CFP: Cultures of Sexuality (Dec 1, 2020)

Sourit Bhattacharya Announcement
Subject Fields
Humanities, Literature, Popular Culture Studies, Sexuality Studies, Women's & Gender History / Studies

Since the sexual abuse allegations against American film producer Harvey Weinstein in Oct 2017, the #metoo movement has received wide attention on social media and in public life. What this movement has reminded us is sexual abuse is deeply implicated in social/hierarchical power structures (forcing survivors to suffer violence and then hide trauma). It has also offered the possibility of speaking against sexual abuse, harassment, and violence in public and “shaming” perpetrators (as “due process” has often been painful, slow, and unfair). The movement has led to public debates on questions of patriarchy, power, nepotism, culture, clothing, ethics, and ideology. Although this Sanglap issue is not exclusively about #metoo, it will seek to understand sex and sexuality in cultural contexts. What are the ideologies that drive the globalized cultural representations of sexuality? How is sexuality practised locally? Is sex, the identity marker, synonymous with sexuality as a cultural and representational construct? How does one differentiate between the understanding of sexuality as a static object and sexuality as a fluid process of endless becoming? How do we uncouple notions of sexuality from sexual reproduction that gives birth to heteronormative practices? How are “assumptions” about male or female bodies formed and naturalized? What role do law and social media play in attending to questions of sexuality? Cultures of sexuality speak to complex identitarian intersections of gender, class, race, ethnicity, caste, language, representation and such. Cultural forms that carry diverse representations of sexuality can play the role of major socio-political influencers. They produce dominant images for geopolitically specific sexual cultures and sub-cultures. These images in turn often colour sexual practices as well as malpractices in society. Cultures also hold strong possibilities of questioning (and overthrowing) existing power structures through local and transnational forms of solidarity. We invite articles that reflect on contemporary regimes of representing sexuality in literature and other cultural forms like cinema, theatre, art, not to mention cultures of sexuality practiced on digital platforms.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  1. Sexuality and Patriarchy
  2. Heteronormativity and Queering
  3. Sexual Practices and Social Media
  4. Sexuality and the Class-Caste-Race Complex
  5. “Rape Culture” and Abuse
  6. Sexuality and Social Psychology
  7. Sexuality and Performativity
  8. Image and Sexuality
  9. Sexuality and Crime
  10. Sexuality and Consent

Please send in your full papers (within 8,000 words, including notes and references, formatted in MLA 7th edition) to sanglapthejournal@gmail.com by Dec 1, 2020. Please follow our house-style from this link:

http://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/information/authors

We will get back to you after the peer-review by Feb 1, 2021. The issue will be published in Apr 2021.

Contact Information

Sourit Bhattacharya

University of Glasgow

Contact Email
sanglapthejournal@gmail.com