Gloria Naylor’s fictionalized memoir 1996 (2005) remains the least studied but most controversial selection in her decades-long literary output. Published by Third World Press at the tailend of her illustrious career, 1996 stands in stark contrast to Naylor’s iconic tetralogy — which includes Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Cafe (1992), as well as the sibling text Men of Brewster Place (1998) — by centering the author herself in its bold critiques of state power and the ways marginalized communities fight to uphold it.

Article submissions of between 20 and 35 pages on lives and work of either Elizabeth Bishop or Robert Lowell are being sought for consideration by the peer reviewed Bishop-Lowell Studies journal published by Penn State UP. Please consult the journal page a thttps://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_BLS.html for further submission information. You can also contact the editor, Ian Copestake, directly o: copers@gmail.com.

Affect theory turns our attention towards a re-contextualisation of emotional and affective experiences within past and contemporary constructions of race, gender and sexuality. It leads us towards the para-rational zones of lived experience (sensations, disturbances, intensities, etc) and offers new interdisciplinary methodologies. The study of emotionality interrogates the boundary between human and non-human, with contemporary research in ecological feeling playing with the border between humans and other species, nature and geological formations. This issue is interested in how these contemporary and modern affective debates have impacted, and continue to impact, the ways in which we think about feeling.