Overview
The special issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly invites submissions exploring the literary, theoretical, and cultural lifeworlds relating to unbearable being(s). This concept functions on multiple valences as an affective state of being and becoming that indexes the intolerableness of existence within the normative. On the other hand, unbearable beings are the subjects who inhabit abject and/or revolutionary positions in relation to the sociopolitical apparatus, offering alternate possibilities of living and being in this world.
Paper Topics
The issue explores the unbearableness of that which cannot be contained within the category of what Sylvia Wynter defines as the “Man-as-human.” Infrastructures of oppression—the nation-state and its borders, citizenship, the unequal distribution of material resources deemed essential for survival such as healthcare, housing, education, and other human rights—police the borders of the category of the “Man-as-human” and cast out Black, Indigenous, people of color, impoverished, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ people differently.
Topics of interest include the unbearable and Black, affect, feminist, queer, and disability studies; cyborg studies, animal studies, posthumanism, and the concept of “Man-as-human”; horror and the unbearable; speculative/weird/climate fictions and possibilities of being and becoming; and the “praxis of being human” in spaces marked by confinement, regulation, and surveillance.
Submissions Guidelines
Scholarly articles should be submitted to WSQ.submittable.com and not exceed 6,000 words (including un-embedded notes and works cited). Poetry submissions related to the issue theme should be submitted to WSQ.submittable.com. Fiction, essay, memoir, and translation submissions related to the issue theme between 2,000 and 2,500 words should be submitted to WSQ.submittable.com. Visual art submissions related to the issue theme should be submitted to WSQ.submittable.com.
We welcome contributions that examine a wide array of literary and popular texts, films, performance, music, and other artistic expressions by and about marginalized “humans” who engage with histories of negative inheritances. Especially encouraged to submit are scholars, artists, creative writers, and activists who themselves experience various forms of marginalization within nation-states in the Global North and Global South.
Priority Deadline: September 15, 2023
LGBTQIA+, disabled, Black, Indigenous, and people of color are especially encouraged to submit.
For all questions related to creative submissions, email the poetry, prose, or visual arts editors at WSQEditorial@gmail.com and include your medium (poetry, prose, visual arts, etc.) in the subject line.
About WSQ
Since 1972, WSQ has been an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of emerging perspectives on women, gender, and sexuality. Its peer-reviewed interdisciplinary thematic issues focus on a variety of topics, combining legal, queer, cultural, technological, and historical work to present the most exciting new scholarship, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, book reviews, and visual arts on ideas that engage popular and academic readers alike. WSQ is edited by Shereen Inayatulla (York College, CUNY) and Andie Silva (York College, CUNY) and published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Visit feministpress.org/wsq for more information.
