Women’s Studies Quarterly - Call for Papers

Paper topics might include:

• The unbearable and Black, affect, feminist, queer, and disability studies
• Cyborg studies, animal studies, posthumanism, and the concept of “Man-as-human”
• Horror and the unbearable
• Speculative/weird/climate fictions and possibilities of being and becoming
• The “praxis of being human” in spaces marked by confinement, regulation, and surveillance
• Representations of Black, queer, and other marginalized socialities in spaces of exception, such as nightclubs, cruising grounds, hospitals, prisons, and other carceral spaces
• Possibilities of joy, pleasure, and resistance in spaces of tumult
• Unhomely and unclean spaces and the possibilities of communities, intimacies, and mutual aid
• Unbearableness of the settler colonial nation-state
• Medical racism and homophobia/transphobia
• Community building though disability and chronic illness
• Radical care practices
• Criminalization of unbearable being(s)

We welcome contributions that examine a wide array of literary and popular texts, films, performance, music, and other artistic expressions by and about marginalized “humans” who engage with histories of negative inheritances. Especially encouraged to submit are scholars, artists, creative writers, and activists who themselves experience various forms of marginalization within nation-states in the Global North and Global South.

Priority Deadline: September 15, 2023

Scholarly articles should be submitted to WSQ.submittable.com. Send complete articles, not abstracts. Remove all identifying authorial information from the file uploaded to Submittable. We will give priority consideration to submissions received by September 15, 2023. Scholarly submissions must not exceed 6,000 words (including un-embedded notes and works cited) and must comply with formatting guidelines at feministpress.org/submission-guidelines. For questions, email the guest issue editors at WSQEditorial@gmail.com.

Artistic works (whose content relates clearly to the issue theme) such as creative prose (fiction, essay, memoir, and translation submissions between 2,000 and 2,500 words), poetry, and other forms of visual or documentation of performative artistry should be submitted to WSQ.submittable.com. Before submitting, please review previous issues of WSQ to see what type of creative submissions we prefer. Note that creative submissions may be held for six months or longer. We do not accept work that has been previously published. (Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if the editors are notified immediately of acceptance elsewhere.) For questions, email the guest issue editors at WSQEditorial@gmail.com.