Intersecting Gender and Disability

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Intersecting Gender and Disability Perspectives in Rethinking
Postcolonial Identities"
Special issue of Wagadu, Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender
Studies. http://web.cortland.edu/wagadu/
______________________________________

This special issue of Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's and
Gender Studies focuses on the intersections of gender and disability
centered discourses, experiences and theories in rethinking postcolonial
identities. In recent Postcolonial theories and identity analysis, the
Postcolonial subjects have been studied for their multiple subject
positions vis-à-vis race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, but
rarely have these identity constructions been explored in terms of
disability experiences, theories and discourses. While medical and legal
discourses of disability pervade in postcolonial contexts, relatively few
studies have explored humanistic perspectives and dimensions of disability
in constituting, reassembling or deploying narratives and theories
regarding postcolonial identities. The special issue will undertake the
challenge to fill this gap as well as map new directions in theorizing and
analyzing intersecting discourses on gender, disability, and
postcoloniality in interdisciplinary contexts. This issue will include
articles that are informed by disability centered analysis of Postcolonial
identities, and intersections with a network of fields emerging from
Culture Studies, such as critical race feminist theory, transnational
feminism, visual and performative media, gender analysis, as well as film,
environmental and global studies. In addition, articles exploring
disability as a cultural construct and human rights discourse in relation
to Postcolonial contexts, issues and theories are welcome. Some of the
topics of investigation may deal with:

• Challenges to Postcolonial theorizing from intersecting gender and
  disability discourses.
• Impact of Postcolonial theories on analysis and representations of
  disability/gender issues, subjects, experiences and rights.
• Postcolonial Feminist disability theory.
• Analysis of social movements focusing on intersecting struggles for gender
  and disability rights in specific Postcolonial contexts.
• Representations of disability and bodies of difference in specific
  Postcolonial cultures and cultural productions.
• Critique of body and transbody phenomena and experiences as represented in
  futuristic literature and film, such as mechanical body snatchers, aliens,
  cyborgs and posthumans.
• Constructions of disability as represented or examined in Postcolonial
  theory, literature, film and/or art work.
• Challenges to identity norms in changing cultural landscapes and competing
  cultural influences.
• Exploring norms of sexuality, physical appearance, mental ability and
  social conformity in internet Arranged Marriages and Matrimonial web sites
  and their implications for subjects of disability.
• Theorizing Postcoloniality from Disability and GBLT subject positions.
• Emerging influence of popular western cultural ethos of physical fitness,
  beauty and body modification.
• Impact of Postcolonial/global phenomena such as war, environmental trauma,
  poverty and terrorism in rethinking ability/disability categories.
• Humanistic discourses of diseases (HIV-AIDS, Cancer, Polio, etc) and
  Postcolonial reframing of disability.
• Gendering disability and disabling gender.
• Corpulescence: studies of fatness as socially disabling image construction
  across cultures.
• "Starving Children": Charity and Media exhibitionism of "Third world"
  subjects of poverty.
• Transformative directions in specific disability rights activist movements
  worldwide and their specific links to other human rights activism.
• Disability centered reconsideration of values such as independence and
  self-reliance, especially as used in feminist discourses, towards concepts
  of interdependence and intersubjectivity.
• Disability and gendered perspectives in theorizing Postcolonial space,
  especially dealing with issues of accessibility.
• Disability culture as local and global phenomena.
• Migration and diasporic narratives of Postcolonial subjects of disability.
  

Please send Abstracts (75 words) in English by Jan 1, 2006, and complete
essays (approximately 5,500-7,500 words) by March 1, 2006. Essays in other
languages will also be considered. Submissions should be sent
electronically in MLA or APA format to: pparekh@spelman.edu

Dr. Pushpa Parekh
Professor of English
Director, Honors Program
Spelman College
Atlanta, GA 30314-4399
404-270-5665