Original, unpublished research papers are invited for an edited volume titled Vulnerable Lives, Precarious Existence: Contemporary Narratives of Vulnerability from the Global South, scheduled to be published in 2025.

Vulnerability, a willed or unwilled susceptibility to being harmed physically or psychologically, and the related concept of precarity, manifest themselves in multitudinous forms across spatio-temporal locations and population groups. This is particularly evident in the Global South, characterized by shared socio-political and cultural peculiarities such as a long history of colonialization, slow development, poverty, rigid social hierarchies, migration and refugeeism. Entire groups of people located at the margins of various axes of identity exist in a vulnerable and precarious state owing to their caste, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and spatial location. Subjects are rendered vulnerable not only by social and cultural forces, but also by environmental factors such as natural disasters, biological factors such as age, disability and illness, personal and historical trauma, and significantly, by the functioning of biopower.

The precariousness of existence is nowhere more evident than in the Global South with a large majority of subjects being located at the margins of the mainstream social order. As such, narratives of vulnerability, precarity and resistance from the arena are of special significance in understanding and engaging with the lived realities of the Global South. The edited volume seeks to engage with contemporary narratives in order to identify a uniquely Global South model of vulnerability studies relevant to the 21st century, with emphasis on the modes in which subjects resist and accommodate vulnerability and precarity.

The themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Social vulnerability and precarity
• Economic and political vulnerability
• Health and vulnerability
• Environmental Vulnerability
• Pandemics and Vulnerable Corporeality
• Vulnerability, Biopower and Resistance
• Refugeeism, Migration and the Precarity of Existence
• Trauma, Resilience and Vulnerability
• Queerness and Vulnerability
• Posthuman Vulnerability
• Invulnerability

Prospective contributors are requested to send abstracts of 300-350 words by 30 March 2024, accompanied by a bio note of 150-200 words. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their abstracts by 3 April 2024. Full papers are expected by 28 April 2024. Both abstracts and papers must conform to the latest MLA style sheet guidelines and be sent as Word files to cfpvulnerabilitystudies@gmail.com.

Important Dates

Submission of Abstracts

5 May 2025

Intimation of Acceptance

7 May 2025

Submission of Complete Papers

25 May 2025

For further details, please contact the editors:

Dr. Minu Susan Koshy                                                                          Dr. Chilkhe Ganesh Nagorao

Assistant Professor of English                                                                Assistant Professor of English

Mar Thoma College for Women                                                              VIT- Chennai

Affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University                                                  Mobile No. 9701047330

Kerala

Mobile No. 07702463931

Mr. Rajkumar

Assistant Professor of English

Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology       

Sikkim                        

Mobile No. 9490811568