Submission Call-Out ---Submission Call-Out --- Min timeh: Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Resistance, and Space
INANNA PUBLICATIONS is seeking SUBMISSIONS for a new anthology:
Min timeh: Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Resistance, and Space
Edited by Ghadeer Malek and Ghaida Moussa
Deadline for abstract submissions: February 28, 2012
Completed submission deadline: April 30, 2012
Anticipated publication date: Fall of 2012
Description:
This anthology is a meeting space for Arab feminist womyn living in the Arab world and the Diaspora. While physical and metaphorical distances and borders lie in between us, deep founded connection and intertwined roots seem to transcend these divisions and connect us to one another. Our grounded experiences and our reflections as Arab womyn living in Canada, as well as our relationships with communities of feminists in the Arab world -- from Lebanon, to Egypt, Syria, Palestine and the Gulf -- have served as a testimony to these connections, and to the evolution of our shared identity characterized by our often shared struggles, burdens, and questions across various geographical locations, genders, ages, classes, races, religions, and the experiences we live based on these political categories.
Simultaneously, in a world that has increasingly found monolithic and one-dimensional ways of perceiving and imposing stereotypes of Muslim, Arab and Arab womyn identities, we feel that it is imperative to highlight Arab womyn’s voices in constructing and articulating their own identities. Creating alternate spaces to mainstream oppressive discourse is part of reclaiming our voices and resisting the gaze of the “Other”. While we may meet at some intersections, we diverge at others, our identities spreading and molding into a wide spectrum of experiences, knowledge, struggles, and so forth. It is this double reality of sameness and difference that this anthology will bridge, celebrating our multiple voices and honoring our self-determination, as well as meeting our need to find community and belonging on our own terms.
Submissions:
Through this anthology, we are hoping to reflect Arab womyn’s perspectives through personal critical narratives, academic essays, and written and visual arts, on subjects such as homeland, exile, arrivals and departures, feminism, queerness, borders, national struggles, solidarity, and (de)colonization.
We are particularly interested in and highly encourage receiving submissions that explore and document various forms of Arab feminist organizing from the women’s marches happening in Egypt to social media campaigns and setting up feminist organizations. We especially encourage submissions that make the links and draw comparisons between Arab womyn organizing in the ‘Arab World’ and the Diaspora.
Guiding Questions:
Below are some questions that we are hoping to answer by putting together this anthology. Please note that we are keen on accepting a wide variety of submissions -- spanning various topics and issues outlined above - that are not limited to the questions below.
The questions below are only meant to provide suggestions for some of the themes and topics that we are interested in exploring in more depth through the anthology:
- What are some of the physical, metaphorical, and political connections and distances in Arab womyn identities and issues across the Arab world and the Diaspora?
- How have Arab womyn built and developed their identities?
- What role does identity play in shaping Arab feminist struggles and organizing and how does it change with time and context?
Criteria for Proposals:
Proposals should be approx. 500 words (1 page) and sent in no later than February 28, 2012.
While we welcome academic texts, we highly encourage creative productions, whether written or visual, including poetry, analytical self-reflective or community-reflective stories, images, paintings, graffiti photographs, etc.
We are committed to representing a diversity of Arab womyn voices and especially highlighting underrepresented voices, identities, and issues. We are excited to receive proposals from Arab womyn from all walks of life and especially encourage submissions from Arab womyn living in the Arab world and those in between ‘back home’ and ‘over there’, particularly since one of the major themes we are exploring is what unites and divides Arab womyn living in the Diaspora and the Arab world.
The anticipated date of publication is the Fall of 2012.
Completed submissions must be sent in by April 30, 2012.
