Humanities Review: Call for Papers (Deadline Dec 16)

The CFP for this year’s issue of the Humanities Review is here!

Here’s a pdf of the flyer, and a longer description. Please email Seán Griffin and Renee Samuel at sjuhr25@gmail.com with any questions or to submit work!

Hum Rev CFP – Decentering (1)

The Humanities Review 

ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY | GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH

Spring 2025 Issue

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 16th, 2024

Deadline for Accepted Submissions: February 12, 2025

The Humanities Review Spring 2025 Issue, “Decentering Dominant Perspectives,” seeks to explore the decentering in terms of gender, race, class, or other identities and perspectives. The hope is that with the collected works, we can unsettle normative modes. We look forward to scholarly papers, dissertation or thesis chapters, books reviews, narratives, fiction, poetry, art, etc. for this issue.

In the headlines, “Report from Gaza: Israel Kills Dozens More,” “Millions swelter as central and eastern US are placed under excessive heat watch,” “24 dead in Yemen floods as search goes on.” Poet Daniel Borzutsky emphasized in his collection The Performance of Becoming Human (2016) what these headlines do not. He repeats over and over the word “bodies.” As we are told in elementary school, we must label what the number designates. Dozens of bodies killed. Millions of bodies sweltering. 24 bodies dead. While some might argue that headline writing is meant to be succinct, that the bodies are implied, we should not imply a life. With the continuous tumult of politics, public health, abuses toward the marginalized, and overall commitment to white supremacy in this country, we need to decenter the perspective from the implied to the seen. After all, changing our perspective is a vehicle toward understanding. How can we reframe our understanding of this world? In what way can we change our view of unity, the vision of everything working as a whole to the individual pieces that function and breathe?

Our issue is open to proposals that explore all sides and outcomes of “Decentering Dominant Perspectives” including but not limited to:

• Literature stories enacting a decentering or a telling from a unique standpoint
• A new or different perspective as a driver of positive and negative transformation and understanding
• Theories and pedagogies of decentering
• Family narratives: storms in teacups
• The implied v. the seen
• New occasions for feminist, anti-racist, queer, and disability rhetorics

How to Submit:

1. Submit a 200-300 word abstract by December 18th, 2024 to the below submission form
   1. You will receive acceptance responses within one week of the deadline
   2. Once your abstract has been accepted, submit the final by February 5, 2025
2. Creative works can include up to 3 short pieces or 1 longer piece up to 6000 words. You may submit both creative and academic works. If you are submitting creative work, please submit the work instead of an abstract for the CFP.
3. Book reviews and interviews should be no more than 2,000 words. Books should have been published in the last 5 years, with preference given to most recent or under reviewed works. Some recent works that we would gladly include are:

Nonfiction:

Planes Flying Over a Monster: Essays by Daniel Saldaña París, translated by Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman (August 20, 2024)

Die Hot with a Vengeance: Essays on Vanity by Sable Yong (July 9, 2024)

Accordion Eulogie: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico by Noé Álvarez (May 28, 2024)

Shipping Lords and Coolie Stokers: Class, Race, and Maritime Capitalism in the Early Twentieth Century by Ravi Ahuja. (To be released October 29, 2024)

Everything to Play For: An Insider’s Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World by Marijam Did (September 17, 2024)

Fiction:

There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel by Elif Shafak (August 20, 2024)

Silken Gazelles by Jokha Alharthi; translated by Marilyn Booth (August 13, 2024)

Poetry:

OSSIA by Jimin Seo (September 1, 2024)

Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space: Poems by Catherine Barnett (May 2024)

We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word Edited by Franny Choi, Bao Phi, Noʻu Revilla, and Terisa Siagatonu  (September 17, 2024)

Nazar Boy: Poems by Tarik Dobbs (Jun 11, 2024)

1. Send up to 3 artwork/photography as JPEGs.

Please submit your abstracts or creative work using the following form:

Please send all topic concerns and inquiries to: sjuhr25@gmail.com

Seán Griffin

Renee Samuel