Call for Papers

Issue 37.1

Deadline: November 1, 2013

Issue 36.2

Deadline: January 20, 2013

Cluster #1: In/Visibility: Absences/Presence in Feminist Theorizing
Editors: Ilya Parkins and Eva Karpinski

Cluster #2: Social Media, Cultural Politics
Editors: Ann Braithwaite and Annalee Lepp

Cluster #3: Open Call
Editors: Ann Braithwaite and Annalee Lepp

Feminist theory has long been preoccupied with reflecting and even producing the presence of marginalized subjects, making them visible, against their perceived absence from the historical record and the traditional disciplines. Indeed, Women’s Studies was born of the impulse to make women heard, visible, present. While highlighting the centrality of women is crucial political work, are there moments when the work of redressing absence and invisibility potentially undermines feminist and anti-oppressive aims? Does the dichotomy of absence/presence accurately capture the complexities of embodied experience, gendered representations, and the locations of multiply gendered and racialized subjects? When does absence articulate with or facilitate agency? When is invisibility strategically enabling? Can the academic work of recovery, redress, and remembering constitute a form of symbolic
violence against those for whom it ostensibly guarantees presence? How is this violence invisibilized? And what about feminist theory’s own in/visibility in the present neoliberal moment? Can it still be productive in absentia in different social, political, cultural, and academic sites such as occupy movements or queer, indigenous, and disability studies theories?

Inspired by work across a variety of disciplines that considers the complexity of presence and the potentials of absence, we seek contributions that put pressure on the various dichotomies that cluster around this one. We invite work that engages with concepts and practices of silence, concealment, invisibility, and secret-keeping to interrogate the feminist denigration of absence. We also welcome articles on the productive possibilities of haunting as a paradigm that highlights the presence of those who are ostensibly absent. Contributions that integrate theoretical rigour with examples from texts, archives or empirical studies are warmly welcomed.

Cluster #2: Social Media, Cultural Politics
Editors: Ann Braithwaite and Annalee Lepp

Much is made these days about the role that social media plays in social and political life. From laments about how Facebook, texting, tweeting, etc. diminish person to person “live” communication and lead to more isolation, to celebrations of their openness, immediacy, and new ways of communicating, social media of all kinds have come under increasing scrutiny from a variety of sectors. This thematic cluster aims to explore the role(s) that social media play—and can play—in cultural politics, especially for disenfranchised populations. Some questions that papers could address include: Do these new forms of communicating open up possibilities for local, national, and transnational networking and community building, resistance, and action? How, for whom, and under what circumstances? What is gained, and what is lost, in these forms of communication? How have various groups of people used these media to respond to local and global events, i.e, through satire, mockery, humour, drama, etc.? How do we evaluate the effects of instant contact and the ability of “everyone” to participate in an event, i.e., via cell phone cameras and video, blogs, texting, tweeting, etc? What are the ramifications of what seems to be these more democratic possibilities for participation and for responding to power, at the same time as “the state” everywhere seems to be less accessible and accountable, and more invested in security and surveillance?

Cluster #3: Open Call
Editors: Ann Braithwaite and Annalee Lepp

Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice/Études critiques sur le genre, la culture, et la justice sociale also welcomes submissions on topics and themes other than those identified in the above thematic clusters that fit with the journal’s mission statement, as stated above.

Atlantis is now open for submissions.

Register as an author to contribute to Atlantis by following the link at the top of the page.

Note the new format:

Each issue of the Journal will consist of two sections organized around different themes, and an open call section. Each of these sections will be comprised of approximately five to six papers. We also welcome book review essays.

Our list of archived issues is growing. Atlantis issues 33.2, 34.1 and 35.1 are now available for viewing online.

To read these issues, click the Archives tab at the top of the page.

Check back often as we continue to add issues that were previously only available in print.

Stay tuned this winter as Atlantis becomes a fully online open access publication.

Atlantis issue 35.1 is now available for viewing online. Check back often as we continue to add issues that were previously only available in print.

Stay tuned this winter as Atlantis becomes a fully online open access publication.