Genre, Past and Present

Special Issue editor: Audrey Jaffe, University of Toronto

Genre has traditionally been seen as a framework or series of frameworks for organizing texts (and other artworks) so they may be analyzed with some degree of precision, yet the meaning of the term has always been unstable. Disagreements arise around specific classifications, and the term has often been redefined or simply deployed, without explanation, in different ways. The novel, for instance, has been subject to numerous and diverging definitions, from (to name only a few) Gyorgy Lukacs to Mikhail Bakhtin to Ralph Rader to Priya Joshi. Such classifications, no matter how numerous, are familiar. To these, however, we may now add such new terms and innovations as auto-fiction; flash fiction; the blog and the tweet, as well as uncategorized (and perhaps uncategorizable) texts as Vauhini Vara’s Searches, which alters the genre of autobiography by constructing a life story from the archive of the author’s Google searches. Visual and streaming technologies have given us long-form television series such as The Wire; the short-form innovation of the tick-tock dance, and the podcast. As this list suggests, new historical moments and new technologies give rise to new forms that may rely for their structural foundations or appeal to readers on familiar ones, sometimes invoking specific ties with these earlier genres, sometimes taking up a position—implicitly or explicitly—aligned with the past, opposed to the past, or as Thomas Beebee has argued, somewhere in the middle, between genres, both internally and externally. “[A]ll literature makes itself interpretable by referring to what it is not,” Beebee writes.

What kinds of relations exist between newer genres and traditional ones? How do newly innovative forms both depend on and revise familiar ones; how might the relation between the older and the newer help us understand the relation between past and present implicit in current works and the cultures that produced them? Is the idea of genre (either in general or in its particular manifestations) essentially nostalgic, looking back toward a world of fewer categories and greater stability, in the form of shared knowledge or agreed-upon aesthetic criteria? Or does the existence of genre and its theoretical traditions facilitate invention and innovation, giving writers and artists a shared background on which to draw? This special issue is interested in making explicit the temporal relations implicit in genre(s). Arguably, genres positioning themselves as “new” invoke and rely on traditional or existing genres, either for purposes of self-definition (Beebee’s “what it is not”) or legitimization; an appeal to genre may be understood as an appeal to a certain kind of authority, whether embraced or rejected; it may also be a critique of such authority.

This special issue will provide a forum for reflections on the relation between new generic formulations and traditional or existing ones. What is a project’s—or an author’s—attachment to, or disenchantment from—the strictures traditionally associated with a particular genre or genre theory in any of its manifestations? I invite essays, creative work, and reflections on these issues, including broader explorations of ways in which the genre idea has been influenced by technological change, cultural and political events, and disciplinary transformations. I also welcome inquiries about related topics not mentioned here. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

- Continuities and Transformations: Is genre nostalgic? Do traditional genres serve as anchors for innovative work? Essays may consider the way the idea of genre in general and genres in particular have changed over time and analyze the significance of such change;
- Disciplines and Connections: Essays reflecting on the genre idea both within, between, and outside the disciplines of the traditional humanities, or an individual study that reaches across periods and cultures, with the goal of both exploring the concept and opening it up to new work and new meanings; this category would include essays considering the way in which apparently disparate genres may be seen as connected with and in dialogue with one another;
- Decolonization/Globalization: specific genres, as well as ideas of genre more generally, have been transformed by globalization in its various forms: political, economic, informational, aesthetic. Essays on the influence of globalization on specific genres or the idea of genre are invited.
- New work/reflections: examples of work that challenges traditional notions of genre, accompanied (if desirable) by authorial commentary. This category might (for example) include essays on the influence of AI or other technologies on specific genres or ideas of genre.


Please submit abstracts of 350-500 words along with a brief bio to a.jaffe@utoronto.ca by August 1, 2026. Standard analytic essays should be 6,000-8,000 words in length; non-traditional work will vary in length and form (please include details in the abstract). Inquiries about essays or other kinds of submissions are welcome; please contact the editor by email. The deadline for completed work will be March, 2027; all submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process managed by ELN.