Critical Perspectives on the Intersection of Breast Cancer and Academic Identity Abstract Proposal

This volume invites scholars who are either navigating breast cancer treatment or have traveled this path in the past. We hope to create a space for you to share how your experiences with breast cancer have touched and transformed your teaching, research, personal, and professional connections within your communities. Through your contributions, we aim to explore these profound impacts with empathy, adopting a feminist, transnational, and intersectional approach. This is an opportunity to reflect on and articulate the deeply personal ways in which breast cancer has intertwined with your academic life and beyond, fostering a compassionate and understanding dialogue rooted in critical, qualitative, and autoethnographic traditions.The primary aim of this volume is to critically explore how narratives and personal experiences related to the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer reshape our perceptions of identity, agency, and community dynamics, particularly focusing on the existing health inequities and vulnerabilities ingrained within healthcare systems and societal structures. The goal of this volume is to examine how the discourses about and experiences of diagnosis and treatment transforms our understandings of identities, agencies, and communities with critical attention to already existing inequities and vulnerabilities within health care systems, structures, and communities.

We invite chapter proposals to critically engage and situate the unseen, unheard, and unexpected implications of breast cancer on our intellectual, academic, and community lives. As scholars possessing specialized knowledge within our respective fields of study, we are confronted with the imperative to familiarize ourselves with the lexicon of breast cancer. This endeavor requires an understanding of treatment modalities and medical insights, which may either fall outside our conventional spheres of inquiry or intersect closely with our current research trajectories. 

The tone of the volume will aim for conversational, collaborative, critical, and curious. We do not intend nor expect to have a definitive word on anything, nor do we expect for each chapter contribution to be an extensive research endeavor. We have designed the volume focus and format to support these goals: each chapter will be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (inclusive of end notes) and will collectively illustrate the unique, inviting, and coalitional things scholars think and say amidst unfolding situations.

We explicitly welcome contributions from scholars from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in academia, emerging scholars, LGBTQIA+ scholars, and scholars exploring critical methodologies or practices critical of canonical approaches.

We aim to curate contributions that blend the personal with scholarly work and its collective impact on individual academic identities and communities.

We encourage submission that examine how our experience of breast cancer has complicated and amplified fields of inquiry or systemic issues such as, but by no means limited to, the following:

• Attitudes and Biases of various medical professionals 

• Body Autonomy and Reclamation  (Aesthetic flat closure, Grooming, Early menopause, Pain, Clinical coldness, Dehumanization, Gender Binaries, Positioning, Physical Assessments and Gowns, Breast Reduction Surgery, Flat Denial, Acceptable Cosmetic Outcome Including Weight, Age, Race, Gender, etc. Identification, Sugeical Options, Right to Self Determination, Child Abuse PTSD, Gender, Hair loss, Reconstructive Pressure)

• Cancer and Body Rhetorics (“Brave face,” “Fuck Cancer,” “Fight Cancer,” “Cancer Fucked with the Wrong Woman,” Dealing like a “boss,” Advertisements, Purity and Eugenics, Individual “Journeys,” “Making Memories,” War Metaphors, “Journey,” Toxic Positivity, Minimizing Concerns, Dark Humor, Inflammatory Breast Cancer, etc.)

• Collateral damage caused by the cancer (Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, Early Menopause, Partners Who Leave, Isolation, Chronic Pain, Complex PTSD, cPTSD, and Post-Traumatic Growth)

• Community and Presence (Digital community, Family and children, Discomfort and Rationalization, Motherhood and Cancer, Actionable Support, “Pay it Forward” Mentality, Firefly Sisterhood, Angel Network, Caring bridge, Invitations and Exclusions, Ghosting, Anticipatory Grief, Intimate Publics, etc.)

• Demographic and Positionality, Space and Place (Geographic Location, Expertise, Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality, Neurodivergence, Transnationality)

• Fraud and cons perpetrated against the cancer community. Fake patients, miracle cures, social media influencers, etc.

• Medical decision making that is driven by insurance coverage or lack thereof, or by policy guidelines over physician recommendation. This could be extended to include the variations seen across private vs public pay systems. 

• Medical expenses (insurance, coverage, etc.)

• Patriarchy/paternalism (e.g. the assumption that women don’t know what they want for their own bodies-“We’ll leave extra skin in case you change your mind”; bigger or smaller implants than discussed or desired to meet an aesthetic result that is determined by the doctor rather than the patient)

• Perception of Health and Morality (Mental Health, Physical Health, Compassion v. Empathy, Brain and Thought Process/Neurodivergence, Mental Load of Cancer During Diagnosis, Active Treatment, and Afterwards, and Fear of Later Recurrence, Overuse of “Anxiety” Assessment, etc.)

• Perceptions of a Treatment Hierarchy (e.g. Chemo is Hard, Radiation is Easy, Competition of Suffering, and/or Imposter Syndrome) 

• Pink capitalism 

• Post Cancer Identity and Agency

• Survivor and Coalitional Activism (“After” cancer, communities of other people diagnosed and being treated for breast cancer, Sisterhoods, etc.)

• Treatments (e.g. Based on Age-Premenopausal, Pressure to Preserve Fertility, Regardless of Genetics, Symptom, Side Effect, or Pain Dismissal; Early Onset, Trauma, Diet, Testing, Genetic Cancer, Metastatic Breast Cancer, Radiation, Second and Third Opinions)

For full submission details please fill out this form. If the link does not work, paste this into your

browser: https://forms.gle/BMuSjWnK1vBFvYK98

Timeline:

● July 12: Abstract Proposals Due

● Aug 9: Notification of Accepted Abstract Proposals

● Oct 11: Chapter Drafts Due

● Dec 13: Final Drafts Due

● Jan (2025) 10: Manuscript Due to Publisher

We recognize that this is a difficult time. Given all that is going on, if you are concerned about

our ambitious timeline but otherwise very interested in participating, we encourage you to reach

out to the editors (Wendy K. Z. Anderson and Tehmina Pirzada) at this address:

bcintheacademy@gmail.com.