“Extraordinary Women”
Femspec, an interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to SF,
fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore, and other supernatural genres, welcomes submissions for “Extraordinary Women,” a special issue or themed section dedicated to women and disability.
In her book Extraordinary Bodies, Rosemarie Garland Thomson establishes that “Many parallels exist between the social meanings attributed to female bodies and those assigned to20disabled bodies.” We are interested in critical and creative works, including memoir and nonfiction narrative, that explore these parallels.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
Aliens and freaks
Disability, technology, and the cyborg
Adaptation and survival
Women with disabilities in myth and folklore
Disability and feminist spirituality
The “alien” experience of being a woman with a disability
Intervention and accommodation (alien, supernatural, technological, or other)
"(Un)natural” women
Ability/Disability in Octavia Butler’s work
Writing, feminism, disability
“Coming out” as non-normate (disabled, queer, other?)
Passing” as normate
Please submit three copies of your piece to Deborah Bailin at this address: 2101 Susquehanna Hall, English Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
Submissions must *exclude* any indication of your name on them so that your piece may be read anonymously.
Include a separate sheet with the title and genre of your piece, your name, address, email, phone and a two sentence abstract.
Also, include a disc with your document in Word and RTF format. All submissions should conform to MLA standards, as found in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. MLA guidelines can also be found on-line at http://www.mla.org.
Any submission that does not come in with sufficient copies will not be sent through the review process. We will accept submissions through June 1, 2009.
Please note that only subscribers may submit to Femspec. To subscribe, go to femspec.org.
All editorial enquiries should be e-mailed to Batya Weinbaum at femspec_at_aol.com.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Monday, 19 January 2009
CFP: Special Issue to Honor Paula Gunn Allen
FemSpec, an “interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and creative works in the realms of SF, fantasy, magical realism, myth, folklore, and other supernatural genres,” is accepting submissions for a special issue to honor Paula Gunn Allen (PGA) tentatively scheduled for Fall 2009.
Topics may be stimulated by, but are not limited to, concerns raised in her interview with John Purdy in 1997 ("And Then, Twenty Years Later . . .": A Conversation with Paula Gunn Allen, by John Purdy, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 9(3), 5-16, Fall 1997 retrieved 8/19/2008 from http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/paula/PGA-int.html). 20 years after the Flagstaff conference that resulted in the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, PGA identified continuing issues in Native American literary criticism in the context of a major shift:
1] “There was nothing then, and now there's everything.” We welcome essays that detail or engage her contributions to that shift, and/or that identify, assess, and/or remedy problems in the field.
2] “Something was said today, something about answers. And I wanted to say, no, no, no. That's not the point. It's not about answers; it's about good questions.” Building on any of the questions PGA’s work asks us to consider, how can we develop continuing lines of inquiry? For example, in Sacred Hoop she demonstrates that we need not reinvent the wheel with imagined gynocracies. How does the paradigm she describes inform Native American women’s literature?
3] “Very little of our literature is the literature of protest, of oppression … Most of it is the literature of the spirit or the literature of ritual. Almost all of it is, call it political voice and drama, is always informed by the presence of this knowledge that there is always this other world, with which we are always engaged. It isn't over "there" somewhere; it's in our presence and our midst and we are in its presence and its midst.” Feminist speculative literature is predicated on “what ifs.” If we were to continue as we are – what would future dystopias be like? If we were to dismantle oppressive cultural schemata (race, class, sexuality, ability, gender) and live according to an egalitarian paradigm – what could future utopias be like? PGA’s work can push these queries further. For example: what are the implications of an equi-present spirit world for the dystopia/utopia binary?
4] “My own calling has always been of the spirit ...” What are the relationships between women’s speculative literature, criticism, and spirit work?
We seek critical articles, artwork, poetry, and fiction. Articles and fiction can be up to 15 pages. All submissions should conform to MLA standards (see www.mla.org). For further information, please contact special issue guest editor, Menoukha Case, at menoukha@yahoo.com.
Submissions marked "PGA" should be sent to:
Menoukha Case
POB 51
Gt. Barrington, MA 01230-0051
Please submit 4 copies on which your name, address, and contact points do NOT appear, accompanied by a separate page that includes title, genre, your name, address, phone, and email. Submissions with insufficient copies will not be sent through the review process. To submit, you must be a subscriber for calendar year 2009. To subscribe, include a check made out to FemSpec or subscribe on line and send a print out of the receipt with your manuscript. Full price is $40, low income price is $25. Ask your library, public or institutional, to subscribe.
Deadline: June 15, 2009
Topics may be stimulated by, but are not limited to, concerns raised in her interview with John Purdy in 1997 ("And Then, Twenty Years Later . . .": A Conversation with Paula Gunn Allen, by John Purdy, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 9(3), 5-16, Fall 1997 retrieved 8/19/2008 from http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/paula/PGA-int.html). 20 years after the Flagstaff conference that resulted in the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, PGA identified continuing issues in Native American literary criticism in the context of a major shift:
1] “There was nothing then, and now there's everything.” We welcome essays that detail or engage her contributions to that shift, and/or that identify, assess, and/or remedy problems in the field.
2] “Something was said today, something about answers. And I wanted to say, no, no, no. That's not the point. It's not about answers; it's about good questions.” Building on any of the questions PGA’s work asks us to consider, how can we develop continuing lines of inquiry? For example, in Sacred Hoop she demonstrates that we need not reinvent the wheel with imagined gynocracies. How does the paradigm she describes inform Native American women’s literature?
3] “Very little of our literature is the literature of protest, of oppression … Most of it is the literature of the spirit or the literature of ritual. Almost all of it is, call it political voice and drama, is always informed by the presence of this knowledge that there is always this other world, with which we are always engaged. It isn't over "there" somewhere; it's in our presence and our midst and we are in its presence and its midst.” Feminist speculative literature is predicated on “what ifs.” If we were to continue as we are – what would future dystopias be like? If we were to dismantle oppressive cultural schemata (race, class, sexuality, ability, gender) and live according to an egalitarian paradigm – what could future utopias be like? PGA’s work can push these queries further. For example: what are the implications of an equi-present spirit world for the dystopia/utopia binary?
4] “My own calling has always been of the spirit ...” What are the relationships between women’s speculative literature, criticism, and spirit work?
We seek critical articles, artwork, poetry, and fiction. Articles and fiction can be up to 15 pages. All submissions should conform to MLA standards (see www.mla.org). For further information, please contact special issue guest editor, Menoukha Case, at menoukha@yahoo.com.
Submissions marked "PGA" should be sent to:
Menoukha Case
POB 51
Gt. Barrington, MA 01230-0051
Please submit 4 copies on which your name, address, and contact points do NOT appear, accompanied by a separate page that includes title, genre, your name, address, phone, and email. Submissions with insufficient copies will not be sent through the review process. To submit, you must be a subscriber for calendar year 2009. To subscribe, include a check made out to FemSpec or subscribe on line and send a print out of the receipt with your manuscript. Full price is $40, low income price is $25. Ask your library, public or institutional, to subscribe.
Deadline: June 15, 2009
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