The Politics of Love: Recognition, Belonging, and Intimate Life

Co-edited by Arzu Opçin-Kıdal and Süleyman Bölükbaş

We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume provisionally titled The Politics of Love: Recognition, Belonging, and Intimate Life. The volume examines how love, intimacy, desire, attachment, and recognition shape the boundaries of belonging in literary and cultural narratives. It asks how communities define who is visible, who is valued, whose attachments are recognized, and who remains outside the limits of social, cultural, or political acceptance. The collection brings together literary studies, political theory, sociology, gender studies, queer theory, cultural studies, affect theory, nationalism studies, migration studies, and media studies. Its central premise is that belonging is not only a political status but also an affective condition sustained through recognition. Communities are not only imagined; they are desired. We welcome theoretically engaged chapters that examine literary and cultural texts as sites where belonging, recognition, intimacy, exclusion, and alternative forms of community are produced, contested, or transformed.

Possible topics include (but not limited to):

• Love, intimacy, and the politics of belonging
• Recognition, misrecognition, and social visibility
• Queer intimacy and the limits of recognizability
• Gender, embodiment, reproduction, and intimate life
• Family, kinship, romance, and social normativity
• Migration, diaspora, exile, and affective belonging
• Nationalism, community, and desired forms of attachment
• Race, class, sexuality, and the regulation of intimacy
• Digital intimacy, dating apps, algorithms, and platformed desire
• Fandom, popular music, media cultures, and collective attachment
• Refusal, opacity, disaffection, and alternative belongings
• Literature, film, memoir, music, digital culture, and cultural narratives as theoretical
sites

We are particularly interested in chapters that combine close textual or cultural analysis with theoretical engagement.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit a chapter proposal/abstract of 300–500 words, together with a short biographical note of 150-200 words, to:

Arzu Opçin-Kıdal
arzu.opcin@ssbm.ch

Süleyman Bölükbaş
sfb5885@psu.edu

Proposals should include proposed chapter title, abstract, author's name, affiliation and contact details.

Timeline

• Proposal abstract submission deadline: 10 October 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 24 October 2026
• Tentative full chapter submission deadline: 15 February January 2027
• Expected chapter length: 7,000–8,000 words (including references and notes)

All accepted chapters will be subject to editorial review. The volume is intended forsubmission to Routledge

About the Volume

The Politics of Love explores how literary and cultural narratives illuminate the conditions under which subjects become recognizable, lovable, and capable of belonging. Moving beyond approaches that treat intimacy as merely private or purely regulatory, the volume examines how love, desire, attachment, and recognition participate in the making and unmaking of communities. By bringing together the politics of belonging, theories of recognition, and literary and cultural analysis, the collection offers a new interdisciplinary framework for understanding how communities define who belongs, who is excluded, and how alternative forms of belonging become imaginable.