Special Issue of Studies in the Novel (Winter 2026): “The Marriage Plot, ‘Post’-Marriage”
Due Date: 10-01-2025
In a 2023 London Review of Books piece, Maylin Hays asks, “In the post-marriage era, what happens to the marriage plot?” Despite our alleged “post-marriage era,” conversations about marriage animate public discourse more than ever—from “trad wife” influencers on social media to marriage self-help books like Kate Mangino’s Equal Partners (2022) or divorce memoirs like Lyz Lenz’s This American Ex-Wife (2024). While the marriage plot was once fundamental to the realist novel, more recent “anti-marriage” novels such as Miranda July’s All Fours (2024) and Sarah Manguso’s Liars (2024) trouble lingering notions of stable marriage.
In the face of this tension created by disavowals of and increased interest in marriage, we wonder where this leaves the marriage plot and invite essay submissions for a special issue on “The Marriage Plot, ‘Post’-Marriage,” including critical readings, theoretical interventions, and pedagogical approaches. We welcome essays thinking transhistorically and comparatively about the novel’s marriage plot; submissions might put historical literature in conversation with recent “anti-marriage” novels, memoirs, and autofiction. Essays might focus on novelistic engagements with the division of gendered household labor and the current (and heightening) “Why have kids?” discourse. We also seek investigations of how novels about marriage have expanded beyond heterosexual marriage plots to include queer relationships. We are, finally, interested in pedagogical approaches to the novel’s marriage plot: how does reading the marriage plot shape students’ desires and their understandings of the role of marriage in their own lives? How might teaching a course on the marriage plot allow students to access historical novels?
Full essays of 6,000–9,000 words (inclusive of notes and works cited) will be due 1 October 2025 and should conform to MLA style (7th ed.). Inquiries and submissions should be sent to the issue’s editors: Lana Dalley (ldalley@fullerton.edu), Shannon Draucker (sdraucker@siena.edu), and Doreen Thierauf (dthierauf@ncwu.edu).