Call for Articles

Special Issue: (Re)articulating an Old Ideal: Self-Care and Self-Help in Contemporary Culture

Guest Editors: Alexandra Bacalu (University of Bucharest) & Dragoș Manea (University of Bucharest)

Owing to the recent rise of social media, which has only witnessed ever new heights in our post-pandemic world, the 2010s and 2020s have been shaped by a marked cultural concern with virtual forms of self-fashioning and identity performance, breathing new life into the cultural institution of the (online) lifestyle guru and reigniting interest in the related topics of self-care, self-help, and self-love. These recent developments only serve to reinforce rather than challenge the sociological insight that, starting with the 1960s and 1970s, Western culture has been predominantly defined by the ultimate “triumph of the therapeutic” (Rieff 1966; cf. Berger 1965; Lasch 1979; Lears 1983). Indeed, the proliferating mechanisms of psychologization (Beck 1992; De Vos 2013) have become noticeable to the naked eye, with key psychological concepts such as ‘trauma,’ ‘anxiety,’ ‘OCD,’ ‘narcissism,’ ‘personality type,’ or ‘attachment style’ becoming part and parcel of everyday discourse and personal self-reflection.

Without a doubt, the concern with the care of the self (as with the human psyche in general) is far from new. Yet the question of the origin story of ‘self-care’ as we know it today is still under debate. Historians, sociologists, and cultural critics have gestured at the following key contexts as potential starting points: the philosophical culture of the Hellenistic and Roman periods (Hadot 1981; Foucault 1984); conceptions of the care of the soul in early Patristic writings (cf. Knuuttila 2004); early modern philosophy and cultura animi traditions (cf. Corneanu 2012; D’Agostino 2023); Enlightenment theories of happiness and human rights (cf. Lefebvre 2018); Victorian bourgeois culture and the rise of classical liberalism (cf. Nehring et al 2016); the idea of self-reliance in American Transcendentalism (cf. McGee 2005); the widespread success of Freudian psychoanalysis in the 20th century (cf. Illouz 2008); the Civil Rights movement and its particular forms of activist solidarity (cf. Wyche 2025); the growing popularity of self-help and self-development literature at the turn of the 21st century (cf. Rimke 2020); and the list goes on. Considering the fact that our current understanding of self-care takes its strength from many of these cultural-historical resources, this special issue will explore the following broad questions: (1) What explains the rise of self-care in the last two decades of the 21st century and what are the defining features of its contemporary representation? (2) What kind of transformations has the concern with the care of the self suffered throughout history and across cultures? (3) How have the practices surrounding self-care been (re)articulated in contemporary literature, arts, popular culture, and social media? (4) In what ways have conceptions of the ‘self’ and ‘self-care’ shifted alongside one another? (5) To what extent do contemporary forms of self-care continue to carry a moral, ethical, or political dimension?

We invite articles on the following topics and more:

• The history of the care of the self and the historical background behind contemporary views of self-care
• Representations of self-care and self-help in literature, the arts, popular culture, new media, and social media
• Self-care and self-help as literary, visual, or digital practice(s)
• Spiritual exercises, ways of life, and technologies of the self
• Self-care and self-help as moral-ethical imperatives
• Intersections between self-care and counterculture: subcultures, lifestyles, and online aesthetics
• Self-help and self-development as forms of discipline, labor, and (self)regulation
• Psychological language and the psychologization of everyday culture
• The medical dimension of self-care and the cultural discourse around therapy and mental health
• Self-care within the beauty industry
• Pseudoscience, psychobabble, wellness gurus, and lifestyle influencers
• Self-fashioning, identity performance, and the aesthetics of the self

Submission deadline: 1 October 2025

We welcome papers penned by undergraduate and graduate students on any topic in the following fields: Literary Studies, Language and Translation Studies, Cultural Studies.

We also welcome: poetry, fiction or drama translations, as well as works of creative writing.

Articles must not be under consideration for any other publications.

Please follow our Author Guidelines and send us your contributions along with the Submission Form.

Contributions are to be sent to culturesintransit.journal@gmail.com & alexandra.bacalu@lls.unibuc.ro