College Literature: Infrastructural Poetics
Due Date: 12-15-2024
Infrastructural Poetics, a special issue of College Literature, centers on the undertheorized relationship between infrastructure and poetic form. As infrastructure is inherently transnational, we invite articles on poets from any linguistic tradition whose work explores the convergence between poetics and infrastructure studies. Potential topics include
- Infrastructuralism as an approach to poetics, especially theoretical links between built infrastructure and the dynamics of poetic form
- Poetic representations of the afterlives of colonial or plantation infrastructures
- Poetry, social media, and new media technologies, including the material infrastructures that underwrite their existence
- Infrastructures of publication, circulation, and cultural production
- Poetic community and infrastructure, including academic infrastructures
- Translation infrastructures and borders as infrastructural projects
- Infrastructuralism as an approach to literary historicism
- Ecopoetics, infrastructure, and environmental justice
- Transitional and speculative infrastructures
Please submit a 500-word abstract (for essays between 8,000–10,000 words) and a CV to Marty Cain, Claire Farley, and Michael Martin Shea at poeticsofinfrastructure@gmail.com by 15 December 2024. When submitting, please also copy College Literature at collit@wcupa.edu. Essay drafts will be due in the summer of 2025 and sent out for anonymous peer review. This special issue is scheduled to be published in fall 2026. Prospective authors should also feel free to email the editors with general inquiries about the issue.