Still Cruising Utopia: A Utopian Studies Special Issue on Queer Utopia and the Legacy of José Esteban Muñoz

EXTENDED Deadline for all manuscripts: May 15, 2024

To acknowledge and celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the publication of Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009) by José Esteban Muñoz (1967-2013), Utopian Studies seeks contributions for a special issue on Queer.  Scholarly writing on queer utopias and/or queer utopianism has exploded since the publication of Muñoz’s text in 2009. For this issue of Utopian Studies we are particularly interested in contributions that assess the role that Cruising Utopia and other work by Muñoz have played in the theorization of queer possibilities. How has his work–and those who have followed him–shaped the field that is, or could be, called queer utopianism? How has this work been reshaping the very field we call “utopian studies”? We encourage contributions from queer, BIPOC, Latinx, and social and gender minorities, as well as contributions from the Global South.

Utopian Studies is an interdisciplinary scholarly journal in its 35th year of publication. For more information on the journal, see: https://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_utopian_studies.html

Types of contributions:

The journal has five sections, accommodating a variety of possible contribution formats:

1.   Full-length academic articles (7,500 words max): For this issue we seek essays on any aspect of queer utopianism. All essays should be informed by contemporary theoretical debates in both utopian and queer studies. For inquiries, please contact Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor (Editor) at jaw55 [at] psu.edu.
2.    Critical Forum: A set of essays that comprise a “dialog” around a particular theoretical question or issue. The Forum is typically organized as a discrete set of contributions (some of these groupings have started out as conference panels). This cluster of essays can run from 20,000 to 25,000 words total, comprising 4-6 contributions. For inquiries, please contact Christian Haines (Associate Editor) at chaines [at]psu.edu.
3.  Desire Lines (2,500 words max): This section features academic writing in a more personal mode. Contributions might address “What would a queer utopia look like”?, for example. For inquiries, please contact Stephanie Peebles Tavera (Assistant Editor) at stephanie.tavera[at] tamuk.edu.
4.   Conference Briefings: If you have attended a conference, workshop, or colloquium in the last year that pertains to the special issue topic, we accept submissions of 1,500-word critical reflections on the event. For inquiries, please contact Manuel Sousa Oliveira (Editorial Assistant and Conference Briefings Editor) at msoliveira[at] letras [dot]up [dot] pt.
5. Book Reviews: We publish book reviews of recent publications. Single-book reviews have 1,500 to 2,500 words; review essays (reviewing 2 or more books) up to 5,000 words. For this issue, we particularly seek reviews related to queer history, queer theory, and queer literature and art/performance. For inquiries, please contact Elisabeth Reichel (Book Review Editor) at elisabeth.reichel[at]uni-osnabrueck.de.

ALL CONTRIBUTIONS MUST BE RECEIVED NO LATER THAN MAY 15, 2024, AND SUBMITTED THROUGH OUR EDITORIAL MANAGER SYSTEM. To submit a manuscript to the editorial office, please visit 

http://www.editorialmanager.com/uts/ and create an author profile. The online system will guide you through the steps to upload your manuscript. Submissions must follow the most recent edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Academic article manuscripts should not be longer than 7,500 words including abstracts and notes.

Critical Forum essays may vary in length, depending on the number of contributors.

Desire Lines should be no longer than 2,500 words.

Book Reviews should not be longer than 2,500 words (or shorter than 1,500 words); review essays should not be longer than 5,000 words.

Conference Briefings should be no longer than 1,500 words.

Please see the complete Submission Guidelines:

http://www.editorialmanager.com/uts/account/US_SubmissionGuidelines.pdf

LAST UPDATED: 15 Apr 2024