Call for Papers

 Campus Nostalgia

East-West Cultural Passages (peer reviewed, open access journal, https://sciendo.com/journal/EWCP)

Special Issue: Campus Nostalgia. July 2022

Deadline: 1 May 2022

In the last two academic years, most universities have taken a turn towards an exclusively online environment, whether used for classes, faculty meetings, student hangouts or academic conferences. The general mood of despondency and disappointment among teachers and students has been counteracted by a buoyantly renewed interest in campus novels. Consequently, the genre forms the subject of a host of recent articles published in Lit Hub, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, Bustle, Publishers Weekly, independent student newspapers of British universities (Cambridge, St Andrews, Bristol), and independent booksellers and online communities. Not surprisingly, many of these articles are blatantly nostalgic and unabashedly escapist. They foreground the comforting potential of immersing oneself into the fictional world of (safe) campuses and quads on the one hand and indulge in a retrospective, stocktaking stance on the other: countless top tens of best campus novels mushroom across the dramatically titled pieces (e.g. “Campus Novels Are What We Need”, “Possibly the Only Safe Campuses You’ll Find This Year”). The first campus novel dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic is yet to be written. In the meantime, it is worth considering whether this nostalgic response has not always been inspired by campus novels: a quick look reveals the fact that student life and its inevitable associations with youth have always galvanized readerly nostalgia. Indeed it seems that nostalgia permeates campus novels in yet another sense as well: the sense of the loss of and yearning for the university of the past – e.g. for the non-utilitarian view of the university as an institution of knowledge ‘for knowledge’s sake’ – but also for the academic profession of the past; in short, what A. E. Housman called “the land of lost content” (Moseley 2021). As it has always done, the campus novel acts as a mouthpiece for beleaguered academics and students everywhere, lamenting the replacement of “epistemological value with financial value, [of] quality with quantity” (Docherty 2006).       

Considering all these (and other) nuances and instances of academic/campus nostalgia and its possible reappraisal in light of the new situation we find ourselves in, East-West Cultural Passage invites papers on the campus novel genre related (but by no means restricted) to this topic. Articles will be subject to a blind peer reviewing process and must not be under consideration for any other publications.

Submission guidelines: The first page of the manuscript should carry the title, author’s name, institutional affiliation, a 200-word abstract, and ten key words/ concepts. The article/ piece must be accompanied by a 200-word biographical note and must conform to MLA referencing (7th Edition). Please see further information and instructions on the journal’s guidelines at: http://site.magazines.ulbsibiu.ro/ewcp/ and https://sciendo.com/journal/EWCP.

The word limit for scholarly articles is 8500 words.

The word limit for creative pieces is 3000 words.

The word limit for reviews is 1000 words.

Please email enquiries and submissions marked “Campus Nostalgia” to Dr Corina Selejan at corina.selejan@ulbsibiu.ro and to Professor Merritt Moseley at moseley@unca.edu, before the closing date.