Calls for Volume / Journal Articles

Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies – Volume 13, 2024: Writing the ‘Good Life’ in Narratives of Canada
Deadline: April 30, 2023

WRITING THE ‘GOOD LIFE’ IN NARRATIVES OF CANADA 

Call for Papers for a special issue of Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies 
https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179/index
Volume 13, 2024 
Guest Editors: Silvia Caporale Bizzini and María Jesús Llarena Ascanio

Deadline: April 30, 2023

In her book The Promise of Happiness (2010), Sara Ahmed explains how the concept of happiness is related to heteronormative notions of the “good life”: “The good life is the life that is lived in the right way, by doing the right things, over and over again” (Ahmed 2010, 36). Questioning the promise of a good life leads to unhappiness, but unhappiness (unlike happiness) can be productive for social change as it fosters a possibility to open to new affective spaces in the subject’s life. Ahmed describes individuals’ urges toward “the good life” as frequently grounded in attachments that, while often toxic and ultimately unfulfilling, are not recognized as such by the people who engage in these negative relations. Those feelings derive from the impossible emotional fantasy of living a good life—an emotional state that Lauren Berlant aptly defined as “cruel optimism,” a situation in which what people most desire is actually an obstacle to their flourishing. The cruelty comes from the fact that people tend to depend on “objects that block the very thriving that motivates our attachment in the first place” (Berlant 2012). Both notions of the good life and cruel optimism are connected to Kathleen Stewart’s “ordinary affects,” a “kind of contact zone where the over-determinations of circulations, events, conditions, technologies, and flows of power take place” (2007, 3). For Stewart, ordinary affects happen through unexpected events which may be shocking, perturbing, traumatic, or even funny, but which offer individuals the opportunity to move forward. The ordinary and the unexpected can merge to transform individuals’ lives and allow them to form new connections (2007, 95). In both Berlant’s and Stewart’s thinking, the unexpected has the power to redefine individuals’ inner landscapes and their perceptions of self—both of which are structured by a lifelong dynamic of intimate relationships and attachments. 

The guest editors seek articles that analyze narratives of Canada that unravel the notions of the good life (Ahmed), and/or cruel optimism (Berlant), and/or ordinary affects and the unexpected (Stewart). Contributors are encouraged to examine how these notions articulate new places of critical potential in narratives of Canada.

Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following areas: 

• Narratives of dissent
• Insurgent utopias 
• Indigenous resistance, reparation and resurgence
• Refugee writings
• Transnational narratives
• Queering Canada: gender, sexuality and beyond 
• Feminist killjoys
• Posthuman approaches, dystopias, speculative realities 
• Un/happiness and ugly feelings
• Environmental approaches to the good life

Canada & Beyond is a peer-reviewed, open access journal indexed in MLA. Modern Language Association Database, DIALNET, LATINDEX, ERIH+. You can learn more about the journal’s review process, style guide and past issues here: https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179

All submissions to Canada & Beyond must be original, unpublished work. Articles, between 6,000 and 7500 words in length, including notes and works cited, should follow the current MLA bibliographic format. Submissions should be uploaded to Canada & Beyond’s online submissions system (https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179/about/submissions) and simultaneously sent to caporale@ua.es and mllarena@ull.edu.es by April 30, 2023. For more information please contact the guest editors at the e-mail addresses above. Your submission will be peer-reviewed for volume 13, 2024. 

This CFP is part of the work conducted within the joint international research projects The Premise of Happiness (PID2020-113190GB-C21) and Narrating Resilience (PID2020-113190GB-C22)

CFP

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(Posted 10 November 2022)

LEA Journal, 12 (2023): Past and present changes in gender dynamics
Deadline for submissions: 8 May 2023

LEA is a peer-reviewed international scholarly journal based at the University of Florence that publishes original research papers in all areas of literature, linguistics, and philology.

Issue description

On March 7, 2022, Amnesty International launched an alarm regarding the worldwide “grave erosion of rights” and “global assault on women’s and girls’ dignity” in the wake of events in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the US, Turkey, and Iran in 2021 and 2022. The UN Working Group has expressed similar concerns, noting that economic crisis, austerity measures, and cultural and religious conservatism has brought about a backlash against gender equality. This backlash has a major impact on people living in poverty and with lower socio-economic status, LGBTIQ+ communities, migrants, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities, exacerbating pre-existing discrimination. 

To promote a better awareness of current phenomena, LEA 12 (2023) proposes to investigate gender relationships from the perspective of literary, linguistic, and philological studies. We are especially interested in investigations exploring relationship patterns among different genders and concerning the ways in which gender narration is passed on or transmitted. Special attention will be paid to representations of, and discourses on:

• Gender and power; articulations of gender, sex, sexuality, and power, dominance, or prestige.
• Gender and human rights; political struggles, activism, resistance, protest, inequality, violence in both the public and private sphere.
• Gender and citizenship, (de)colonization, national and ethnic self-determination, religious identity, political participation.
• Gender and wellbeing; health, disability, age, poverty, bodily autonomy, etc.
• Gender and sexual conduct, sexual orientation/identity and/or status, non-binarism, etc.
• Ecofeminism, queer ecological thought, and feminist ecocriticism.
• Gender-inclusive language/gendered language, gendered rhetoric, gender representations in media.
• Gender issues in translation.

LEA also accepts contributions that are not related to the topic proposed in the CfP – more information is available on our website. Please follow the author’s guidelines.

Manuscripts should be submitted using our online systems. Should you experience any difficulties using the journal platform, here you can find step-by-step instructions.

The Journal Editors can be contacted at lea@forlilpsi.unifi.it.

Deadline for submissions: May 8, 2023.

Editor(s)

• Ilaria Natali, Associate Professor in English Literature, University of Florence
• Ayse Saracgil, Full Professor in Turkish Literature, University of Florence

Deadlines

Essays: 8 May 2023

Website

https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-lea

Contact details

LEA lea@forlilpsi.unifi.it

https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-lea

Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures, and Psychology
University of Florence
V. S. Reparata 93/95, 50129 Florence (Italy)

CFP

CfP-LEA-2023Download

(Posted 17 November 2022)

Linguaculture Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2023: Genre(s) in Translation
Deadline for submission of proposals: 30 June 2023

Issue edited by

Sorina Ciobanu (UAIC, Romania) & Patricia Rodríguez-Inés (UAB, Spain)

Issue theme presentation 

Ever since the early days of applied linguistics, LSP studies, and functional approaches, the notion of text genre has been pervasive in translation studies. However, it is only in recent years that generic features and their treatment in translation have gained a more prominent position among the researchers’ interests (e.g. B.J. Woodstein, Translation and Genre, Cambridge University Press, 2022). 

For this special issue, Genre(s) in Translation, we welcome contributions focusing on the many sides of genre and the way in which it is approached and dealt with in translation practice, translator training, and (scholarly) translation criticism. Without being restricted to these areas, contributions may refer to: 

• generic features and related concepts in translation (e.g. text type, register)
• translating literary genres (e.g. poetry and its subgenres)
• translating professional & specialized genres (e.g. the news report, the power of attorney)
• comparative interlingual (sub)genre studies (e.g. paper abstracts in English and Spanish)
• the use of genres in translator training (e.g. using cooking recipes in the translation classroom)

Timeline

• Submission of manuscripts: 30 June 2023 
• Review period: 1 July 2023 – 15 November 2023

Website: https://journal.linguaculture.ro/

Instructions for Authors page: https://journal.linguaculture.ro/index.php/home/instructions-authors;

Submissions page: https://journal.linguaculture.ro/index.php/home/about/submissions

Contact details

E-mail: journal@linguaculture.ro

CFP

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(Posted 8 January 2023)