CFP: Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation

We invite prospective contributions for the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation, an exciting new addition to the growing, dynamic book series. 

Despite robust discourse on globalization and a perhaps momentary preoccupation with post-nationalism toward the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the concepts of nation and nationalism continue their tenacious hold on our imaginations—a hold that, given the state of global politics, surely deserves further and renewed explanation, unpacking, and critique. 

This project thus seeks to trace historical discussions on nation and nationhood, recovering canonical debates and critiques from the 18th-20th c. that establish the significance of the category and its interplay with cultural and aesthetic production. It will then turn to the nation's continued significance and future possibilities—as figuration and reality; as source of empowerment and exclusion; as object critique and as utopian horizon, etc.—within relevant subject areas and fields. 

We are particularly interested in the following areas of scholarship:

• Digital humanities
• Ecocriticism
• Disability studies
• Medical humanities
• Affect
• Memory – or trauma and memory

And/or the following subject areas:

• World literature
• Diaspora
• Migration
• Religion
• Gender and sexuality
• Ultranationalism/hyper-nationalism, religious and racial nationalisms
• The relationship between or among forms of nationalism, including historical and contemporary

And in the following geographic areas:

• Africa (especially outside of North Africa)
• Eastern Europe
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Australia
• East Asia
• Canada

We hope to collaborate with a range of scholars whose work concerns a variety of mediums and forms of aesthetic and cultural production (e.g., film, literature, the visual and performing arts, music, archives, museums, legal documents, etc.). Please note that while we welcome traditional academic essays of up to 6,000 words, we are also interested in alternatives and creative forms, including review-length essays, visual essays, and others. 

If this project interests you, we ask that you submit an abstract of 250-400 words with a provisional title via email to stalpaz@oberlin.edu by November 15, 2022.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or comments. 

Sheera Talpaz

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies

Oberlin College

Anuradha Needham 

Donald R. Longman Professor of English, Cinema Studies, and Comparative Literature

Oberlin College