College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies Special Issue: Trans Literatures
Due Date: 12-15-2023
This special issue of College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, titled Trans Literatures, asks the following: What place(s) do trans literatures occupy inside and outside the academy? Alongside the formation and partial institutionalization of trans studies, how have trans literatures challenged the methods and tenets of the academic field? What genealogies and genres of trans literatures proliferate beyond realism and memoir? How is trans writing—from literary fiction to genre fiction, from poetry to memoir and beyond—differently racialized? How and in what ways do trans literatures converge and diverge with queer literatures? To build off the questions initially raised by Ramzi Fawaz and Shanté Paradigm Smalls in Queers Read This!, how are trans literatures written, read, and taught? How do they challenge and recast trans literary histories? What kinds of stories, theories, and pedagogies do trans literatures produce? How do trans literatures challenge and recast sociality and criticality alike? And, most basically, what makes literature trans?
College Literature invites articles exploring trans literatures in ways that may include
- Trans genres
- Trans literary aesthetics
- Trans literary subjects or subjectivities
- Trans in the first person
- Trans literatures and trans of color critique
- Trans literatures in a transnational context
- Trans literatures in translation
- Trans literatures in or and the prison industrial complex
- Trans methods of reading
- Trans literary pedagogies
- Trans in the publishing industry
- The process and prospects of trans literary canonization
- Banned books
- Anti-trans legislation and trans literatures
- The place of trans literatures in trans studies
- The place of trans literatures in literary studies and literary theory
Please submit a 500-word abstract (for essays between 8,000–10,000 words) and a CV to both rl goldberg (rlgldbrg@princeton.edu) and Alex Brostoff (brostoff1@kenyon.edu) by 15 December 2023. When submitting, also copy College Literature (collit@wcupa.edu). Essay drafts will be due 1 August 2024, and sent out for anonymous peer review. This special issue is scheduled to be published in summer 2025. Prospective authors should feel free to email general inquiries about the issue as well. For more information, visit https://www.wcupa.edu/arts-humanities/collegeLit/manuscripts.asp.