Storytelling in the Margins

CALL FOR PAPERS ISSUE 5.1: ‘Storytelling in the Margins’
One of the most pervasive topics across the Humanities is storytelling. Whether we are seeking to understand the development of shared identities, cultural beliefs and practices throughout history, or grappling with pressing contemporary concerns like anthropogenic climate change and accelerating globalisation, the centrality of narrative(s) to much of our work on these issues—and to the issues themselves—is undeniable. As Donna J. Haraway points out in Staying with the Trouble (2016), stories matter, and thus it also matters how we tell them. The ever-increasing attention given to voices and perspectives that challenge established canons and hegemonic discourses, both within and outside of academia, is gradually destabilising the common notion of one “central”, linear narrative and creating space for narratives which thrive in complexity, multiplicity, and non-linearity. At the same time, contemporary artistic practices and emerging media platforms are producing new kinds of texts, thereby giving rise to new forms of storytelling. Ultimately, what is placed in the margins need no longer be
marginal. However, this last statement also prompts several critical questions. Who gets to tell the story of the margins? Who decides what is marginal? How are such marginalisations established and perpetuated? How does the margin assert itself in relation to the centre? Can we rethink the margins as not simply surrounding, but as irreducibly part of the text? Why should we be so preoccupied with the margins to begin with?
With these matters in mind, we invite graduate and postgraduate students of the Humanities to contribute to the next issue of Junctions , titled ‘Storytelling in the Margins’ . From all fields, we welcome submissions that engage with this topic and the issues that stem from it, such as:
– “New” forms of storytelling: What are the narrative affordances of contemporary and emerging media technologies—e.g. videogames, VR/AR/XR, social media platforms, online streaming
services, etc.—and how are they challenging previous notions of narrativity? How new are these\ “new” media, and how applicable are established narrative frameworks in these contexts? How can these technologies be useful for offering different kinds of narrative (and how can they not)? How productive are the (post-)structuralist approaches of narratology in analysing these “new”
narratives?
– Canons, accessibility, and epistemic (in)justice: What is the role of canons today within disciplines like philosophy, (art) history, and literature? How do explicit and implicit canons shape
the way we relate to our subjects/objects of study? Who or what lies outside of the canon, and how can we rethink a canon to make it more open and inclusive in the name of epistemic justice? Which canons demand such critiques, and why? Are there particular ideas or thinkers that fall outside the traditional canon that could make a significant contribution to the current field or contemporary debates?
– Political activism and narratives of/by people of marginalized identities: How should the stories of those placed on the edges of society be told, by whom, and to what end? Who are “we”, and who are “we” to include “them” in “our” academic body of work? How do opposing political factions use particular narratives and communicative strategies to conduct their activism nowadays? How effective are such contemporary strategies, and how do we measure their success? What is the “public sphere” today?
– Narratives of climate change and eco-communication: Why is there such a disparity between well established ideas within the scientific community and the state of the discourse in other
social and political spheres? Why have narratives which demonstrate the urgent need for measures against climate change and environmental destruction not led to the realisation of large-scale and effective policies? What sorts of narratives are required to help bring about such changes, and what motivates the sorts of narratives that are standing in their way? Whose
narratives are missing within current discourses about climate change? How can we use modern media technologies to help us conceptualize the “slow apocalypse” of climate change in a way that also inspires political action?
Other potential topics of interest include (but are certainly not limited to!):
– Theories on the form-content distinction and media materiality
– Archives and archivization in the ‘digital age’
– Religion and the modern media landscape
– Contemporary cultural movements across media forms (e.g. Afrofuturism in music/film/art)
– Research ethics when studying the margins
– Reflections on the meaning of diversity and inclusion, inside and outside the university
We also encourage book reviews on recent publications related to these issues, and a separate call for book reviews will be published shortly. Submission length is 3500-5000 words for original articles, and 750-1500 words for book reviews. Submissions should engage with the scholarly literature of the appropriate discipline and clearly identify its contribution to the field. The complete manuscript should be in Chicago author-date referencing style, following the official Junctions Word template and the prescribed author guidelines (which can be found at https://junctionsjournal.org/about/submissions/ ). Please submit a digital copy (as a Word document) via the submission system on our website by 15 November, 2019 .
Please omit references to the author in manuscripts to ensure anonymous reviews. After double-blind reviewing, accepted articles will undergo a revision process which will conclude with the publication of the journal issue. The journal does not accept manuscripts previously published by or simultaneously submitted to other publications. Please contact editor@junctionsjournal.org with any questions about the publication process. For more informal questions about the issue, you can contact the managing editors on Twitter: Dennis Jansen ( @rmpdenjan ) and Mark Whittle ( @markwhittle444 ).

Important Dates

15 November 2019: Deadline manuscripts
10 January 2020: Notification of editor decision
30 January 2020: Deadline first revisions
6 March 2020: Deadline final revisions
29 March 2020: Planned publication of issue on https://junctionsjournal.org/

Junctions: Graduate Journal of the Humanities aims to connect the different disciplines of the Humanities by collecting disciplinary and interdisciplinary texts that are accessible to readers from across the Humanities. This gives graduate and postgraduate students the opportunity to gain valuable publishing, editing and reviewing experience. Everyone who submits an article to Junctions will receive feedback from our reviewers, and if your work is selected for publication, the editors will guide you through the different stages of editing to produce a professional article and begin your academic CV