Call for Submissions: Fat & Queer Anthology

By | September 3, 2008

I’m tickled to be posting this here on behalf of a reader who is assembling an anthology of writings by fat queers, a project that I think is fabulous and extremely necessary and couldn’t be happier about (and I’m not just saying this because it was such a struggle to find good sources when I was writing my MA thesis on fatness & queer theory a hundred years ago).

Check it out:

Call for Submissions

Working Title: Spilling Over: A Fat, Queer Anthology
Editor: Jessica Giusti, Feminist Studies Ph.D. Student, University of Minnesota
Contact: spillingover@gmail.com
Submission Deadline: December 1, 2008

Despite the attention given by queer studies to the materiality of bodies and the cultural and social inscriptions that designate them, still a dearth of both scholarship and literature exists around intersections of gender, sexuality, and fatness. As fat studies begins to emerge as a viable academic location of inquiry, questions surface as to how fat bodies, deemed “excessive” in their trespasses of size and space, create even more complex subject positions when compounded by queer desires. This proposed anthology seeks contributions addressing junctions of “fat” and “queer” in pieces that consider the representations and resistances of non-normative corporeality and also writings considering the theoretical conceptions of these intricate subjectivities. Spilling Over will reflect the notions of excess, boundaries, and containment implied by the labels “fat” and “queer” both singularly and collectively. In the form of scholarly writing and creative non-fiction pieces, essay submissions might consider (but are not limited to):

• theorizing the concept of “excess” as it pertains to fatness and queerness
• fat and queer identities; personal narratives; reclaiming “fat” and “queer”
• notions of (in)visibility, hypervisibility, and passing and/or privilege
• intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, (dis)ability, age, and religion
• the economics of the obesity “epidemic” and the diet industry
• fat, queer art and performance; performativity
• pleasure, sex-positivity, eroticizing non-normative bodies
• acceptance movements, political activism, resistance
• the engagement of feminism with fatness
• global, transnational, transcultural constructions of fat, queer bodies and lives
• critical reflections of fatness and queerness in media, literature, film, music, and visual arts
• the rhetoric of fat oppression, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, responding to and/or addressing hate speech

By December 1, 2008, please send your 2,000 – 6,000 word submission, along with your complete contact information and a 50-100 word biography, to spillingover@gmail.com with the subject line of “Spilling Over – Submission.” Submissions must be received in 12 point Times New Roman font and sent in via Word documents (PDFs will not be accepted). Pieces will be reviewed and decisions made by April 2009. Please note that accepted submissions will be approved on a tentative basis, pending editorial board approval once the anthology has secured a publisher.

Questions can be directed to me at spillingover@gmail.com or visit the MySpace page at www.myspace.com/spillingoveranthology

Please distribute widely.


Comments are closed.