Reconciliatory Spaces: Post-Conflict Interventions in Anglophone Women’s Writing.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 30 July 2024.
Issue edited by Lourdes López-Ropero, University of Alicante, Spain
Issue theme presentation
In the landmark resolution 1325 of the year 2000, the UN Security Council stresses that the peace and reconciliation agenda has to embrace women’s participation, and encourages research into the role that women play as agents in processes of conflict resolution and social reconstruction, as well as into the impact of conflict on women’s lives. This work must be intersectional, incorporating the experiences of a wide range of women, including the perspectives and remarkable contributions of Indigenous women to conflict resolution. In her work on women and peacebuilding, Elizabeth Porter (2008, 2016) claims that the model of relationality offered by the feminist ethics of care is very useful for reconciliation, based as it is on restorative values such as the absence of domination, interdependence, empathy, or openness to diverse and silenced voices. Porter also importantly argues that reconciliatory spaces may occur in multiple settings, not just formal ones as “tribunals” or “commissions”, but unofficial ones as “around a kitchen table, under a tree, in a playground, on the grass or on a mat in a hut. Sometimes they transpire through the use of theatre, drama, art, play or healing workshops, wherever people are open to express their individual stories and learn about others”. In these spaces, individuals “need to feel free to argue and disagree; they also need opportunities to apologise, confess, forgive, build trust and develop changed relationships that show the healing power of reconciliation”. With regard to the particular contribution that the arts can make, John Paul Lederach (1997, 2005) insists that reconciliatory efforts require a degree of creativity, of what he calls “the moral imagination”, shown for example in “the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies” or in “the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown” .
This volume aims to foreground the responses of Anglophone women writers to the issues involved in reconciliation processes and debates. We seek original papers that illuminate articulations of reconciliatory spaces in women’s writing, or that approach the text as a potential space of reconciliation, where its challenges and contradictions are played out, but also where ideas conducive to social reconstruction may be creatively generated. We adopt a dynamic approach to reconciliation (Verdeja 2009) not as an event, but as an open process, a space of relationality and dialogism, an arena of negotiation and encounter with the other. We understand the term ‘writing’ in a broad sense, including literary work in different genres as well as non-fiction or screenwriting.
We invite a consideration of historical contexts immersed in or suffering the absence of processes of transitional justice in the aftermath of conflict and violations of human rights, where a society progresses towards the recognition of past wrongs, social reconstruction and peace. The origin of conflict may lie in political, interethnic violence and repression, as in the cases of African countries (e.g.: Apartheid, civil war), or in the grievances suffered by indigenous populations in the colonial past in postcolonial settler societies as Australia or Canada (e.g.: the Stolen Generations, Indian Residential Schools), but we encourage the exploration of relevant contexts that are less paradigmatic or that have been underexamined.
Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following issues:
- The role of compassion and empathy in reconciliation
- The benefits and challenges of truth-telling and forgiveness
- Imagining reconciliatory relationships
- Questions of material space as/and reconciliation
- Confronting and articulating atrocity in post-conflict contexts
- Rape as war crime, the persistence of a rape culture, and post-conflict
- reconciliation
- Women writers and peace activism
- The potential pitfalls and paradoxes of identifying the feminine with peaceful
- nurturing values
- Reconciliation and genre: Are there particular genres of reconciliation—’sorry’
- novels, literature about truth commissions—or are certain genres particularly
- suited to address reconciliation-related issues—poetry, theatre?
- Reconciliation and speculative fiction (dystopias, utopias, fantasy, science fiction):
- Imagining horizons of possibility and/or articulating discontent?
- How do children’s and young adult texts engage with conflict and reconciliation?
Timeline
Detailed proposals (600-1,000 words) for full essays (6,000 – 7,500 words) and queries should be sent as word files to the email address reconfemua@gmail.com by July 30th, 2024. Submissions should include the author’s name, affiliation, a tentative title, up to 5 keywords, a short bibliography as well as a 200-word biographical note.
Notification of acceptance: Authors will be informed of the results of their submission before September 30th, 2024.
The submission deadline for selected essays will be April 15th, 2025. Selected papers will be included in a volume that will be published in a top international press.
Website address
Contact details
For further details, see the original CFP below.
CFP-Reconciliatory-Spaces-in-Anglophone-Womens-Writing(Posted 12 May 2024)
Lagoonscapes 4 | 2 | 2024 : Ecologies of Life and Death in the Anthropocene.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 July 2024.
Issue edited by Professor Peggy Karpouzou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece & Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Presentation
Grounded in the theoretical framework of death studies, this special issue explores life and death eco-imaginaries and engagements, as they are interwoven through the study of the human and more-than-human world. It is there where an ontology of ecologies of life and death is being exposed and where the ethical territories of eco-grief and eco-mourning unfold. Therefore, the possibility of studying the ecology of life and death is questioned: How do we come up with death issues in nature? Is nature grievable? How do we mourn for it? How about the circular and linear way between life and death in nature’s spatiality and time? How about writers and artists’ perception of ecologies of life and death and how are they represented in texts and artworks? How do ecologies of life and death affect the way of writing or artistic outcome? How about the posthuman perspective on dead bodies and afterlife issues? What will it mean to live and die in the Anthropocene? (e.g., Scranton, 2016; Stiegler 2018).
While the ecologies of life and death give way to ‘decentralize’, even ‘deconstruct’ concepts like melancholy, grief and mourning, also ‘view’ the last ones as an approach of resilience and symbiosis between them, even a ‘spur’ to act. In this sense, there is a need to re-organize what is holding humanity back, such as the fear of humans’ destructive power, and take action to achieve life’s preservation in order to build sustainable futures. We particularly welcome submissions that revolve around, but are not limited to, the following axes and concepts:
- ecologies of life and death in ecocriticism, ecopsychology, eco/bio-philosophies, bioethics, plant humanities, animal studies, etc.
- eco-anxiety, eco-grief, eco-mourning, solastalgia, toxic environments, extinction studies, political ecology of death
- ecologies of life and death in -cene, e.g., Anthropocene, Neganthropocene, Necrocene, Symbiocene etc.
- the genre of elegy (e.g., eco-elegy, “ecological lament”, (anti-)pastoral elegy etc.
- ecologies of life and death in continental philosophy
- ecologies of life and death in posthumanities (e.g., posthumanism, transhumanism, a-humanism, meta-humanism, anti-humanism, super-humanism etc.)
- ecologies of life and death in medical humanities (e.g., pandemics, epidemics, plagues, biotechnology etc.)
- ecologies of life and death in religious studies and anthropology
- postcolonial narrations of death
- “necropolitics” (Mbembe), “bare life” (Agamben), “slow death” (Berlant)
- ecologies of life and death in indigenous studies
- human and more-than-human world in queer death studies and gothic studies
- ecologies of life and death in disability studies
- ecologies of life and death in arts and aesthetics / ars moriendi
- ecologies of life and death in visual studies, media studies, film studies
- memorials, ways of remembering, rituals of eco-mourning
- images, tools and practices of the afterlife in literature, philosophy and arts (e.g., mummification, cryonics, end-of-life applications, 3D printing for facial reconstruction etc.).
Timeline
Deadline for full articles’ submissions: Kindly submit a full article of no more than 50,000 characters (spaces and references included), an abstract of no more than 650 characters spaces included, and at least five keywords by 31 of July 2024 at the latest.
Website address
Contact details
In case you have further queries, you are welcome to send an e-mail to the Editors’ e-mails:
(Posted 12 March 2024)
Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies. Colors in Econarratives about the Human and More-than-Human World.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 August 2024.
Issue edited by Guest Editors: Professor Peggy Karpouzou and Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki
Presentation
In this special issue, econarratives of colors explore the complexities of pairing material environments with their representations with narrative forms of environmental understanding and ‘propose’ a change in how we interact with the environment today. This endeavor could be effectively executed while exploring storytelling of coloring imaginaries and sustainable futures as ‘narrative rehabilitation’ to draw attention to values and responsibilities and envision strategies to avoid possible ‘disastrous narrative endings’. Econarratives of colors could also be a new approach to overcoming the traditional dichotomies of how we see the world around us, including ourselves, laying the ground to think beyond colors in a more-than-human world. They might also encourage us to think beyond the classical narratological analysis, and consider new analytical tools suited to the current planetary challenges.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:
- narratives of colors in Environmental Humanities, Posthumanities, Environmental Digital Humanities, Blue Humanities, Ocean Humanities, Plant Humanities, Animal Studies, Medical Humanities, Energy Humanities, Public Humanities, Citizen Humanities
- colors in -cenes, e.g. Anthropocene, Symbiocene, Capitalocene, etc.
- colors in ecocriticism, eco-poetics, ecofeminism, queer ecologies, etc.
- econarratives of colors in comparative and global literature
- econarratives of colors in continental philosophy
- econarratives of colors in visual, media and film studies
- colors and soundscape ecologies
- colors in eco-/bio-art
- colors in food studies
- ecotheological, ecopsychological and indigenous environmental approaches on colors
- colors and biopolitics
- the term, concept and language of colors in ecolinguistics
- colors in green pedagogies/education studies
- storytelling of re-connecting/repairing humanity with nature via colors
- storytelling of coloring imaginaries and sustainable futures
Timeline
The working language is English. Please send an abstract of up to 300 words and further queries to Professor Karpouzou’s e-mail at pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and Dr. Zampaki’s e-mail at nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr until the 31st of August 2024. After the abstracts’ final selection and approval/acceptance, the Editors will notify the author(s) to submit their full in articles (6.000-8.000 words) to their e-mails by the end of February 2025.
Website address
Contact details
- Professor Karpouzou’s e-mail: pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and
- Dr. Zampaki’s e-mail:nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr
(Posted 11 March 2024)
The SASE Journal – Journal of the Serbian Association for the Study of English.
Deadline for contributions: 1 September 2024.
The SASE Journal is an open access, double blind peer-reviewed journal that publishes research papers dedicated to issues in the broadly-defined areas of English linguistics, literature, and culture. It will predominantly appear in an online format once a year, in December. The SASE will provide space for its electronic release on the SASE webpage and support the publication of a limited number of print issues.
The journal aims to serve as an accessible platform for the exchange of information and ideas, catering to a comprehensive audience of researchers, educators, and practitioners alike. To enable rapid dissemination of scholarly information, the journal will be offering authors the opportunity for advance online publication of their submissions as soon as they have passed the review process.
The journal welcomes a variety of previously unpublished manuscripts: traditional ‘full-length’ articles based on empirical or theoretical data, meta-analyses, case studies, review papers, brief reports, and book reviews. Proposals for special issues that center around an under-researched or emerging topic of interest are more than welcome and can be discussed with the Editors (thesasejournal@filfak.ni.ac.rs).
We would be truly honored if you could make a personal contribution to the first issue of our journal. The papers, written in English, are to be submitted electronically no later than September 1, 2024 to the email address thesasejournal@filfak.ni.ac.rs.
In the official CFP inserted below you will find additional information pertaining to the formatting of the papers (A Guide for Authors).
CFP
(Posted 3 December 2023)