Call for Book Chapters

Historical Fictions as Reparative Histories

For a planned edited volume in the Global Historical Fictions Series (Brill, https://brill.com/page/419602), the editors invite proposals for book chapters.

 For a long time, there was a tendency among critics to dismiss historical fictions as inauthentic, inaccurate and fanciful: perhaps even as falsifications of history. They have also often been associated (in some cases justifiably) with conservative, escapist ideologies. Yet, more recent scholarship has highlighted the manifold uses of popular representations of the past. These not only teach history to the interested public; they may also render the past more accessible and more democratic, giving everyman and everywoman their own history and questioning the authority of traditional, undemocratic elites. Moreover, the past in popular media may offer assurance in a world in flux by emphasising commonality across time and the universality of human experience.

In this volume, a follow-up from a workshop, we seek to examine the reparative potential of historical fictions, which may address and redress past grievances and give a voice to ethnic, sexual and social minorities and to groups which had previously been written out of history. Moreover, historical fictions may imagine alternative histories in which past wrongs have not happened or which lay the groundwork for a better, more equal future. At the same time, such alterations can be critically interrogated, raising the question whether the erasure of social injustice from our historical imaginary blinds the public to its continued existence in the present.

We seek proposals for book chapters of 6,500 to 8,000 words especially, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Slavery and the slave trade
• Neo-Victorianism

Please note we are open to submissions on historical fiction in any form.

Proposals of no more than 500 words are due 1 April 2024. Please include a short bio (150 words max) and send these to historicalfictionsresearch@gmail.com. Full papers will be due in February 2025.

Volume editors: Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir, Jerome de Groot, Dorothea Flothow, Siobhan O’Connor, and Stephanie Russo.