Cultural Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research (Web); Guest editors: Pia Laskar, Linköping University; Erika Alm, Göteborg University; and Cathrin Wasshede, Göteborg University, Sweden

Proposals by: March 1, 2016

The editors: In this call we are looking for texts that explore gendered and sexual futures beyond Eurocentric and binary paradigms on the secular respectively the religious.

We invite texts investigating the function of cultural products in the making and remaking of figurations of gender and sexuality. Through focusing on cultural products we hope to be able to tap into and explore practices of communities of belonging that might take other forms than the ones easily recognized.

Cultural notions and practices of femininities, masculinities, and sexualities, undergo deep transformations globally, as they move between, and within, the local and the transnational in multiple and entangled ways. Scholarship on these changes, feminist postcolonial intellectuals argue, tend to move within a narrow developmental paradigm, in which what is defined as gendered progress as well as progress related to sexual rights, is often understood within a traditional-modernity frame in which Europe and secularism are seen as given, and perceived as the center of, and the condition for this progress. Further, it is argued, European civil society, in a modernist/colonial tradition, takes on the “burden” to change and reorganise issues on gender and sexualities in other parts of the world (Spivak 1999; Mohanty 2006; Puar 2007; Massad 2007; Asad 2009; Mahmood 2009; Tamale 2013). Thus, of special interest in this call, is studies on transnational communities in which gender and sexual norms are performed in varied, diverse and even antagonistic patterns. We are especially interested in the performative power of cultural products within and by way of transnational communities. What do cultural products do to, and for, civil society and its (potential) actors, and what are their political affects/effects? Are there new and original ways of studying civil societies, and transformations of genders and sexualities, as both global and local phenomena, which are in a state of constant change and emergence? What happens if we follow cultural products like the rainbow flag, or the veil, or manga series? What constitutions of communities of belonging can be spotted? In what contexts do the usage and production of cultural products, material and immaterial, consolidate into communities of belonging, into commercialized phenomena, into political strategies and even policy products?

Please submit an abstract of 300 words as well as 5-8 keywords before March 1, 2016. Additionally, include a short author’s bio of 50 words, including affiliation, research interests and e-mail address. Send submissions to: pia.laskar@liu.se

About Culture Unbound: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research is a peer-reviewed, electronic academic journal for border-crossing cultural research, including cultural studies as well as other interdisciplinary and transnational currents. It is published by the Linköping University Electronic Press, and is completely open-access and does not charge publishing fees.

Source: genus@genus.gu.se