CFP - Edited Volume: Female and queer bodies in speculative fiction and visual culture

Edited by María Gil Poisa (University of Oviedo, Spain) and Débora Madrid Brito (University of La Laguna, Spain)

This edited volume aims to explore different representations and interpretations of female bodies and queer bodies presented in speculative fiction and visual culture. Through a diverse and transnational perspective, this publication aims to illustrate how these bodies are constructed, contested, and reimagined within non-realist cultural frameworks. Speculative fiction and visual culture are understood here as encompassing a broad spectrum of artistic and narrative expressions within the realms of all the subgenres of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history, across a variety of media and disciplines. The centrality of the body for power, resistance, and stigma has long been recognized in critical academic discourses, particularly within fields such as Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Studies. This publication aims to foster a critical dialogue that traverses those disciplinary boundaries, offering innovative and intersectional insights into the ways in which female and queer bodies are imagined and interrogated in speculative and visual cultures. By foregrounding diverse perspectives and methodologies, we seek to contribute to ongoing discussions about the cultural, political, and theoretical significance of embodied subjectivities in non-realist genres. In order to do that, we invite contributors to engage with theoretical frameworks that have significantly shaped these disciplines, drawing on thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Linda Williams, bell hooks, and Laura Mulvey, among others. Contributors are encouraged to critically examine how female and queer bodies are depicted, regulated, and politicized in speculative and visual texts, interrogating the interplay between embodiment, identity, and sociocultural paradigms. By addressing contemporary debates on embodiment, identity, and representation, this volume promises to engage with a wide readership across global contexts.

We invite contributions that critically engage with a broad range of media and artistic forms, including but not limited to film and television, literature, comics and graphic novels, drama, fanfiction and fan creations, radio and podcasts, video games, contemporary art, drag performance, photography, and plastic arts. While submissions grounded in close readings of single texts or artworks are welcome, we particularly encourage chapters that adopt a comparative approach—examining two or more texts, creators, or artistic movements—or that situate their analysis within broader cultural, theoretical, or historical frameworks. Such comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives will allow for a richer, intersectional, and more dynamic exploration of the themes central to this volume.
Potential, but not exclusive topics, may include:
- Abjection, monstrosity, and Otherness
- Bodies and Horror
- Maternity
- Corporeality
- Power, surveillance, and control
- Agency and resistance
- Transformation
- Trans bodies
- Robots and cyborgs
- Posthuman and transhuman bodies
- Age
- Disability
- Species
- Mental Health and neurodivergence
- Stigma

We welcome original and unpublished proposals. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words before April 20th, along with a brief bio, to gilmaria@uniovi.es and dmadridb@ull.edu.es and the subject “Female and Queer Bodies Proposal + your name”. In your proposals, please clearly include an outline of the chapter’s objectives, theoretical framework, and analyzed works, authors, or movements. We particularly encourage proposals that bring fresh perspectives from underrepresented regions and voices in the Global South. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by June, with full chapters between 6,000 and 8,000 words expected by October 31st, 2025. We are currently seeking a publishing house to support this volume, and we are committed to collaborating with a publishing house that values academic rigor, diverse perspectives, and innovative approaches to critical scholarship.
For further inquiries, please contact the editors at gilmaria@uniovi.es and dmadridb@ull.edu.es.