to JBLAC Webinar. Friday November 7, 3:00pm California / 6:00pm New York. Visit the LSA homepage to learn more and register.