Laura de la Parra Fernández (UCM) (Web) and David Yagüe González (MIT) (Web)

Proposals by: 15.01.2026

Healthcare and care provision have long been influenced by gendered dynamics. Whether in access to treatment, diagnosis, or the dominant narratives about body normativity, access to care remains unevenly distributed. The inclusion of women in health trials was not consistently considered until the NHS Revitalization Act of 1993; however, to this day, other structural factors, such as race, ethnicity, or class, remain underrepresented in clinical studies (Kwiatkowski et al., 2013). In patient-centered care, which emphasizes patients’ autonomy and overall well-being (Reynolds 2009), it is essential to consider both structural and individual factors. Similarly, care provision remains highly underpaid, undervalued, and gendered in a neoliberal society (Gerstel 467). The “crisis of care” articulated by Nancy Fraser (2016) illustrates this paradox: capitalism demands higher productivity and lower spending, while care work becomes invisible and conflicts with neoliberal time regimes. At the same time, the idea that care and nurturing are inherently tied to femininity continues to essentialize and devalue a fundamental aspect of society (Gerstel 468).
In turn, narrative has reflected, contested, and reimagined these dynamics, providing insight into how gender influences experiences of well-being, illness, and healing. As Louise Hide and Joanna Burke explain, care produces “subjective experiences in relation to notions of, for example, ‘vulnerability’, ‘trust’, ‘need’, ‘dependency’, and ‘interdependency’, ‘consent’ and ‘harm’” (684). Narrative offers a privileged perspective from which to examine such experiences of care, enabling us to explore their effects, recognize silenced voices, and foster change toward achieving a “care democracy” (Tronto 2013). Recent studies on the medical humanities highlight the diverse applications and potential of narrative in clinical settings. Following Ronald Schleifer and Jerry Vannatta, “training and practice in grasping the local and global meanings in a literary narrative is excellent practice for listening to and comprehending patients’ histories of present illness” (xxxiv).
This volume seeks to interrogate how illness narratives expose the entanglement of care with systemic harm, and how these texts imagine possibilities for healing and care otherwise. We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume that explores the intersections of gender, healthcare, and narrative across various contexts, periods, genres, and media Continue reading →

Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Studia Territorialia; Ota Konrád (Web)

Proposals by: 31.01.2026

Violence and the experiences of violence associated with war are among the central concerns of modern social science and historical research. Since the First World War—with its new forms of mass industrialized violence and the blurring of the boundaries between front lines and home fronts—and the emergence of modern societies marked by conscription and the militarization of everyday life, war-related violence has become a shared experience for a broad spectrum of social groups, and not merely professional soldiers. It has decisively shaped individual lives, social structures, and the collective memories of war in postwar societies, with long-term consequences that have essentially shaped the political development and political culture of those societies.
As numerous studies demonstrate, widespread violence in wartime cannot be regarded as merely an aberration or excess. Instead, it has often been an integral part of military tactics, a tool for enforcing political objectives, and a kind of behavior that is acceptable to—or at least tolerated by—political and military elites, as well as large segments of the civilian population. Violence is internalized and normalized by otherwise “ordinary” men and soldiers. Scholarship on sexual violence as a weapon of war, on genocides occurring in wartime contexts, on occupation regimes, on the treatment of prisoners of war, on the specific dynamics of radicalization of the perpetrators of war crimes, and on postwar conflicts that often surpass the brutality of the preceding war illustrates how embedded indiscriminate violence has become in modern warfare.
At the same time, the qualitative and quantitative transformations of wartime violence have been accompanied by attempts to control and regulate the violence of war, or even eliminate it altogether, which have met with varying degrees of success. These efforts range from distinguishing “legitimate” forms of wartime violence from war crimes, through the establishment of legal norms to govern the treatment of prisoners of war and the conduct of occupying powers, to broader international initiatives aimed at delegitimizing war as a means of state interaction entirely. Regulation of wartime violence also encompasses strategies adopted by groups and individuals confronted with violence at the regional or local level, whether motivated by ethical principles or by pragmatic considerations. Equally important are strategies for coping with the consequences of violence that address or ignore the traces it leaves in bodies, minds, and communities. Continue reading →