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Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, a peer-reviewed online journal, invites submissions for its thematic issue, “Becoming-Girl.” Deleuze articulates the notion of becoming as existing through multiplicity and alliances, a process that does not have a beginning or end, but is always in-progress; becoming is, much like girlhood, intermezzo. Deleuze claims that “Girls do not belong to an age group, sex, order, or kingdom: they slip in everywhere, between orders, acts, ages, sexes.” Girls’ identities, interactions and relationships, particularly in cyber-contexts, are rhizomatic, complex, bordering the virtual and reality in their multiple becomings.

The purpose of this special issue is to explore how girls negotiate identity and practice resistance rhizomatically. We are particularly interested in how identity negotiations operate in digital cultures, such as social networks (Facebook, MySpace), virtual realities (Second Life), and activist cultural productions by girls, such as ‘zines, blogs, instant message communication, and mobile phone texting. We are interested in multiple approaches, genres, and media that consider these issues, including mediums that resist categorization. Submissions need not be limited to those focused on the digital/virtual; we also welcome explorations of girls’ identities and becomings from pop cultural, historical, psychological, experimental and/or other perspectives.

Proposals might (or might not) address the following questions:
·How can girls resist fixed identity constructs through digital, cultural, popular, artistic, activist, and/or other mediums?
·How do girls engage digital and/or cultural spaces to negotiate identity and the process of becoming?
·How do such spaces foster connectedness rather than isolated action(s) for girls who resist dominant cultural messages about girlhood?
·What are the everyday embodied conditions of girls’ lives as constructed/experienced through new technologies and communication networks?
·How are gender and femininity experienced in virtual mediums? How are they articulated through, complicated by, and/or manifest in popular or other cultural mediums?
·What are the possibilities of the so-called networked body or the body online?
·How might girls’ rhizomatic online identity constructions and alliances challenge or disrupt (or reinforce) traditional social interactions?

As a full text online periodical, Rhizomes emphasizes multimedia to foster imaginative work that challenges typical critical forms. While submissions need not necessarily include developed multimedia, authors are encouraged to consider how their work might be enhanced by elements specific to the online medium. For additional information and submission guidelines, please visit the journal's website: www.rhizomes.net. Please direct submissions and inquiries to Leandra Preston at goleandra@gmail.com. Research involving girls directly (rather than only theoretically) must have IRB approval. Inquiries or abstracts welcome any time; deadline for completed essays or multimodal works, October 1, 2010.