Calls for Papers
Special Issue "Contested
Terrains: Third World Women, Feminisms, and Geopolitics"
Volume 32 Issue 3, 2017
Guest Editors: Ranjoo Herr (Bentley University) and Shelley
Park (University of Central Florida)
Hypatia seeks papers for a special issue on “Contested Terrains” featuring
feminist scholarship that explores the varied geopolitical landscapes
on which contestations about feminist theories and practices regarding
Third World women are situated. The experiences and perspectives of
Third World women have been frequently erased, distorted and
manipulated both by dominant feminist discourses and by dominant
geopolitical discourses. Long after the proclaimed demise of second
wave feminism in the academy, neoliberal feminist discourses continue
to dominate within neocolonial geopolitical regimes.
Conventional geopolitical discourses flatten the complexity of
Third World women’s lives and ignore their diversely embodied,
material and psychic realities within nations by emphasizing conflicts
and alliances between nation-states. We invite feminist analyses that
rescale geopolitical landscapes, shifting our attention from the
macroscopic perspectives of international affairs and globalization to
the smaller scale connections between space and politics that play out
at the level of Third World women’s intimate lives, community
practices, and everyday tactics of survival and resistance.
Papers that explore the ways in which race, ethnicity, class,
gender, sexuality, disability, age and other forms of difference
intersect with issues of geopolitical location are encouraged.
This special issue starts from the premise that
differences and disagreements among women have value. Thus, we
encourage submissions that explore tensions among women—locally,
regionally, nationally and globally—as a potential source of
productive feminist questioning, reflection, knowledge and practice.
At the same time, such tensions should not be romanticized;
disagreements are experienced differently and disproportionately by
diverse participants with varying issues at stake. Because the
material and psychic consequences of disagreement are rarely
distributed evenly across geopolitical terrains, contributors are
encouraged to analyze the consequences—as well as the origins—of
contestations between and among Third World and First World women.
We use the identifier “Third World women” here to center the
perspectives of women of color who—whether living in the Third World
or in the First World—contest the neocolonialism and cultural
imperialism of the First World, including First World feminisms.
However, contributions critically examining geopolitical
divisions of the globe into “First” and “Third” worlds (or other
conventional geopolitical mappings) are welcome.
How best to describe the differing geopolitical contexts of
different feminisms in the era of economic, political, and cultural
globalization is—and should be—itself a site of contestation.
Possible topics may include:
·
Contested discursive
terrains: For
example, the contested geopolitical partitionings of West/East;
North/South; or First World/Third World and competing feminist
understandings of globalization as embedded in
theories of “Third World feminism,” “transnational feminism,”
“women of color feminism,” “postcolonial feminism,” and “global
feminism.”
·
Contested epistemological
terrains:
For example, inequitable access to publishing resources, the
privileging of written over oral traditions, and different
understandings of cultural intelligibility.
·
Contested political
terrains:
For example, the geopolitics of war, military occupations,
nationalism, patriotism, terrorism, migration, border patrols,
detention, and deportation; differing experiences of trauma and
violence, security and danger.
·
Contested economic
terrains:
For example, resource conflicts between and among women (and girls)
situated differently as owners, sellers, consumers, workers and
commodities in various industries ranging from agriculture to
technology to tourism.
·
Contested terrains of
kinship:
For example, local and global disagreements among women
concerning the ethics of polygamy, arranged marriages, transnational
adoptions, and other familial forms.
·
Contested terrains of
solidarity:
For example, the struggles that arise between women, locally and
globally, with different ethico-political values or priorities; how
allies often harm those they intend to help.
Submission deadline: December 1, 2015
Papers should be no more
than 8000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for
anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200
words. In addition to articles, we invite submissions for our Musings
section. These should not exceed 3,000 words, including footnotes and
references. All submissions will be subject to external review. For
details please see Hypatia’s
submission guidelines.
Please submit your paper
to: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hypa. When you submit, make sure
to select “Contested Terrains” as your manuscript type, and also send
an email to the guest editor(s) indicating the title of the paper you
have submitted: Ranjoo S.
Herr:
rherr@bentley.edu
and
Shelley Park:
Shelley.Park@ucf.edu
http://hypatiaphilosophy.org/Editorial/#Contested%20Terrains
