CALL FOR PAPERS: (T)rap and Literature: Theories and Aesthetics in the Hispanic Context

2025-03-19

Guest Editors: Álvaro Luque Amo (Complutense University of Madrid) and Guillermo Sánchez Ungidos (University of Castilla-La Mancha)

Submissions deadline: July 30, 2025. Submissions should be sent to the guest editors (alvaro.luque@ucm.es and Guillermo.SUngidos@uclm.es) and uploaded simultaneously to the Theory Now platform.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan in 2016, as Alexandre Gefen (9-13) argues, marked a milestone that illustrated some of the shifts in the boundaries of the literary system over recent decades. In response to these evolving spaces, literary studies have engaged in dialogue with disciplines related to aesthetics, philosophy, and sociology, ultimately aiming to shed light on literature's new roles. Precedents for these approaches can be found in the works of Adorno (1973), who, despite his apparent musical elitism, outlined a theoretical framework that remains highly relevant for studying music within the contemporary arts system, or Barthes, who, from the perspective of literary theory, explored significant issues such as "the act of listening" and "practical music" (Barthes).

Prioritizing a theoretical-literary perspective over a comparative one, this issue aligns with this context of theoretical and aesthetic-philosophical hybridization to analyze rap and its derivative, trap, in relation to literature. Since its inception, rap has maintained a distinctive relationship with literary discourse. While popular music has increasingly attracted literary studies' attention throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, this proximity is even more evident in the case of rap, trap, and so-called urban genres. Formal elements such as the length of lyrics, minimal intonation, and the near-oral nature of the discourse reinforce this connection, which has led to the emergence of a dedicated bibliography in literary studies since the late 20th century. Although this bibliography is relatively scarce in the Hispanic sphere, studies reinforcing this direction have been emerging since the early 21st century (Santos Unamuno; Pujante Cascales; Martínez Cantón; Bernabé) and have been further consolidated in recent years (Castro; Sánchez Ungidos & Del Río Castañeda; Luque Amo).

This relationship between rap and literature has evolved over the past decade with the emergence of trap, which expands interpretive possibilities not only artistically but also culturally. Its commercial success—linked to the rise of the Internet as a medium (Espigado; Martín-Juan) and responses to various social contexts (Sánchez Jiménez; Suárez Ruiz; Tomás Cámara)—has driven the development of other urban genres in the Spanish music industry and the rise of artists like Rosalía, C. Tangana, and Quevedo, whose commercial and aesthetic impact on the Spanish music scene is unprecedented in recent history.

By examining the relationship between (t)rap and literature within the broader discussion of the 21st-century literary system from theoretical-literary and aesthetic-philosophical perspectives, this issue seeks to highlight the genre’s capacity to challenge industry mechanisms while simultaneously engaging with established discourses—such as literature—without losing its transgressive aesthetics. The evolution of (t)rap as an aesthetic phenomenon with global reach has not only demonstrated its connection to the "social ear" (Méndez Rubio) but also its ability to foster dialogue, integrate diverse cultures, and provide new modes of expression. This issue aims to foster a pluralistic dialogue that emphasizes music as a social practice, explores new research avenues on music, literature, and popular culture, and—through various interartistic analytical approaches—examines both the social conditions that have enabled (t)rap’s emergence and the power dynamics it establishes with the music and cultural industries and artistic creation as it transitions into mass culture.

This special issue seeks to trace the dialogue between rap, trap, and literature within the Hispanic context from a perspective that integrates literary theory with aesthetic philosophy. On the one hand, it distinguishes between rap produced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and trap as a derivative movement with distinct characteristics, which has primarily developed since 2012. The term (t)rap is used to encompass both genres as well as the broader category of urban music, which today also extends to freestyle, reggaeton, dancehall, and EDM as distinct aesthetics. Similarly, this issue aims to engage with the existing bibliography on this subject in other languages (Adinolfi; Barret; Bradley; Pate; Heuguet & Menu; Ghio).