East-West Cultural Passage

Special Issue: Representations of Disaster in the Humanities, September 2024

Submission deadline: 1 August 2024

In the current international context, crises seems to be the byword. From political crises which have turned into a war of attrition, such as the war in Ukraine, to the more recent crisis between Israel and the Hamas that, far from being a local conflict threatens to affect and involve a large number of countries, crises have become a harrowing, everyday reality. The older crises and threats have receded into the background; from internal and civil conflicts ravaging various countries, hunger in different parts of the world, climate change resulting in extreme phenomena that destroy homes and communities and that increase the levels of poverty, child abuse that continues to stay at alarming rates, to the legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic which has deeply affected many economies, the world has been facing huge disasters that ask for urgent solutions. It comes as no surprise that the preoccupation with disaster and apocalypse studies has deepened in recent years, resulting in a wealth of research that is still far from grappling with the current challenges.

In this context, the upcoming issue of the East-West Cultural Passage Journal (https://sciendo.com/journal/EWCP), to be published in September 2024, will be dedicated to the ways in which disasters have been represented in the humanities, and in the arts in particular. The imbrications and intersections between the humanities and other fields such as sociology, media studies, ecocriticism, psychology and information technology can only yield fresh insights into crises that affect humanity at various levels.

Themes may include, but are not limited to:

Representations of disaster in fiction

War as disaster

Natural disasters vs man-made disasters

Ecological disasters

Apocalyptic film and television

The Coronavirus pandemic

Popular culture and disaster

Media and disaster

Metaphors of disaster

Digital culture and disaster

Violence as disaster

Vulnerability and healing

The arts as consolation for the disasters of the contemporary world

Submission deadline: 1 August 2024

Articles will be subject to a blind peer reviewing process and must not be under consideration for any other publication.

Submission guidelines: The first page of the manuscript should carry the title, names of authors, institutional affiliations, a brief but detailed 200-word abstract, and 7-10 key words/ concepts. The article must be accompanied by a 200-word biographical note and must conform to MLA referencing (9th edition). Please see further information and instructions in the journal’s Submission Guidelines at: https://magazines.ulbsibiu.ro/ewcp/.