Call for papers

Call for Papers 17

Issue no. 17 (31) / 2022

In Solidarity with Gender and Feminist Studies Scholars During Difficult Pandemic Times

(Open call for a non-thematic issue)

Deadline 15 March 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically transformed all of our lives, as well as the ways we do things. Plans, projects, and writings have been cancelled or postponed. As other professionals, scholars have also been facing challenges related with the new regime of working from home, doing research in a “socially and physically distanced world,” facing the fear and uncertainty of living in a pandemic context. Taking into consideration all of the above, we felt the need to offer a sign of solidarity during difficult times. We are therefore launching a non-thematic Call for Papers for our next AnaLize Journal issue. Innovative critical contributions dealing with any of the areas covered by our journal (gender/feminist/queer/LGBTQIA+) are welcomed.

Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies intends to open conversations among Eastern and non-Eastern feminist researchers on the situated nature of their feminism(s) and to encourage creative and critical feminist debates across multiple axes of signification such as gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, ethnicity, religion, etc. We are also open to publishing position papers, case studies, viewpoints, book reviews from practitioners of all grades and professions, academics and other specialists on the broad spectrum of gender and feminist studies.

We are an online, open access, peer-reviewed international journal that aims to bring into the public arena new ideas and findings in the field of gender and feminist studies and to contribute to the gendering of the social, economic, cultural and political discourses and practices about today’s local, national, regional and international realities.

Issue coordinators:

Diana Elena Neaga, Nicolae Titulescu University, Bucharest;
Valentin Quintus Nicolescu, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest

Submission deadline: 15 March 2022

Submission contact: contact@analize-journal.ro

Analize Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is listed in EBSCO, DOAJ, ERIH, Worldcat, Open Academic Journals Index.

Call for Papers 16

Issue no. 16 (30) / 2021

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on:

The benefits and pitfalls of gender mainstreaming in research

From the classic binary definition of gender, proposed by Ann Oakley (1972), in order to explain the power relationships between males and females, to the more nuanced ones that are included in the actual theoretical perspectives, which define gender as a multidimensional process, a spectrum, a continuum, concepts and theories in the area of Gender Studies evolved consistently.

Gender is seen, nowadays, as a key analytical category, not only a descriptive and explanatory variable in social and political science research. Integrating gender sensitivity and gender awareness within research, paying attention to gender aspects in all its stages (gender mainstreaming research) are considered key components of research excellence.

How academics (and specially the new generations of young academics) approach the gender mainstreaming desiderate in their researches? What are their experiences? What strategies did they choose? If and how paying attention to gender aspects (at epistemological methodological level) improved their research work? What are the lessons learned?

For this issue of AnaLize Journal, we provide an academic open space mainly for master and PhD students (but not only) to propose gender mainstreamed articles based on their master’s and doctoral theses from various fields (sociology, psychology, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, history, Political Science, etc.). We invite authors to reflect on the benefits and pitfalls resulting in the process of gender mainstreaming the researches.

Issue coordinator:

Ilona Voicu, PhD Student, University of Bucharest, researcher, and women’s rights activist (founder of Front Association).

~~Submission deadline: 15th January 2021~~

NEW submission deadline: 30th of April 2021

Submission contact: contact@analize-journal.ro

Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed international journal that aims to bring into the public arena new ideas and findings in the field of gender and feminist studies and to contribute to the gendering of the social, economic, cultural and political discourses and practices about today’s local, national, regional and international realities. Analize is listed in EBSCO, ERIH, Worldcat, Open Academic Journals Index, GIF – Global Impact Factor.

Call for Papers 15

Issue no. 15 (29) / 2020

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on

Playgrounds for Mothers, Fathers, States and Ideologies

As biological, social, cultural and political experiences, pregnancy, birth, along with all the other experiences that come with the new identities, as (in particular but not only) mothers and fathers – continues to raise a variety of difficult questions, debates and contradictory perspectives. From the public-private debate – How public and how private are/can those experiences be?, to the contrast between motherhood as experience and motherhood as work (Chodorow); to the continuum between hyper-medicalized and hyper-naturalized pregnancy and birth; to what kind of state (policies) for “good” mothers, fathers and children as citizens there are in a global world; to important (bio)ethical debates around what Edelman (2004) calls reproductive futurism, but also around everyday experiences such as breastfeeding or co-sleeping. So, even though pregnancy, birth and more general parenthood social change dynamics have been extensively discused, new challenges are worth analyzing in order to have a better understanding of what (not) being a mother or/and a father means nowadays.

Dealing with such a challenge is not an easy task. Many times, a multi and inter-disciplinary approach (from the standpoints of sociology, political science, medicine, biology, psychology, philosophy) is needed in order to bring some light into the field and to reveal the complex framework of the multiple reflections on the topic.

In this special issue, we aim to provide a space of dialogue and debate in which these concerns can be explored from different scholarly perspectives.

We welcome manuscript proposals from any research area discussing, from a gender perspective, contemporary challenges of pregnancy and birth, but also motherhood and fatherhood. These can include explorations of topics such as (but not limited to):

Obstetrical violence in pregnancy and birth;
The (non)medicalization of pregnancy and birth and the market;
Being a mom/dad from a multidimensional intersectional perspective (class, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.)
Good – good enough -bad mothers: power relations within motherhood;
Having a baby in a world of gadgets;
Being a good dad in a patriarchal world – rethinking masculinity;
Reproductive futurism and its critics;
What kind of state (public policies) for parents?
“Perfect” career moms and the neoliberal world;
Are some feminisms against (having) children?
On the (bio)ethics and ideology of breastfeeding;
What kind of a “village” (rural and/or urban spaces/communities) for mothers and fathers? Is the village moving on-line?
Women leaving their kids at home and taking care of other children abroad – global caring migration and its consequences on women as moms and their children;
Shared maternity. Maternity – an individual or a collective “project”;
Mothers and fathers at the intersection of multiple identities – partners, lovers, daughters, sisters, professionals – and the (re)negotiation of various relations between partners;
Children as parents;
Childless women and men;
On the ethics of having/not having children in a hyper-populated climate changing world.

Issue coordinators:

Diana Elena Neaga, Nicolae Titulescu University, Bucharest;
Alice Monica Marinescu, performer and playwright, part of the collectives Political Theatre School, Political Theatre Platform, Macaz Theatre;
Mihaela Michailov (playwright and cultural educator, National University of Theatre and Film I.L. Caragiale, Bucharest, co-founder of Replika Center for Educational Theatre and part of the collectives ADO and Literature and Feminism;

Submission deadline: 15 March 2020

Submission contact: contact@analize-journal.ro

Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed international journal that aims to bring into the public arena new ideas and findings in the field of gender and feminist studies and to contribute to the gendering of the social, economic, cultural and political discourses and practices about today’s local, national, regional and international realities. Analize is listed in EBSCO, ERIH, Worldcat, Open Academic Journals Index, GIF – Global Impact Factor.

Call for Papers 13

Issue no. 13 / 2019

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on

Care work at home and abroad.

Demographic changes, technological development and the transformation of social policies addressing the new societal challenges are among the factors that are re-shaping care work in the past decades around the globe. Population ageing and international migration led to a significant transformation of population structure, the growth of life expectancy conducing to an extended number of seniors in need of long term care, while international migration supplied labour force involved in care work in affluent societies and dried it out from home societies of immigrants. Technological development contributed to the extension of healthy and independent life of seniors and eased the care work by providing medical treatment, appliances and equipment that reduced considerably the amount of work required by long term care. On the other hand, part of the care work performed mainly by women, such as emotional work or looking after children’s education is not so much re-shaped by new technologies. The new developments of social policies generated by the increasing in women employment, the transformation of the traditional family pattern and marketization of care work changed family’s contribution, as well as the roles inside family in care provision.

Post-communist societies, Romania among them, are particularly affected by these trends, due to the intersection of demographic change and the reconfiguration of social policies during the past three decades. The growth of life expectancy, low fertility rate and massive external migration put significant pressure on care providers, while the restructuring of welfare system after 1990 led to the reduction of state involvement in provision of care.

The current issue focuses on the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, aiming to answer to several research questions such as: to what extent the raising need for care provision put extra-burden on women shoulders in post-communist societies? How does migration for working in care services contribute to the re-shaping of gender roles inside families? Who takes over the care work when women are abroad? Does the gender balance in care work change when there is more to do? What isthesize of “nanny phenomenon” in the region and what is the impact of women’s migration for work in care services on their own families?

This special issue of Analize welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions tackling the connection between demographic change, transformation of care work and gender roles in post-communist societies.

Issue coordinators: Mălina Voicu (Research Institute for the Quality of Life, Romanian Academy) and Delia Bădoi

Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed international journal that aims to bring into the public arena new ideas and findings in the field of gender and feminist studies and to contribute to the gendering of the social, economic, cultural and political discourses and practices about today’s local, national, regional and international realities. Analize is listed in EBSCO, ERIH, Worldcat, Open Academic Journals Index, GIF – Global Impact Factor.

Deadline for submission: ~~15 September 2019.~~

New deadline: 1 November 2019

Please address any queries regarding the Call for Papers to: contact@analize-journal.ro and check the journal website for submission guidelines (http://www.analize-journal.ro/instrucctions-for-authors ).

Call for Papers 12

Issue No. 12 / 2019

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on

The Future of Men. Men, Masculinities and Gender Equality.

The past decades have witnessed a paradigm shift towards a recognition not only of men as gendered beings, but also of a plurality of masculinities. The new interdisciplinary field of men’s studies puts the particular instead of the universal male subject into focus. It conceives of masculinity as an intersectional category interlocked with other categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, age or sexuality. At the same time, there has been a growing recognition that gender equality cannot be achieved without men and boys. Gender inequalities are embedded in a multidimensional structure of relationships between women and men that operated at every level of the human experience – from economic arrangements, culture and the state to interpersonal relationships and individual emotions. Moving towards a gender-equal society involves profound institutional change as well as change in everyday life and individual behaviour. Making progress towards this goal requires widespread support, including significant support from men and boys. This, in turn, requires further research and evidence about the changing social construction of masculinities.

This issue of AnAlize is designed to explore and advance recent theoretical developments and empirical findings in the study of men and masculinities and how they relate to gender equality. We welcome manuscript proposals from multiple disciplines (sociology, anthropology, media studies, health sciences, pedagogical sciences, psychology, history, men’s studies, etc.) discussing men and masculinities. These can include explorations of themes, topics and questions such as (but not limited to):

– The historical construction and dissemination of culturally specific ideals of masculinity;

– The role of violence and sexuality for the construction of what R.W. Connell defined as “hegemonic masculinity”;

– The functions of representations of “hyper-masculinity” in culturally and historically specific contexts;

– International, regional and national discourses on engaging men and boys in gender equality programming and its underlying evidence base;

– Men, masculinity and sexual and gender-based violence;

– Men, fatherhood and caregiving;

– The critical possibilities and/or limits of theories of intersectionality, affect, and the body for the study of masculinities;

– (de- or re-)constructions of masculinity in culture – literature, film, theater, dance, visual art – popular culture, and the media;

– How does the contemporary “crisis of masculinity” resonate in political and social discourses as well as in cultural productions;

– Case studies on engaging men and boys in the fields of sexual and reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS;

– New forms of sexism (neosexism, modern sexism, ambivalent sexism) and men’s role in promoting them;

– Men, masculinity, sexuality (re)defined by new technologies of the body and mind;

– Theoretical reflections and case studies that address the pedagogical, conceptual and political dimensions of teaching and learning about gender and masculinities.

Submission deadline: 31 March 2019

Issue coordinator: Frank Elbers, independent researcher, visiting gender fellow at the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World, Lebanese American University, Beirut

Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Authors will be requested to sign the Acceptance of Responsibility before publication of the accepted article.

2. Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic american English of international standard in order to be considered for review.

3. Manuscripts may be 5,000 – 8,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography, current affiliation and official email address.

4. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5- spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.

5. Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

6. Language revision (if possible by a professional) is strongly encouraged as the Journal has no adequate human resources for this specific task. Manuscripts may be rejected before entering the peer review if the general level of English is not satisfactory.

7. The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

8. Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro, with the subject Art_Submission_nr11_LastName_Country

Call for Papers 11

Issue no. 11/2018

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on

Analysing Love.

As a topic of scholarly analysis love raises a variety of difficult questions: how do norms about love change, as social norms about gender roles are changing? Are the societies that we live in amatonormative, i.e. is romantic love between partners seen as central to human flourishing – and is this problematic? Can one love a robot – and can a robot be one’s friend? Can preference for specific genders, ethnicities or other attributes in lovers be the product of prejudice? Is there a right to be loved, and is love, or should it be, unconditional? Is love an emotion? Is it a disease? Why does love hurt?

Questions such as these have increasingly captured the attention of researchers from several disciplines from philosophy to sociology, psychology or biology. In this special issue, we aim to provide a space in which these concerns can be explored from different scholarly perspectives.

We welcome manuscript proposals from any research area discussing, from a gender perspective, contemporary challenges of love. These can include explorations of topics such as (but not limited to):

Norms about love and gender justice
Love and marriage
Love and the family
Pregnancy, bonding and parental love
Love and technology
Enhancing love
Love and sex
Love and respect
Love and consent
Politics of love
Interspecies love
The ethics of love
What feminism has to say about love

Submission deadline: 1~~5 May 2018~~ extended to 10 June 2018

Issue coordinator: Daniela Cutaș, Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy, Umeå University and the University of Gothenburg

Information for Authors

The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Authors will be requested to sign the Acceptance of Responsibility before publication of the accepted article.
Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.
Manuscripts may be 5,000 – 8,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography, current affiliation and official email address.
The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5- spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.
Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

Language revision (if possible by a professional) is strongly encouraged as the Journal has no adequate human resources for this specific task. Manuscripts may be rejected before entering the peer review if the general level of English is not satisfactory.
The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.
Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro, with the subject

Art_Submission_nr11_LastName_Country

Call for Papers 10

Issue no. 10/2018

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on

LGBT Rights in Central and Eastern Europe: Theoretical Disputes, Community Building Strategies.

In 2001, Romania was one of the last countries in Europe to decriminalize homosexuality. For over 30 years sexual relations between consenting same-sex adults were strictly forbidden, and dozens of LGBT people were sent to prison. Article 200 from the Romanian Penal Code also banned any sort of association for queer individuals. However, following decriminalization of homosexuality, a new movement was born, with new organizations popping up, community programs being developed. Moreover, a queer scene has been building up and LGBT people have enjoyed more visibility.

At the same time, in Central and Eastern Europe new social movements concerning LGBT rights have been developing. Hungary has witnessed both a revival, as well as a backsliding in terms of equal rights for LGBT citizens, in Poland the process of Europeanization hindered, some say, the development of a more robust LGBT movement (Conor O’Dwyer), while more recently both Slovakia and Croatia experienced referenda in order to ban gay marriages, with completely different outcomes, due to a series of local factors and elites’ attitudes towards LGBT subjects. At the same time, Central and Eastern Europe has experienced a de-democratization process, with anti-LGBT sentiment being part of a larger illiberal agenda.

In order to better understand the local context for the LGBT communities in Central and Eastern Europe, their particularities and the main issues of contention for queer subjects and these societies at large one must answer a series of questions. What were the main processes and events that helped shape the LGBT communities in CEE for the past years? Did Europeanization hurt or sustain the evolution of the LGBT communities? How does one measure the level of success or failure of certain developments? How do the LGBT communities in CEE look like nowadays and which were the crucial moments on the path to “queering citizenship” (Amy L. Brandzel)? How did activists frame their messages and their claims for equality? Is marriage equality a goal in itself for the LGBT communities in CEE and how other issues of interest are brought forward? What was the relationship between the states in CEE and the movements around LGBT rights built? Middle-class gays and lesbians are enjoying much more visibility, but society still relies on the gendered division of labor that renders certain subjects unequal. How we may escape this vicious circle? Should queer theory reorients away from its preoccupation with psychoanalysis, language, and performance, insisting upon close analysis of the structures of late capitalism, labor, and commodification (as Rosemary Hennessy argues)? How globalization transforms sexual identity in the region, opening up both new forms of commodification and new opportunities for agency? What are the theoretical tensions and everyday life power relations within the LGBT community? Last but not least the unravel of the controversial relation between academic feminism, Gender Studies and Queer/Lesbian/Transgender Studies could contribute to enhanced understanding of the issues involved.

We welcome manuscript proposals from any research area discussing, from feminists perspectives, the evolution of the LGBT in Central and Eastern Europe. These may include (but are not limited to) explorations of topics such as:

Legislative history
Europeanization and LGBT rights
Queer art
Building up the LGBT social movements in Central and Eastern Europe
Homonationalism & heterosexism in the region
Transgender rights & gender equality
Gender identity /gender spectrum/fluidity of gender
Feminist approaches (and clashes) in the CEE-LGBT context
The process of NGOization
Transnational networks, transnational politics
Using courts as a means to advance equality

Submission deadline: 31 March 2018

Issue coordinator: Vlad Levente Viski, independent researcher

Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Authors will be requested to sign the Acceptance of Responsibility before publication of the accepted article.

2. Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.

3. Final manuscripts should have 5,000 – 7,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5), list of references (only cited works) and the author’s short biography (150 words), current affiliation and official email address.

4. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and list of references) will be 1.5, spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.

5. Submissions should conform integrally to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html). Manuscripts may be rejected from the beginning, before the peer review process, for not conforming in totality with the indicated editing style.

7. The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

8. Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro, with the subject Art_Submission_nr10_LastName_Country

Call for Papers 9

Communism/ Postcommunism. Perspectives on Gender

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on Communism/ Postcommunism. Perspectives on Gender, with the intention of exploring the complex relationships between prevalent ideologies and conflicting reality/ies in the respective periods, as well as the gendered perspective on the actors involved in these relationships.

Gender equality was claimed and imposed top down after the Second World War in communist states in Central and Eastern Europe and it primarily presupposed emancipating women from their subordinating roles in the private sphere by engaging them on the labour market, as well as imposing some sort of quota system in representation at all levels. Simultaneously, communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe took over women’s reproductive roles, and it suffices to mention pronatalist policies in communist Romania or the forced sterilization of Romani women in former Czechoslovakia.

The success of these policies is debatable: for example, in 1989 in Romania the quasi totality of women were employed and unemployment was inexistent. Moreover, in the last legislature of the Romanian Parliament – Marea Adunare Națională – in 1989, women held 34% of the seats. Nevertheless, as these practices did not presuppose the emancipation of men in the private sphere, they thus emphasized the double burden that women had to carry. It is also necessary to underline their limited relevance – for what was the point of having quotas in political and economic representation when representation of any kind was totally meaningless anyway in a dictatorial regime?!

The same power discourse seems to be validated by postcommunist realities when gender equity and equal opportunities policies do not appear to capture enough attention either from the establishment or the larger public. Moreover, political representation collapsed and economic gender disparities increased. Nationalism and populism interfere aggressively with gender equality discourses. Postcommunist states still seek to control women’s bodies and their reproductive role, especially as the state is now connected to religious initiatives in this field – see the situation in Romania and Poland, with their so far unsuccessful attempts to limit women’s rights to abortion (by for example compulsory counseling) (Romania, 2012), or to outlaw abortion completely (Poland, 2016).

Some underlining connection between the communist and postcommunist realities is obvious, although of course there are specificities across the countries in the region. There are many ways in which women and men have reacted, responded, submitted to, have engaged with or have appropriated this power discourse. In this context, we can claim feminism is a valid response, with its diverse theoretical aspects and a multitude of ways of voicing it.

There are plenty of publications on the subject. See for example Gender Politics and Post-Communism (1993) with Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller as editors, or Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender, and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (1993) by Barbara Einhorn, Gail Klingman’s The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania (1998) or Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday’s Life after Socialism (2000), edited by Susan Gal, Gail Klingman. In Romania, Mihaela Miroiu, Laura Grünberg, Enikö Magyari Vincze, among others, have also brought valuable contributions to the field. However, the new global social, political and ideological environment require an update, a constant revision and a context-based reevaluation of the topic.

This issue of AnaLize welcomes contributions aiming at exploring such themes with their complex theoretical and ideological perspectives and specific case studies regarding shifting gender realities in Central and Eastern Europe. A global perspective is also welcome, as scholars have made parallels between ideologies and power systems from a trans-border and transcultural stand point. For instance, the imposition of communism in Central and Eastern Europe has been compared to the imposition of colonialism, and postcommunism has to some extent been regarded as a sort of postcolonialism.

The spectrum of the reflection themes for this issue is intentionally large. Articles could refer (but are not restricted to):

Gender representation and equality
Power discourses in communism/postcommunism
Nationalism, postcommunism and gender issues
Populism, postcommunism and gender issues
Feminist activism as a response to contemporary challenges
Communism as a type of colonialism/ postcommunism as postcolonialism
Intersectionality and gender identity construction in communism/ postcommunism
Postcommunism and body politics
Media representations of gender in communism/ postcommunism
Aspects of everyday life in communism/ postcommunism. Oral his/her/stories.
Challenges of building a Marxist feminist discourse in postcommunism
Challenges of building a Liberal feminist discourse in postcommunism
Communism/anticommunism and implications for gender in postcommunism
How are women saved by the market? From economic empowerment to exploitation in postcommunism

Submission deadline: 15th of October 2017

Issue coordinator: Roxana Marinescu, Associate professor Bucharest University of Economic Studies and member of AnA Society for Feminist Analyses

Information for Authors

The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Please do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.
Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.
Manuscripts may be 5,000 – 8,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography, current affiliation and email address.
The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5- spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.
Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).
If you need more help with citing, check this Ultimate Citation Reference – http://wiht.link/citationsguide. It provides clear guidance on each citation style as well as hand-picked links to further resources for each style.
The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.
Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

Call for Papers 8

Feminist Practices in Visual Arts/Art Practices in Feminism

AnaLize-Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a call for papers for a special issue on “Feminist Practices in Visual Arts/Art Practices in Feminism” that intends to trace the complex, provocative and controversial relationship between feminism and (contemporary) art. The proposed thematic issue of our journal will focus on how socio-politics have been influencing and shaping the feminist art tools, but also on how various feminist visual representations have been reconfiguring the feminist socio-politic discourses.

Feminism had a crucial impact on late twentieth-century art, inspiring some of the most pioneering developments in sculpture, painting, performance, photography, film and installation. The art world has been transformed by feminists who at the same time have been among its chief critics. It has redefined the very terms of late twentieth-century art, exposing assumptions about gender, politicizing the link between private and public and stressing the specificity of art marked by gender, race, age and class. At the same time, feminist artists influenced in various ways the socio political feminist discourses and practices of their time.

The intersection between art and feminist practices comes with gaps and limitations, taking into consideration the challenges of sharing a common agenda and set of activist tools and a common background of diverse visual representations. Feminist liberal socio-politics had its confrontations with feminist art from the 1970’s in the West, proving to become two areas of practice that were not necessarily analogue. Women artists did not receive the support of feminists working in the socio-political environment. The divisions also took place within the practice of feminist art and theory. The editors of the well-known American journal Artforum reacted aggressively towards the work of Linda Benglis, Untitled, a photograph that was inserted as an ad in the 1974 November issue. The work represented a naked woman proudly holding a double dildo on her pubis. As striking as it might have appeared, the work was actually following feminist criticism towards the roles and lack of power and access of women in the art world and public space in general through a visual choice familiar to the male gaze and male art production: a long history of female nudes. Nevertheless the work was considered “an object of extreme vulgarity”[1] that challenges norms for what we might call conservative feminism.

It is relevant to assert that feminist art iconography has changed norms of representation and reception, in time determining a visual shift (the process is still ongoing) in relation to its message and its construction altogether. We are dealing with two separate domains belonging to humanities studies: one of them, visual arts, has the advantage of working with and being fueled by the socio-political context, while the other, socio-politics, doesn’t necessarily use, work, or depend on art.

The fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe has opened a virgin terrain for starting the processes of building a common feminist agenda within the new specific socio-political contexts: new actors and institutions, transfer of knowledge from the West, theoretical reactions, counter spaces and creations, including immaterial productions in feminist visual representation. A socialist theoretical apparatus in post-communist countries breaking from the neo-liberal paradigm has increasingly come closer to a transition from the theory-visuality gaps of feminism to their cooperation.
It is in the context of the “love and hate” relation between feminist art and feminist activism, a relation less documented, at least in Eastern Europe, that we are welcoming papers that address aspects of the dynamics of art-feminism divisions, inferences, mutual influences and collaborations. Aiming to understand the complex associations between the social historical cultural and political landscape and art (with focus on visual arts), papers may also examine solutions tested for overcoming the gaps in view of reaching an inclusive, intersectional and common perspective.

We are welcoming papers focused on, but not limited to:

Current themes in feminist art/feminist theory/feminism activism: overlaps, intersections and/or complementarities.
Visual tools of socio-political feminisms and the visual construction and significance in feminist art practices.
Feminism and political instrumentalization of art.
Feminist socio-political theories and engaged art.
East-West comparative models of practicing dialogue between feminist art, women’s movement and academic feminist discourses.
Feminist art-theory-activism discourses in the new technological era.

Overviews and/or book reviews of recent works on the theme of the issues are also welcome.

Submission deadline is April 1st 2017

Issue coordinators:
Olivia Nițiș – Curator, Researcher at the Institute of Art History “G. Oprescu” of the Romanian Academy, Vice-President of Experimental Project Association
Laura Grünberg – Associate Professor University of Bucharest, President, Romanian Society for Feminist Analysis AnA

Information for Authors

The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Please do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.
Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.
Manuscripts may be 5,000 – 8,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography, current affiliation and email address.
The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5- spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.
Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).
The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.
Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

[1] Dekel, Tal, Gendered: Art and Feminist Theory, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, p. 11.

Call for Papers 7

Envisioning Roma feminism

The AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies editorial team is pleased to announce the launching of a call for papers that challenges feminism and its relations to Roma ethnic and gender identity. Roma women in Romania, as in many parts of Europe and all over the world, have been associated mainly with different symbolism that is “traditionally” attributed to Roma. From the stereotypical representations that generated the essentialist image of ‘’Roma women’’ which can be understood in direct connection with the trap of paternalism, to subsuming their experiences and interests either to gender, ethnicity, or to social issues, all these representations, discourses, researches, structures and practices have left outside the most important agents – namely the Roma Women. Their multiple and intersectional identities have been either ignored or denied, analyzed in comparison with “the norm”, or defined as ‘’to reproductive body’’. So we believe that a Roma women standpoint must emphatically be encouraged in order to produce new research frameworks and new ways of substantive empowerment.
Nevertheless the Roma women’s movements in different countries have started in the recent years to challenge the dominant narrative regarding the ’Roma’, the patriarchal system, racism and classism, shifting from one perspective to a pluri-perspectival view, intersecting with feminism, LBGTQI or other movements. But if social movements are more dynamic reflecting Roma women’s diversity of voices, in academia, and particularly in Romania, they are still marginal.
Therefore, this state of affairs raises a series of questions, which span from the dichotomy of gender and ethnicity, power relations, position of Roma women within the Roma ethnic and society, to how it can shape feminism.
We invite scholars, researchers and activists to critically reflect on Roma women’s position within and outside the ethnic group from a feminist perspective, intersecting with different groups and social movements.
Possible themes may include but are not restricted to the following:

Roma women and the concept of ’’to productive bodies’’, reproductive rights, sexuality and control
Roma feminism as specific form of determination or ’’gadje value’’
intersectionality and its relevance for feminism or Roma women’s movements
neo-liberalism discourse and its impact on gender and class inequalities between Roma
mainstreaming or targeting in national or European policies;
Roma women and tokenism inside the feminist movements;
politics and policies of governance for Roma women;
Roma women representation and (re)interpretation – in art, mass-media, novels, film industry;
Roma women in communist and post-communist contexts.

Overviews and/or book reviews of recent works on the Roma women, or focusing on certain particular aspects of this issue will also receive special attention.

Submission deadline is October 1st , 2016

Issue coordinators:
Carmen Gheorghe, independent researcher and president of E-Romnja Association;Diana Elena Neaga, gender expert, lecturer at Nicolae University, Bucharest

Information for Authors

The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.
Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.
Manuscripts may be 5,000 – 8,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography and current affiliation.
The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.
Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).
The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.
Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

Call for Papers 6

[ENG]What is Surrogacy for the East-European Feminism?

AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies launches a call for papers on surrogate motherhood.
An explicit feminist approach is expected, meaning that the articles submitted have to question on the surrogacy’s consequences on the women’s individual, collective, social and political condition, while taking into account the gender relations as power and domination relations, structurally unfavourable to women.
Some people consider surrogacy as very ancient, referring for this to the text of the Bible. The manner that we use this term here is the contemporary meaning, as mentioned by the World Health Organization, which is considering it as an assisted reproductive technology. Surrogacy has than to be seen as an activity based on a voluntary medical act, and moreover an act which puts together several actors (persons who desire to became parents, women who want to be surrogate mothers, doctors, lawyers, notaries), and requires a good technological development of the society.
Certain European countries (the Great-Britain), as certain States from the USA legally adopted the surrogate motherhood since three decades. But the last ten years it became a much more widespread practice, which reaches nowadays a trans-national dimension. Several countries get it legal; some others are setting up consultations with a view to legalize it (through a national ethics committee, or a parliamentary commission). At the present, the issues and the consequences of this practice reached such a magnitude, that several international bodies are working on international instruments in order to regulate it (the Hague Conference of Private international law, the Council of Europe). The willingness to regulate the surrogacy is motivated by more and more information concerning the exploitation of vulnerable women, or children born by surrogacy, as well as the development of a real human body market. In order to avoid the commoditisation, the international bodies find it possible to set up instruments aimed to ensure an ethical surrogacy, which is respectful of the dignity of all the persons embedded, and rejects the financial interest.
From several years, knowledge about surrogacy’s individual, familial, social and economic issues are enhancing. Nevertheless, collecting data remains partial and sometimes impossible to do systematically – as it is the case for the countries where surrogacy is not legal (France), or where the discrimination against women is strong, being in the public or the private sphere (India), or in the countries where the surrogacy is allowed or not-forbidden, but there is no rigorous monitoring framework of this practice (Ukraine, Romania). The feminist approach is generally little present, and when it is, it puts forward notions as empowerment or free choice, aiming to get understandable the individual action, at the expense of analysing the social and economic conditions of the women’s difficulties to emancipate, depending on their status in their families and social groups.
This issue of AnaLize invites to critical debates on the issue and hopes to contribute to a better knowledge of different aspects concerning the surrogate motherhood. We welcome well-argued reflections, based on concrete data and theoretical references. Contributions may be conducted in a specific discipline, or interdisciplinary. Case studies are very welcomed, in particular those focussing on the surrogacy in the east-European countries and in Russia.
Some issues are of particular interest, even that they are not exclusive:

women’s motivations to became surrogate mothers, and especially the analyse of this motivations given the social, economic and political realistic alternatives available for them, in the society where they live;
the practical realisation of the surrogacy, while taking into account the interests and the means of the actors concerned (intended parents, surrogate mothers and their families, medical staff, agencies);
the position of the child born through surrogacy, in particular including the legal and administrative rules of child’s protection in the respective country;
the emerging legislation regulating the surrogate motherhood as assisted reproductive technology.
surrogacy in the larger context of new reproductive technologies.

Overviews and/or book reviews of recent works on the surrogacy, or focussing on certain particular aspects of this practice will also receive special attention.

Proposals can be in English or French.

~~Submission deadline is April 8, 2016~~
Extended deadline: April 9, 2016

Issue coordinator: Ana-Luana Stoicea-Deram, Social Policies Instructor, Institut de Recherche et de Formation à l’Action Sociale de l’Essonne, Evry, France

BRUNET, L. & al., 2013, A Comparative study on the regime of surrogacy in the EU Membre States, European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs.
As the Law Professor Muriel FABRE-MAGNAN shows, while putting the surrogacy in regard with all the international conventions for the protection of children and women rights, or against the slavery. La Gestation pour autrui. Fictions et réalité, Fayard, 2013.
Céline LAFONTAINE, 2014, Le corps-marché. La marchandisation de la vie humaine à l’ère de la bioéconomie, Seuil.
For instance, as concerns the offspring of surrogacy in Great-Britain, the longitudinal survey directed by Susan GOLOMBOK and her team, from the Center for Family Research, University of Cambridge, collected data from now fifteen years.
American sociologist Sharmila RUDRAPPA formulates her research from a feminist perspective, for instance.
As feminists, we remind that “(…) there can be no freedom, no liberation, when the available choices are only constructed on the basis of gross inequity. More ‘choice’, or even a greater ability to choose, does not necessarily mean greater freedom.” (KIRALY, M., TYLER, M., 2015, Freedom Fallacy. The Limits of Liberal Feminism, Connor Court Publishing, Ballart, p. xii)

[FR]Qu’est-ce que la maternité de substitution pour le féminisme, en Europe de l’est?

La revue AnaLize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies lance un appel à contributions sur le thème de la maternité de substitution (dite aussi gestation pour autrui).
L’approche de cette thématique doit être explicitement féministe, dans le sens où les articles doivent interroger les effets de cette pratique sur la condition individuelle, collective, sociale et politique des femmes, en tenant compte des rapports sociaux de sexe comme rapports de pouvoir et de domination structurellement défavorables aux femmes.
Si pour certains la pratique de la maternité de substitution est réputée être une pratique très ancienne, certains voulant même en retrouver des références dans le texte de la Bible, la manière dont nous l’entendons ici est celle de sa signification d’aujourd’hui, mentionnée notamment par l’Organisation mondiale de la santé, comme une technique d’assistance à la procréation. C’est donc dans le sens d’une action impliquant un acte médical volontaire qu’elle doit être vue, un acte réunissant plusieurs acteurs (des personnes qui désirent devenir parents, des femmes souhaitant être mères porteuses, des médecins, des avocats, des notaires) et nécessitant un degré certain de développement technologique de la société.
Pratiquée depuis maintenant plus de trente ans dans certains pays européens (Grande-Bretagne) ou dans certains Etats des Etats-Unis, la maternité de substitution s’est beaucoup répandue depuis une dizaine d’années, et elle se déploie aujourd’hui de plus en plus dans un contexte transnational. Plusieurs pays l’ont légalisée, d’autres sont en train d’organiser des réflexions (à travers par exemple des Comité nationaux d’éthique, ou des commissions parlementaires) en vue de sa légalisation. Les enjeux et les conséquences de cette pratique sont d’une telle ampleur à présent, que des instances internationales sont en train de produire des instruments internationaux afin de la réguler (Conférence de la Haye de droit international privé, Conseil de l’Europe). La volonté de régulation vient des constats de plus en plus nombreux de situations d’exploitation de femmes vulnérables, ou encore des enfants nés de mères porteuses, et du développement d’un véritable marché du corps humain. Pour éviter la marchandisation, les instances internationales considèrent qu’il est possible de mettre en place des instruments visant à garantir une pratique éthique, respectueuse de la dignité de toutes les personnes impliquées, et dont l’intérêt financier est absent.
La connaissance des aspects individuels, familiaux, sociaux et économiques de la maternité de substitution s’enrichit depuis quelques années. Cependant, le recueil de données est très lacunaire et parfois impossible à faire de manière systématique – c’est le cas dans les pays où la maternité de substitution n’est pas légale (France), que dans les pays où la discrimination des femmes est particulièrement prégnante aussi bien dans la sphère privée que dans la sphère publique (Inde), et aussi dans des pays où cette pratique, quoique légale ou non-interdite par la loi, ne donne pas lieu à un encadrement rigoureux (Ukraine, Roumanie). Quant à l’approche féministe de cette pratique, elle est peu présente en général, et quand elle l’est, elle met en avant des notions comme celles d’empowerment ou de libre choix, visant à rendre compréhensible l’action individuelle, aux dépends d’une analyse des conditions sociales et économiques des difficultés d’émancipation des femmes, en fonction de leurs statuts au sein de leurs familles et groupes sociaux.
Ce dossier invite à un débat critique sur la question, et souhaite contribuer à la connaissance de différents aspects liés à la maternité de substitution. Il se veut un espace accueillant des réflexions argumentées, s’appuyant sur des informations concrètes, d’un part, ainsi que sur des éléments théoriques explicites d’autre part. Les contributions peuvent s’inscrire dans une perspective disciplinaire bien délimitée, ou bien être interdisciplinaires. Les études de cas sont accueillies avec un grand intérêt, et plus particulièrement celles concernant la pratique de la maternité de substitution dans les pays d’Europe de l’est et en Russie.
Parmi les aspects qu’il nous semble nécessaire d’interroger, recevront une attention particulière :

les motivations des femmes qui se proposent comme mères porteuses, et notamment l’analyse de ces motivations au regard des possibilités sociales, économiques et politiques disponibles pour les femmes, dans la société où elles vivent ;
les modalités réelles de réalisation d’une maternité de substitution, en tenant compte des intérêts et des moyens des différents acteurs impliqués (les parents d’intention, les mères porteuses et leurs familles, les personnels médicaux, les agences intermédiaires);
la prise en considération de l’enfant issu d’une maternité de substitution, notamment en rapport avec les dispositifs législatifs et administratifs de protection de l’enfance dans le pays concerné ;
l’émergence d’une législation qui reconnaisse la maternité de substitution comme technique d’assistance à la procréation ;
la maternité de substitution vue dans le contexte plus large, des nouvelles technologies reproductives.

Des comptes-rendus d’ouvrages récents abordant le thème de la maternité de substitution (gestation pour autrui) ou bien des revues bibliographiques abordant des aspects particuliers de cette pratique seront également les bienvenus.

Les propositions peuvent être rédigées en français ou en anglais.

Elles devront être envoyées au plus tard le 8 avril 2016.

Coordinatrice du numéro: Ana-Luana Stoicea-Deram, Formatrice en Politiques sociales, Institut de Recherche et de Formation à l’Action Sociale de l’Essonne, Evry, France

BRUNET, L. & al., 2013, A Comparative study on the regime of surrogacy in the EU Membre States, European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs
Comme le montre la juriste Muriel FABRE-MAGNAN, qui fait une lecture de la pratique de « gestation pour autrui » en fonction des différentes conventions internationales visant à protéger les enfants, les femmes, ou à lutter contre le trafic d’êtres humains et l’esclavage, La gestation pour autrui. Fictions et réalité, Fayard, 2013.
Céline LAFONTAINE, 2014, Le corps-marché. La marchandisation de la vie humaine à l’ère de la bioéconomie, Seuil.
Par exemple, pour ce qui est des enfants nés d’une mère porteuse en Grande-Bretagne, l’enquête longitudinale menée par l’équipe dirigée par Susan GOLOMBOK, du Center for Family Research, University of Cambridge, offre des données qualitatives depuis près de quinze ans.
Comme dans les travaux de la sociologue américaine Sharmila RUDRAPPA, qui se définit elle-même comme féministe.
En tant que féministes, nous nous devons de rappeler que “ (…) there can be no freedom, no liberation, when the available choices are only constructed on the basis of gross inequity. More ‘choice’, or even a greater ability to choose, does not necessarily mean greater freedom.” (KIRALY, M., TYLER, M., 2015, Freedom Fallacy. The Limits of Liberal Feminism, Connor Court Publishing, Ballart, p. xii)

Call for Papers 5

Women, Mobilisation and Political Representation

Political representation of women has been an important area for theory production and consistent research since the middle of the last century. There is a wide and engaging literature on gender and politics addressing various topics from voting behavior, obstacles women face when entering politics, strategies used to increase women’s political representation, the role of women’s movements, policy outcomes when women enter politics etc. Pamela Paxton, Sheri Kunovich and Melanie M. Hughes when selectively reviewed the literature on gender in politics focusing on women’s formal political participation, they notice that „our knowledge of women in politics is still expanding. Indeed, the literature on women in politics could be described as exploding.” (Paxton, Kunovich, Hughes, 2007, p. 264). However, some contexts were more opened for researches than others and became more visible for scholars and the wider public. These contributions are highly valuable since they developed complex theoretical, epistemological and methodological instruments and stream of thoughts. The authors conclude that future directions for research should include as well the perspective of globalizing theory and research:

“Future research must globalize our present understanding of women’s politicalparticipation, representation, and impact by (a) determining which theories developed in the West apply to the non-Western context, (b) , and (c) investigatingwhether these newer theories apply to other regions or globally”. (Paxton,Kunovich, Hughes, 2007, p. 275)

Nevertheless, despite expanding the arguments for a politics of presence, women have actively mobilized outside the realm of politics to better pursue their interests, sanction politicians for not addressing substantive representation, urge them to elaborate a gender sensitive agenda or women ‘just’ mobilized to support various causes (environment, LGBTQ, anti-globalization etc.). The evolution of technology and communication platforms made their mobilization more flexible.

We solicit contributions (theoretical or empirical) on women’s and men’s participation as members of political parties, political candidates, and activists pursuing gender interests or women’s interests. Papers that examine social media as a mobilization tool for politicians and activists are welcomed. We are interested in strategies of actions of politicians and activists, coalition making, alliances or autonomous strategies when pursuing a gender sensitive goal. Of particular interest are intersectional approaches to political representation, political and civic engagement.

The following themes suggest some of possible aspects that could be approached in the submitted articles for this new issue of AnALize, but any contributions regarding the topic are welcomed:

What are the limitations of theories developed in the West when applied to the non-Western context? For instance, what are the theoretical limitations when addressing political representation in Central and Eastern Europe? (We welcome case studies).
Do descriptive representation and substantive representation intersect in specific areas: violence against women/gender based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, and work-life balance?
What challenges pose an ‘amateurish’ discourse in regards to political representation of women? Does it feed backlash? Does it support caricature-like depictions of political representation?
How do men support substantive representation of gender interests or women’ interests? (We welcome case studies).
Can men be critical actors when it comes to political representation? In what sense? Are they progressive or conservative?
Are women critical actors when in comes to political representation? In what sense? Are they progressive or conservative?
How do media step in when it comes to mobilisation? Do media support or hinder mobilisation? Which type of media, traditional or new/social media? (We welcome case studies).
How do mobilised groups interract with politics? Do they engage in a dialogue or conflict? (we encourage case studies)
How do women active during protests confront traditional gender sterotypes?
Do women involved in environment, anti-globalisation movements assume a gender identity as well?
How does the interaction between politics and civil society shape policies addressing women’s interests/gender interests?
What types of challenges poses intersectionality in regards to political representation?
How can intersectionality be operationalised in regards to political representation? (we welcome case studies).

Submission deadline is: November 1st, 2015

Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

Issue coordinator: Associate professor Oana Băluță, University of Bucharest, Faculty of Journalism

Call for Papers 4

“Unveiling the Feminisms of Islam”

The editorial board of “Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies” (www.analize-journal.ro) is pleased to welcome submissions for the 2015 issue of the journal. The topic for the upcoming issue is: “Unveiling the Feminisms of Islam”

Orientalist discourse imposed mainly an essentialized image of „Muslim woman”, a politicized symbol of all the immutable, barbaric determinations of Islamic religion, and by extension, of a culture and civilization that should be annihilated or/and reformed. That construction about the unique status of Muslim woman was used as a supreme proof of the incompatibility between Islam and modernity.

Postmodernist feminist discourses on hegemony, representation, pluralism and diversity generated an explosion of writings on Muslim women, including writings assumed by Muslim women themselves. The dynamism of real, common Muslim women’ lives, found at the intersection of different social, political, economic, cultural and historical forces, was emphasized and explained. A more complex analysis regarding the identity construction processes, influenced by various factors as race, ethnicity, nationality, region, historical period, emerged. The process itself of producing knowledge about Islam was questioned. The sacrality of the Qur’anic text was not contested, but its various interpretations, historically monopolized by men/males conditioned by different socio-political contexts were. The questions regarding the normativity or normativities of the Islamic religion became once again central to Muslim discourses. In this context, Islamic Gender Studies focused on the idea that there is no ideal, uniform Islamic tradition, but a diversity of complex interpretations.

Nowadays we can witness a variety of perspectives about Muslim women’s roles and status in society. Still visible and quite vocal are the defensive and excessively apologetic tendencies of the Salafi, traditionalist and neo-traditionalist Muslims, men or women, doubled by an aggressive attack on secular and even Islamic feminisms. Some Muslim feminists plead for preserving and exploiting in a new manner the categories and goals specific to Islamic traditional jurisprudence. Other Muslim feminists propose a radical reform of the fundamental suppositions and principles that informed pre-modern Islamic exegesis and jurisprudence. Another category of Muslim feminists prefers to adopt and integrate the discourses, approaches and terminology used by Western feminists, sometimes translating them into the Islamic idiom, other times importing them as such, even from a secular perspective.

No wonder, all these competing contemporary views on women in Islam(s) simply reflect a social reality as diverse, complex and ‒ not so rarely ‒ very tragic as ever. We can witness in different Muslim communities a quite popular „normative” denial of women’s autonomy and right to self-determination, expressed in various modalities, from the abject, stupefying revival of the institution of slavery to the daily, unquestioned routine of women being treated as creatures that must be under the „protection” ‒ read guardianship and subordination ‒ of males. On the other extreme, there are growing Muslim communities in which women leading the prayer in a mixed congregation or performing Muslim gay marriages are accepted practices.

The following themes suggest some of possible aspects that could be approached in the submitted articles for this new issue of Analize, but any contributions regarding the topic are welcomed:

Is gender inequality in Muslim-majority countries a direct consequence of religion,here Islam?
How do the religious, cultural, social, political contexts influence the gender dynamics in these Muslim dominated areas?
Who can offer the most efficient and Islamic validated ‒ or not ‒ discourse that can improve Muslim women’s status?
What power of defining Islam have women nowadays?
Is Islamic feminism an oxymoron?
What are the validity, efficiency and limits of Islamic feminisms?
Can Islamic pre-modern exegesis and jurisprudence offer a functional paradigm for improving women rights?
Could the Qur’anic text be exploited in order to promote an egalitarian view on gender relations in conformity with the contemporary necessities and realities?
What about the Sunnah?
What was the impact of the last century fundamentalist renewal movements on Islamic feminisms?
What is the relevance of the differences between the so-called normative formulation of women status in Islam according to various Islamic schools of thoughts and the every day realities of Muslim women lives?
What are the differences and commonalities between the classical roles attributed to women in Islam, in its various interpretations, and in other religions?
How is Islam feminism related (in theory and practice) to “other” feminisms? What are the common grounds (if any) among all types of feminisms?

~~Submission deadline is: 18th May 2015~~
Extended deadline: 18th May!

Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.

2. Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.

4. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.

5. Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

6. The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

7. Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

Call for Papers 3

Genders, Diversity and Urban Space

The editorial board of “Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies” (www.analize-journal.ro) is pleased to welcome submissions for issue nr. 3, 2014 of the journal ”Genders, Diversity and Urban Space” (deadline 30 September 2014).

Each place coresponds and defines a certain cultural, political, economic and historical context. Any city, with its spaces, places, monuments, traditions, inherits a past – a collective memory about its people and builds a future – a set of aspirations and values about what its inhabitants can and may do in their multidimensional existence. As Henri Lefebvre remarks, social space ceases to be indistinguishable from mental or physical space.

Urban space is a social institution that defines and models human interactions, delineating each of us as individual and citizen, as man and woman, as young or aged, minority or majority. Urban architecture, urban signalectics, urban language, the visual identity of a place, the organization of the city and its surveillance mechanisms, its outdoor publicity, its patterned relations among various social groups, are just a few mechanisms through which urban structures and practices regulate human relations and interactions and take (or not) into consideration issues of diversity, inclusion, violence, freedom, human rights.

Urban space is also deeply gendered. The increasingly diverse and transational character of urban landscapes invites a rethinking of the relation between gender, identity and urban space. The way it is thought, planned, built, organized, lived, who is symbolically visible and invisible within its premises and how one or the other is made by the city as important or anonymous, who has the power of decision over the city, all these aspects give important information about the gendered roles, relations and practices, about the explicit and implicit power negotiation between its women and men, about mentalities and equal opportunities policies.

Concepts of space, place, urbanity, have received less attention within the area of feminism and gender studies. This is why issue no. 3 of Analize- Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies is dedicated to ”Genders, Diversity and Urban Space”. We invite contributions that approach, from interdisciplinary perspectives, various aspects of the gender dimension of the city. We expect contributors to look critically at urban settings through gender lenses, showing special interest on issues of gender diversity, gender segregations, inequalities and discriminations and conceptualizing gender as a multidimensional category of analysis.

Articles (from a variety of fields such as sociology, architecture, urbanism, arts, history, anthropology, political sciences, feminism, etc.) could reflect on themes such as:

How the concepts of gender and space have been conceptualized so far within the feminist thought?
What signs of sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism can be identified in public spaces?
The dynamics (in time and space) of gender discourses of the cities.
How marginalizing or even exclusion of women or men from the public space takes place at the level of daily practices (e.g. street sexual harresment or hate speech ).
How gender unfriendly planning of the urban space (e.g. lack of facilities for old and disabled people, of accesible/equiped toilets for parents with babies or insuficient green areas and parks) increase/decrease the quality of life for some.
What do outdoor/urban advertisments say about women and men ?
What are the gendered messsages of urban art (stencils, graffitti, etc.)?
What historical and cultural naratives are promoted by public space (street denominations, building/ monuments/metro stations/market places names, urban art, etc.) and how do they contribute (or not) to the empowerment of women.
What kind of urban physical, functional and symbolic oppressive elements can be identified, elements that obstruct women’s self-esteem (which women in particular), and how these barriers can be removed for offering alternative narratives to the dominant ones.
Is public space friendly towards women’ activism ?
How friendly is the city towards ”other” genders?
Who is visible, important or on the contrary marginalized, ignored, anonymous in the city? Why?
How would a gender friendly city look like?

Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.

Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.

2. Manuscripts may be 4,000 – 8,000 words. The upper limit of 8,000 is inclusive of bibliography. They must include an abstract (maximum 300 words), a summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography and current affiliation.

3. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set for A4 paper size standard. The document (including notes and bibliography) will be 1.5-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.

Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

4. The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

Manuscripts should be sent to: contact@analize-journal.ro

Submission deadline is: 30 September 2014

Call for Papers 2

The editorial board of “Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies” (www.analize-journal.ro) is pleased to welcome submissions for the 2014 issue of the journal.

The topic for the upcoming issue is:

Controlling (women’s) bodies

We invite scholars to send articles that critically approach, from an interdisciplinary perspective, recent theories and practices dealing with controlling the gendered bodies in our societies.

Nowadays we appear to be living more than ever in a somatic society in which the major social and political issues of our time are expressed more explicitly via the “human” body. We live in a surveillance society in which systematic control of our lives, which is of our bodies, is happening at unprecedented scale.

Embodiment lies at the heart of human experience. Nowadays the body has increasingly became the target of political control, rationalization and discipline. States and agencies of state exert considerable control over the movement of people in time and space and encourage individuals to discipline themselves (and implicitly their bodies) in compliance with the state objectives (such as improved health, demographic politics, etc.). Our bodies – our DNA, our potential “imperfections” (e.g. diseases), our movements, feelings, desires, are currently public by default due to new sophisticated surveillance, data collecting and monitoring technologies. We ourselves control and intervene on our own bodies more than ever looking for perennial youth, to reflect aesthetic standards or simply to express our identity.

Feminism and feminist approaches added significant value to the debate about bodies and especially about the struggle of being a gendered body in society. There are also lots of challenges inside feminist movements regarding the ways of approaching the body in the analyses and deconstruction of patriarchy, e.g. the debates regarding Femen activism or prostitution vs sexual labor.

We invite scholars to propose articles that critically approach, from an interdisciplinary perspective, recent theories and practices dealing with controlling bodies in our societies. Reflecting on bodies via issues such as medicalization, technologization, reproduction, pornography, legislation, violence, education, activism, public policies, etc., we expect to gather provocative studies on aging bodies, bleeding bodies, vulnerable bodies, maternal bodies, social bodies, thinking bodies, political bodies, etc. We are especially interested in critical case studies from debates on public policies and analyses on politicizing the human body in various societies. We also expect contributors to offer critical perspectives on various new politics of the body appearing both in the western and non-western societies.

These are just a few possible starting points for further reflection on this generous topic. We welcome contributions from all disciplines and on a wide range of topics. Possible themes might include, but are not limited to:

– bodies and gender(ed) identity;

– bodies and sexualities;

– bodies and (de)neo-colonialism;

– post-human bodies;

– fashionable bodies – aesthetics and the reshaping of bodies;

– the body canvass – tattooing, piercing and other forms of body art as an expression of identity;

– state policies and the body;

– the commoditization of bodies, etc.

Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.

Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.

2. Manuscripts may be 3000 – 10000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography and current affiliation.

3. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.

Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

4. The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

Submission deadline is: 20 December 2013

_____________________________________________________________________

The editorial board of “Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies” is pleased to welcome submissions for the 2013 issue of the journal.

Motivation

After decades of conceptualization and refinements, reflection on gender deserves “a place of its own” wherefrom it can be critically explored, assessed and creatively developed further. In Romania, but also in the SEE and CEE Region, such an editorial space is still limited although there is an increasing mass of gender experts and scholars in need for dialogue, for enlarging their possibilities to share ideas, findings, doubts, dilemmas and directions of research in the field of gender and feminist studies.

About the Journal

“Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies” is an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed international journal that aims to bring into the public arena new ideas and findings in the field of gender and feminist studies and to contribute to the gendering of the social, economic, cultural and political discourses and practices about today’s local, national, regional and international realities.

Edited by The Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses AnA, the journal intends to open conversations among eastern and non-eastern feminist researchers on the situated nature of their feminism(s) and to encourage creative and critical feminist debates across multiple axes of signification such as gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, ethnicity, religion, etc.

The journal publishes studies, position papers, case studies, viewpoints, book reviews from practitioners of all grades and professions, academics and other specialists on the broad spectrum of gender and feminist studies.
Regarding submissions, papers that fall outside the issue’s main topic launched for each number are also to be accepted. In addition to a thematic issue the journal also includes a “Lab” of ideas, images, tools for investigating the gendered world, a storytelling section (AnAStories) for sharing lived experiences and life (his/her)stories together with “News” and a “Press review”.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The topic for the upcoming issue is:

What kind of feminism(s) for today?

We invite authors, scholars and researchers to critically reflect on forms of feminism(s) in practice today and how/if they serve the interests of women in the 21st century.
Feminist thought and movements, as we have come to know them, are going through permanent metamorphoses, adapting to the times. Like all traditions, the feminist ones also change over time responding to various criticisms. Feminism was “accused”, among other things, for being rooted in western terminology, hard to adapt to other cultures, adopting an “us against the world” identity politics, being sometimes “more” an academic than a social justice tradition, excluding more than including lives and contributions of “others”- women and men alike, etc.
How feminism(s) reacted to such critiques? Which are the ways feminism adapted to the new social, economic and techno-cultural environment of the 21 century? What is nowadays the relation between the academic and activist feminism? What kind of feminist movement is most efficient today in the technologized and virtual society we live in? Is gender mainstreaming or the intersectionality paradigm the “inclusion solution”?
Is the ontological turn of feminist thought (human/non-human embodiment, post-humanities, biopolitics, material feminism, etc.) a way out from certain research pitfalls? How are we to assess the postmodern proposals to “undo gender”? What approaches to gender are better from a methodological and practical perspective? What/how feminism(s) should be delivered in academia – what is more needed: Women’s Studies, Gender Studies and Feminist Studies?
What type of relationship exists between gender and feminist studies? Do we speak of (strategic) cooperation, latent tension or something else? Is feminism requiring a particular political commitment?

Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and has not been published previously. Do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal. Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.
2. Manuscripts may be of 3000-10000 words or longer if approved by the editor. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author’s short biography and current affiliation.
3. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address. The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.

Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).
4. The journal is committed to a double blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

Manuscripts should be sent to: contact@analize-journal.ro

Submission deadline is 08.03.2013