Call for Papers, Poetry, and Prose
WSQ Special Issue Fall 2015: The 1970s
Guest Editors: Shelly Eversley and Michelle Habell-Pallán
The 1970s was a revolutionary moment for women. It transformed the very notion of female power regarding their bodies, their pleasure, and their work. In addition, women’s activisms in the decade shaped new paradigms for thinking about race, sexuality, reproductive rights, labor, colonialism, technology and the environment. Inaugural moments in film, music, television, sports, visual arts, and computing remain crucial landmarks in debates and interventions concerning pornography, sex work, sound studies, digital feminism, legal theory, and religion.
The decade witnessed congressional passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (1972), with ratification by 35 states by 1977—just 3 states shy of a formal change to the US Constitution. The rise of oral contraception, the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade (1973), and the publications of books such as The Joy of Sex (1972) and Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973), as well as activisms around domestic violence and rape offered new, practical and theoretical models of female empowerment. Activists, writers and scholars such as Bella Abzug, Angela Davis, Nawal El-Saadawi, Audre Lorde, Robin Morgan, Kate Millet, Gayle Rubin, Gloria Steinem, and Michele Wallace created new epistemologies of gender, sex, race, class, and politics.
Popular culture changed as well: Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in the “battle of the sexes;” Donna Summer helped launch disco music; television saw new female characters such as Wonder Woman (1975-79) and The Bionic Woman (1976-78), both imagining women in relation to new technologies of science and communications; new film production code inspired innovation and controversy (e.g., Deep Throat (1972) and Cleopatra Jones (1973)); and Spanish language commercial media in the U.S. also began to take hold.
Feminist grassroots culture blossomed, taking cues from activists, writers, and scholars. Women took the reigns of emerging technologies and developed projects that provided platforms for feminist and queer voices in the form of Olivia Records and the development of community radio networks. Independent feminist journals such as Third Woman Press emerged to publish Chicana and Latina feminist writings. Art collectives like Mujeres Muralistas pushed the flourishing of public murals in the Mission District, throughout the Bay Area, and nationally. Changes in immigration policy prompted Teatro Chicana to bring immigration and gender issues to the foreground. In major cities, women—including women of color—played key roles in the development of punk and hip hop, as these scenes responded to the material realities of global economic restructuring. The conservative response to this era of transition and change also inspired the “New Right,” which left lingering effects.
The social and cultural agendas developed in 1970s continue to haunt and inspire. This special issue of WSQ invites scholars, artists, and activists to reflect on the decade’s broad ranging accomplishments, its unfinished agendas, and its influence on the contemporary moment.
Topics we are interested in exploring include, but are not limited to:
*reproductive politics, and/or activisms around ERA
*feminist avant-gardes, including visual and performance art
*sex, sexuality (e.g., female orgasm, The Joy of Sex, Our Bodies, Ourselves)
*oppositional music scenes such as punk, fandango, hip hop, and salsa
*global feminisms
*lesbian and gay activisms
*feminist development of community radio networks, music labels, and music engineers
*ecofeminism
*feminist presses
*Women of color/Chicana/Latina/Native/Asian women’s collectives
*popular culture, television, and film
*Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman as cyborg
*biopolitics of gender and race
*women, race, and computer and scientific technologies
*pornography (e.g., Deep Throat, Lialiah)
*feminism and the law, legal theory
*pre-histories of digital feminism
*Black Power, Black Aesthetics
*Spanish language popular culture and film
Please send abstracts, inquiries, and essays to Shelly Eversley and Michelle Habell-Pallán atWSQ1970sissue@gmail.com. We will give priority consideration to abstracts submitted by August 1, 2014. Final essays and essay submissions are due on October 2, 2014. Final submissions should not exceed 6,360 words (including un-embedded notes and works cited) and should comply with the formatting guidelines athttp://www.feministpress.org/wsq/submission-guidelines.
Poetry submissions should be sent to WSQ's poetry editor, Kathleen Ossip, at WSQpoetry@gmail.com by October 2, 2014. Please review previous issues of WSQ to see what type of submissions we prefer before submitting poems. Please note that poetry submissions may be held for six months or longer. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if the poetry editor is notified immediately of acceptance elsewhere. We do not accept work that has been previously published. Please paste poetry submissions into the body of the e-mail along with all contact information.
Fiction, essay, and memoir submissions should be sent to WSQ's fiction/nonfiction editor, Asali Solomon, atWSQCreativeProse@gmail.com by October 2, 2014. Please review previous issues of WSQ to see what type of submissions we prefer before submitting prose. Please note that prose submissions may be held for six months or longer. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if the prose editor is notified immediately of acceptance elsewhere. We do not accept work that has been previously published. Please provide all contact information in the body of the e-mail.