Special Issue – Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest

Sponsored by the Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Writing (University of Kent)

Feminist Movements Across the Board: A Critical Analysis

Call for Papers

Editors:

Barbara Franchi (University of Kent), Natália S. Perez (University of Kent and Freie Universität Berlin), & Giovanni A. Travaglino (University of Kent)



Nobody’s going to save you.// No one’s going to cut you down
cut the thorns thick around you. // No one’s going to storm
the castle walls nor // kiss awake your birth,
climb down your hair,// nor mount you // onto the white steed.
There is no one who // will feed the yearning. // Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.
Gloria Anzaldúa – Borderlands/ La Frontera

But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?
Ellen Page

Feminist movements have had a fundamental impact on social life in many different parts of the world. Reforms in marriage and private property laws, as well as change in spheres as diverse as sexual life, contraception, and the work-place have had profound consequences on the way we conceptualize, act and signify gender relations. Feminist thinkers and activists have also brought attention to the impact that the intersectionality of racism, heterosexism, poverty and religious intolerance (among many other factors) can have in people’s lives.

Despite gradual change, gender-based oppression, even in its most extreme forms, is still a reality across the globe (consider – for instance – the Taliban’s attempt to assassinate Pakistani women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai in 2012). Recent events of popular appeal, such as One Billion Rising in February 2013, and FEMEN’s topless jihad in April 2013, have managed to bring mainstream attention back to questions of gender oppression and have found fruitful ways to interpret the female body for feminist protests.

In academic context, feminist theory has contributed greatly to theoretical development across disciplinary borders, from the technosciences to the arts. The several instances of feminist hacktivism, working at the intersection of technology, arts and social justice also exemplify the vitality of transdisciplinary feminist contributions.

This special issue of Contention aims to provide readers with a broad overview of contemporary feminist perspectives. We aim to publish papers about the impact of feminist theories and movements on literary, cultural, political, scientific and social practices from a transdisciplinary and postdisciplinary approach.



We welcome original papers with empirical or theoretical contributions from the social sciences, arts, and humanities.



Topics may include (but are not limited to):

Genealogies of feminisms
New critical approaches to gender studies in the arts and literature
The role of social media in creating and portraying global feminist movements
Questions of female representation in politics and media
Intersectionalities, hybrid identities, racism, religion and gender (including analyses of privilege, prejudice and discrimination)
Transnational, anti-racist, third-world feminisms
Posthumanist and new materialist feminisms
Feminisms in the technosciences
The role of literary genres in writing and re-writing gender
Concepts of gender after performativity
Critical theory as political weapon: politicization, artistic representation and critical discourses in feminist movements
Methodological, epistemological and ontological questions in the study of gender
Objectification, self-objectification and forms of sexism
Analyses of discrimination in the workplace
Analyses of men’s rights social movements
Analyses of womanhood and manhood in contemporary and historical societies: the impact of gender-related social movements
Posthumanism and feminisms
Although we welcome interdisciplinary papers, work conducted within the boundaries of a single discipline is also suitable for Contention. Due to the multidisciplinary audience of our journal, authors should however put efforts in explaining key terms and concepts so that these can be understood across disciplines.

Articles (5,000 – 7,000 word) should be formatted following APA style. Manuscripts should include an abstract of maximum 250 words and a cover page with a biographical note about the authors.

Authors are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract of their paper previous to the submission date.

Deadline for abstracts is 30 November 2013.

Final submissions of full articles should be sent by 31MARCH 2014.

Please send abstracts and full articles to Barbara Franchi – b.franchi@kent.ac.uk and Natália S. Perez – natalia.perez@fu-berlin.de.
More information and full article guidelines are available at the following web address, http://contentionjournal.org/authors.



Notes on the Journal:

Contention is a new fully open access, peer-reviewed journal that promotes disciplinary cooperation and interdisciplinary integration while broadening the scope of academic work in the fields of social movements and protest. Contention is published by Punctum Books and is administered by an international and interdisciplinary editorial board.

This new journal pursues two objectives:

1) Becoming an on-going forum for debate and discussion across the social sciences and humanities on the topic of Social Protest, in its many shapes and forms.

2) Expanding multidisciplinary cross-fertilization and increasing dialogue across disciplines and fields.

For more information visit www.contentionjournal.org/aims