gender studies and sexuality

Anticipated Publication: Volume 5, November 2025

Guest Editors: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, Christopher J. Olson, and Hannah Steele

Purpose: Articles that explore the intersection of queer studies and professional wrestling studies to address a scholarship gap on the application of queer theory to explore professional wrestling individuals, texts, practices, and fandoms.

Submissions: Seeking empirical articles aligned with the special issue’s purpose that may include, but is not limited to, the following topics:

Summary: Midsommar, Saint Maud, False Positive, Hereditary, The Hole in the Ground, The Witch, etc. All of these A24 horror films feature women in crisis. Most are struggling with their mental health, most are betrayed by their loved ones, most are literally or emotionally isolated, and most are victims of an uncaring world. In all cases, the films end with the physical or figurative destruction of woman. She is insane, incinerated, beheaded, broken, forever haunted ... The question remains, should viewers accept these endings? Should they be viewed exploitative or unnecessarily shocking? Or is there room to view these as a warning?

Description: Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own imagines Shakespeare’s plays being written by Judith, a fabricated sister of Shakespeare, who had escaped an arranged marriage, and turned playwright. Woolf’s text proposes that women need private spaces to write, but this view implies that women during the early modern period were not already prolifically writing, which is not true. Many women during the early modern period were writing and publishing texts across genre, often engaging in political, religious, and social discourse that attempted to revolutionize their societies.

From an early stage, the modern African novel has recognized the unjust challenges faced by African women. Even novels of the 1950's, such as Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City (1954), bear witness to the difficulties that women face in transcending traditional norms as well as modern forms of objectification and exploitation. Even though these novels gesture to the need for better physical and societal realities for women, we may not find in the early novels a plan or vision of what exactly is needed for women to surmount various cultural hurdles and to fully actualize their potential in the modern realm.

"Interdisciplinary Research, Digital Humanitie Text Analysis" Seminar at the 56th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (March 6-9, Philadelphia, PA). Call for Papers #nemla2025  Submit your abstract https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20988 Maryann Pasda DiEdwardo is the Chair of a Seminar "Interdisciplinary Research, Digital Humanities, Text Analysis" for inclusion in the 56th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (March 6-9, Philadelphia, PA). https://www.nemla.org/convention.htmlNeMLA's 56th Annual ConventionHotel & Convention Site: Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Cultural Studies and Media Studies

The panel "Abortion, Single Motherhood, and Adoption Schemes in Magdalene Literature" will take place at the 56th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) organised from March 6 to March 9 in Philadelphia, PA. 

Magdalenism is a structure which was implemented from the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century in about 60 European and Europeanised countries around the world. Its objective was to control and fashion femininity, women’s social behaviours, and their sexuality. At a time when abortion was illegal in most countries, Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby “Homes” were often seen as a “solution” for unmarried pregnant girls and women.

Bodies of Feminist Resistance: Archives and Practices in Spain and Latin America - Panel Discussion at NeMLA 2025, "(R)EVOLUTION"

Host Institution: La Salle University

Hotel & Convention Site: Philadelphia Marriott Downtown

Dates: March 6-9, 2025

Departing from 'the body' as a terrain of feminist analysis and resistance, this panel seeks to explore the wide range of interventions re-imagining 'the political' in contemporary Spain and Latin America.

Human bodies and, by extension, human subjectivity have long been contested spaces. Against traditional Eurocentric and anthropocentric definitions of the human as a stable identity abstracted from its surrounding environment, movements like feminism, anti-racism, anti- and post-colonialism, and ecocriticism have called out the human’s complicated entrenchment in and with other/othered bodies and landscapes. Posthumanist scholars like Rosi Braidotti define the (post)human body as necessarily relational, nomadic, ever-changing with and in response to others. As such, the body becomes a site for radical transformation through which we may interrogate contemporary issues such as gender and race equity, income inequality, and climate change.

Submitted by: 

Survive and Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine 

Asia’s Maritime History and Identity at Cultural Crossroads

Please consider submitting an abstract for the NeMLA 2025 in Philadelphia.

NeMLA 56th Annual Convention

Philadelphia, PA, 6-9 March 2025

Primary Area / Secondary Area:

French and Francophone / Cultural Studies and Media Studies 

Chair:

Atim Mackin (Harvard University)

New Forms of Revolution in the Francophone World

 Revolutions have always been pivotal moments in the history of societies, but the forms they take are constantly evolving. This panel aims to explore the new forms of revolution within French and Francophone contexts. We seek contributions that question, analyze, and discuss the following aspects (among others):

This panel is being organized as part of NeMLA 2025, centered around the theme of (R)Evolution.

Description:

In dialogue with theorists of (post)humanism, this panel seeks to examine how science fiction has historically been used to bolster erroneous and destructive "scientific" discourses, such as social Darwinism, and, conversely, how science fiction has been used toward revolutionary ends to imagine alternative formations of (post)humanity that defy socially constructed taxonomies and hierarchies.

Abstract: 

Have you given a talk on drag culture recently? A conference paper on Drag Race that you’d like to publish? A thesis chapter on anything related to drag and/or social and racial justice that can be developed further? We are reopening this CFA for interested scholars to contribute a chapter to this edited collection.