Genre et Espace

Call for Papers
SURFACING: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Journal is soliciting papers for its Fall 2009 issue on Gender and Space

The elasticity of the concept of space has generated a vast spectrum of research, as the distinction posited in the social sciences between “space” and “place” helps to extend notions of social space, calling upon time and thus invoking dimensions, philosophical thought and relativity. Yet dominant binaries of gender continue to shape contemporary scholarship on space such as Western/non-Western, modern/traditional, public/private, urban/rural, core/periphery. These binaries are instrumental in mapping communities and social relations within these communities, which can become discriminatory spaces to those who do not fit the social mold.


The questions of who, what and where is being mapped lies at the heart of inquiries that reassess received social geographies and re-appropriate techniques for apprehending spatial formations. Beyond physical locations and local communities, space opens the discussion of the distant/proximate, stretched/compressed and the complex experiences that accompany such phenomena. Communication strategies and mediums on the Internet have proliferated spaces of exchange, broadening ideas about mobility and raising questions about identity and unforeseen gender configurations.


Space can be as definitive as national borders prohibiting passage or as abstract as demarcations of the mind. Surfacing is looking for various engagements with “space,” from the concrete to the abstract, in ways that challenge perceptions of gender in the Global South.

Possible problematics to explore:

• hierarchies and boundaries in spatial arrangements
• access to space based on gender
• the politics of urban space
• regional comparisons of masculinity or femininity
• the body as a gendered space
• gender, public space and visual culture
• the role of information technology (internet, mobile phones, blogs, personal networking sites, 24-hour media)
• the gendered nation-state
• the politics of citizenship and gender
• the space between women and men
• mapping gender
  

Formats of all kinds are welcomed: photo-essays, notes from the field, articles, essays, working papers, commentaries, letters to the editor, reviews, talks and conference papers,etc.
*Deadline for articles will is due on April 15th , 2009.
*Formatting standard: Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed.
*Essay submissions should be no longer that 8,000 words and review submission no longer than 2,500 words.
*All questions and queries can be addressed: surfcing@aucegypt.edu