WSQ Call for Papers: Unbearable Being(s)

May 2, 2022

As a partner of Women Studies Quarterly (WSQ), the Center for the Humanities is excited to share this call for papers for a special WSQ issue Unbearble Being(s)which will be co-edited by Debarati Biswas (New College of Florida), and Laura Westengard, (New York City College of Technology, CUNY ), in collaboration with WSQ‘s publisher The Feminist Press and fellow partner The Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Priority Deadline: October 13, 2023

This special issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly invites submissions that explore the literary, theoretical, and cultural lifeworlds created by and about unbearable being(s).

“Unbearable being(s)” functions on multiple valences. “Unbearable being” is 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 and offer alternate possibilities of living and being in this world.

This special 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. The COVID-19 pandemic and accelerating climate change have further dismantled the fictions of liberal humanism and laid bare the exploitative and extractive designs of capitalist white supremacy that create the category of “Man-as-human.” Treated as the refuse of urban renewal and gentrification, and/or displaced by environmental crises, wars, and ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and capitalist exploitation, marginalized subjects have, however, effected enormous sociopolitical changes over time, and have fostered socialities in spaces deemed unhomely and unclean. Such abject spaces include prisons, hospitals, segregated housing projects, war-torn zones, disaster sites, nightclubs, single room occupancy hotels, digital spaces, and other similar sites.

There have been a growing number of studies published on abject socialities and aesthetics in the fields of affect, feminist, queer/trans, environmental, and disability studies and their intersections with Black, Indigenous, and ethnic studies. Examples include José Esteban Muñoz’s Disidentifications (University of Minnesota Press, 1999), Katherine McKittrick’s DemonicGrounds (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), Darieck Scott’s ExtravagantAbjection (New York University Press, 2010), Alison Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip (Indiana University Press, 2013), Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman’s Sex, or the Unbearable (Duke University Press, 2014), Alexander G. Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus(Duke University Press, 2014), Donna J. Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), and C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Building on this existing scholarship, we seek submissions that focus specifically on cultural expressions produced in abject spaces within various nation-states both in the Global North and Global South. We are interested in submissions that explore abject spaces shaped by white settler colonial domestic/international policies and multinational corporations. More specifically, submissions should explore how these cultural expressions push against/embrace/reject the unbearableness of being(s) and offer unknown possibilities of our freedom and creativity as a species.

LIST OF POSSIBLE TOPICS:

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.

Submissions Guidelines

Priority Deadline: October 13, 2023


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 such topics as Asian Diasporas, Protest, Beauty, Precarious Work, At Sea, Solidarity, Queer Methods, Activisms, The Global and the Intimate, Trans-, The Sexual Body, and Mother, 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 Red Washburn (Kingsborough Community College, CUNY), 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 such topics as Asian Diasporas, Protest, Beauty, Precarious Work, At Sea, Solidarity, Queer Methods, Activisms, The Global and the Intimate, Trans-, The Sexual Body, and Mother, 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 Red Washburn (Kingsborough Community College, CUNY), Dána-Ain Davis (The Graduate Center, CUNY) and Kendra Sullivan (Center for the Humanities, CUNY) and published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Visit http://www.feministpress.org/w… published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

Performance

Slam Precarious Work

Wed, Feb 14, 2018
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM