Proposal Deadline: December 15, 2025

Under consideration with a major academic press

Following the Eisner Award–winning success of The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader (University Press of Mississippi, 2022), we are now curating a second volume to extend, deepen, and diversify queer comics scholarship.

The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader, Volume II: Desire, Difference, and Disruption will build upon the first volume’s attention to community, global intersections, resilience, and visibility. This new collection ventures further into the erotics of queer representation, the aesthetics of queer form, and the disruptive capacities of comics as a queer medium. We aim to reflect the growing complexity, reach, and political urgency of LGBTQ+ comics and comics studies.

Since the publication of the first Reader, the field has expanded rapidly in both scholarly and creative dimensions. The study of queer comics is inseparable from the history of queer experience, as LGBTQ+ readers have long been shaped by the comics they read, study, and share. This second volume engages directly with “future directions” in queer comics studies, mapping emerging critical pathways and centering work that is formal, global, transgressive, and intersectional in its commitments.

We welcome contributions that reflect a range of disciplinary approaches—including literary, visual, sociohistorical, and political methods—and that position queer comics as vital case studies of contemporary cultural criticism.

We invite proposals for scholarly essays, interviews, and creative-critical contributions on topics such as:

• Queer erotic and pornographic comics: Sustained considerations of their histories, aesthetics, readerships, and cultural impact
• Trans and nonbinary narratives: Addressed as distinct and evolving trajectories within comics history and queer traditions (especially interested in interactions among comics’ form, genre, and trans embodiment)
• Dialogues with creators and critics: Interviews, oral histories, and first-person accounts that document queer comics cultures
• Intersectional approaches: Explorations of how race, disability, class, migration, religion, and other identity vectors shape queer comics
• Aesthetics and form: Analysis of comics’ visual rhetorics, sequential logic, and multimodal affordances as tools of queer subversion and worldmaking
• Global and transnational perspectives: Work beyond Anglophone traditions that investigates circulation, translation, and reception across diverse cultural contexts
• Pedagogical or archival reflections: Explorations of how queer comics are taught, preserved, and remembered

Submission Instructions

Please send the following (as MS Word documents):

• A 300-word abstract or proposal
• A 50-word bio

Submit to both editors:

Alison Halsall & Jonathan Warren

Deadline for proposals: December 15, 2025

All submissions will be acknowledged.

Chapter Guidelines

• Final essays: ~15–18 pages double-spaced (approx. 5,000–6,000 words)
• Intended for both a scholarly and advanced general readership, including students and researchers in comics studies, queer theory, visual culture, and media studies
• First full drafts due: April 15, 2026
• Final revisions due: August 30, 2026
• Anticipated publication: Winter 2027

Visual Material & Permissions

Contributors are responsible for:

• Obtaining image permissions (if applicable)
• Paying any associated reproduction fees
• Submitting low-resolution images (small JPEGs) for review alongside drafts
• Providing high-resolution images upon acceptance

We especially encourage submissions from early-career scholars, independent researchers, international contributors, and voices historically underrepresented in academic publishing. Proposals that explore unconventional formats or hybrid genres are welcome.

Let us know if you have questions or if you’d like to discuss whether your idea is a good fit. We’re excited to hear from you.

— Alison & Jonathan