WSQ – Spring 2020 Issue; Guest Editors: Maria Rice Bellamy, and Karen Weingarten (New York) (Web)

Proposals by: March 1, 2019

To inherit is to receive, to gain, to be left with more. The term “inheritance” first brings to mind the bequeathing of property by a parent to a child. The exclusion of women from this form of inheritance has been a contested issue for millennia and figured prominently in the earliest feminist causes in the US and other Western nations. Remarkably, women in many parts of the US won the right to own and control property (inherited or purchased, be she single, married, or divorced) before they earned the rights of citizenship, particularly the right to vote.

While this call for papers begins with these most conventional understandings of inheritance, the goal of this issue is to facilitate a conversation on the many meanings and complications of the term “inheritance” and of the processes and experiences of inheriting, including the multiplicity of things that can be inherited and the varied ways these things can be transmitted and received across generations.

The editors are seeking papers that take a critical and transgressive approach to any and all aspects of inheritance, which in its most basic form involves one who bequeaths, items passed down, and one who receives. The consideration of inheritance then questions 1) who has the power to decide what is worthy to be passed down and who is worthy to receive? How is this power granted, questioned, and subverted? How do people divested of this power find alternative ways of leaving a legacy? 2), what … read more (Web).