and Balkan Europe
by IECOB & AIS Università di Bologna
"Queer Balkans": Call for Papers for Sextures, E-journal for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics
Deadline for submitting abstracts: Sep. 30, 2012
Deadline for submitting full papers: Jan. 31, 2012
Description of the Call
The journal "Sextures" is an electronic publication whose main themes of research are sexualities, culture and politics in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe. A call for papers has recently been announced by Sextures on the issue of "Queer Balkans". The call puts together two debated concepts, Balkans and Queerness. These issues have been much discussed by scholarly literature and this call for papers aims at conceptualizing them and their relationship and connections.
As the call for applications states: "While the “Balkans” (and “balkanization”, Todorova) comes to denote the post-communist/post-Soviet political spaces and has been an instrumental transitional paradigm and empowering term for political scholars and technocrats, “queer” (coined by de Lauretis, though heralded by Anzaldua) served to empower the political and cultural concerns of LGBTIQ people and left-wing academics in America and the West. Subsequently, queer gradually began to empower other regions influenced by the developmentalist paradigm." Theorizing "Queer Balkans" is thus conceptually complicated because it means to work with conflicting notions.
Eligible topics for the conference
Papers can address the following topics:
- Queer and the geopolitics of the Balkans
- Deterritorializing queer/queering territories/the nomos/sovereignty
- LGBT identities, queer and the political construction of the Balkan region (“Eastern Europe”, “South-Eastern Europe”, “Western Balkans”, “Central and Eastern Europe”)
- Unprivilleging/Easternizing/De-westernization of queer theory and activism
- Translating queer: cultural translations and contextualizations
- Queer travels: West-East and East-West perspectives
- Queer alliances in the Balkans
- Relations and practices between queer – art – activism in the Balkans
- Queers and cross-cutting activisms (e.g., LGBTIQs and other social movements – feminisms, ANTIFA, anti-racism, etc.)
- The Balkans transition, neoliberalism, and LGBT NGOs
- Queer analyses and critiques of Western LGBT expertise and Western-run/supported activism
- De-NGO-ization of activism and the renewal/making of grass-root activism
- The commodification/bureaucratization/policy-zation of LGBT activism
- Queer theory/activism and/against LGBT identitarianism/activism
- Comparative analyses of critiques between LGBT organizations and queer in/formality
- Queer perspectives on discrimination and hate speech in the Balkans
- Critical legal studies and queer theory in the Balkans’ context
- Strategies of silencing queer: state-hijacking/appropriation of LGBT/queer activisms and the EU; EU, sexual difference and the civilizational discourse
- Queer theory/activism and the de/politicization of sexual difference
- The Balkans’ LGBT/homo/normativity and internalized homophobia/transphobia
- LGBT/homo/normativity and the ethnic/the racial question in the Balkans
- Queer theory and critical race studies in the Balkans context
- Queer theory and methodologies in the academic life in the Balkans
Guidelines for submission
Paper proposals must not exceed the 500 word limit and should be submitted online at http://www.sextures.net/guidelines-for-contributors. Authors are encouraged to follow the guidelines for contributions when submitting abstracts and papers.
Organizer
Information & contacts
Stanimir Panayotov
e-mail: spanayotov@gmail.com
Alexander Lambevski
e-mail: alex@sextures.net
Download the Call for PapersPECOB: Portal on Central Eastern and Balkan Europe - University of Bologna - 1, S. Giovanni Bosco - Faenza - Italy
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