Girlhood Studies – An Interdisciplinary Journal
CALL FOR PAPERS
Technologies of Non-Violence: Re-Imagining Mobile and Social Media Practice
in the Lives of Girls and Young Women
From the slums of Mumbai to the streets of New York, cellphones and other devices are becoming ubiquitous in people’s everyday lives, alongside various social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Despite their pervasiveness, the application of these technologies to addressing pressing global concerns such as violence towards girls and women (in universities, on the streets, in schools and so on), is vastly under-realized. Indeed, much of the work, to date, on mobile and social media in relation to violence in the lives of girls and young women has been on its threats and harmful effects, particularly in the context of cyber-bullying and other forms of online harassment (Hart and Mitchell 2015). But what are the possibilities for turn- ing these technologies into technologies of non-violence? In Technologies of Non-Violence (2012), Jonathan Bock con- siders this question in his exploration of the ways in which technologies can be associated with advocacy and social action, as happened, for example, during the Arab Spring. Bock’s work serves to frame a growing movement in which digital technologies might be examined in relation to what could be termed networks of resistance, particularly in relation to gender-based violence and efforts towards non-violence and the development of new forms of imagined publics (Mugo and Antonites 2014). While we recognize that the root causes of violence, such as poverty and gender inequality, will not be solved simply by the addition of new technologies, the promise of this work framed as technologies of non-violence may inspire the development of new technological applications. For example, Harassmap (www.harassmap.org) and Hollaback! (www.ihollaback.org) address street harassment through the crowd sourcing of stories on online maps that identify sites of risk, harassment, and safety, and, in so doing, they give voice to girls and young women. How might advances, both theoretical and practice-based, in addressing violence against girls and young women include the development and testing of new apps and software, and the creation of grass-roots maker technologies that can serve at-risk populations according to their contexts? This Special Issue of Girlhood Studies seeks to examine the ways in which the notion of technologies of non-violence might lead to a re-imagining of both urban and rural spaces as sites of networked resistance and transformation for girls and young women.
Contributions to this themed issue may address, among others, the following questions:
– What existing digital technologies of non-violence are used or could be used by girls and young women (both online and offline)? In what ways do they (or might they) function for girls and young women in relation to emergency communication, local storytelling, education, or addressing contexts and circumstances that put girls at risk?
– What historical technologies might be re-examined as girl-centered technologies of non-violence?
– What types of software and support infrastructures exist to facilitate girls’ and young women’s development of technologies of non-violence (for example, the plug-and-play MIT App Inventor)? What roles do NGOs, universities, and crowdsourcing hold in the development and support of these softwares, and other forms of technologies of non-violence?
– What technology-enabled research methods are being used by and with girls and young women to create various kinds of data (for example, affective storytelling media)? How does this work inform policy making?
– In what ways might mobile technologies designed for non-violence meet the needs of diverse groups of girls and young women such as, for instance, LGBTI, indigenous, and racial minority girls as well as girls with disabilities, and other marginalized populations?
– What public infrastructures like law enforcement, for example, are required to respond to these technologies?
– How might we think about digital technologies in relation to the role of bystanders in schools and universities? What are the security risks?- How might technologies currently present in or part of violence by girls (like cyber-bullying) and against girls and young women (such as rape culture, and child trafficking on social media), be redesigned, intercepted or re-appropriated for non-violence? What measures are already being taken and by whom (social media companies, universities, public schools) and with what effect? How are technologies being incorporated into, for example, locally developed campaigns on consent?
– In what ways are intersecting practices, such as community and participatory arts, media production, and community development/network building represented by technologies of non-violence?
– How do existing policy frameworks seek to create non-violent environments for online technologies? In what ways do such frameworks succeed? How do they fall short by, for example, reinforcing normative, gender-dominating and patri- archal practices?
– What theories are employed in the development and application of technologies for non-violence with young women? How might existing theories of non-violence and activist methods be re-imagined by incorporating new technologies, and practices/theories around technologies and society?
Guest Editor
Laurel Hart is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post Doctoral Fellow at McGill University. She is guest-editing this themed issue with Claudia Mitchell. Laurel’s work focuses on digital multi-modal communication. She is particularly interested in the intersection of high and low technologies, and on how tech is hacked, appropriated, and re-framed for social justice, creative practice, cultural transformation, and for girls and young women’s self- efficacy and voice.
Article Submission
Please direct inquiries to Guest Editor, Laurel Hart (laurel.hart@mail.mcgill.ca) and send expressions of interest and/or abstracts to her by 31 July 2016, or contact Girlhood Studies (girlhood.studies@mcgill.ca) by 31 July 2016.
Full manuscripts are due by 15 November 2016.
Authors should provide a cover page giving brief biographical details (up to 100 words), institutional affiliation(s) and full contact information, including an email address.
Articles may be no longer than 6,500 words including the abstract (up to 150 words), keywords (6 to 8 in alphabetical order), notes, captions and tables, acknowledgements (if any), biographical details (taken from the cover page), and references. Images in a text count for 200 words each. Girlhood Studies, following Berghahn’s preferred house style, uses a modified Chicago Style. Please refer to the Style Guide on the website.
If images are used, authors are expected to secure the copyright themselves.
References
Bock, Jonathan. 2012. The Technology of Nonviolence: Social Media and Violence Prevention. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Hart, Laurel, and Claudia Mitchell. 2015. “From Spaces of Gender-based Violence to Sites of Networked Resistance: Reimagining Social Media Technologies.” Perspectives in Education 33, no. 4: 135–150.
Mugo, Kagure, and Christel Antonites. 2014. “ #FillThisSpaceIfYou’reAnAfricanWoman.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 28, no. 1: 29–36.
Girlhood Studies is published and distributed in print and online by Berghahn Journals Visit GHS online for further details, including submission guidelines: http://www.berghahnjournals.com/girlhood-studies
Girlhood Studies – An Interdisciplinary Journal
CALL FOR PAPERS: The Girl in the Text
Send expressions of interest and/or abstract by July 31, 2016
Full manuscripts due January 15, 2017
Since the appearance of Stieg Larsson’s three novels all of which feature “The Girl” in its title, we have seen a plethora of books with similar titles. These range from Heidi Durrow’s award winning novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (2010), whose protagonist’s search for racial identity is complicated by her being a blue-eyed black girl thanks to her African American and white Danish parentage to The Girl With Three Legs: A Memoir (2011 by human rights activist and female genital mutilation survivor, Soraya Miré, in which this third leg is the soon to be amputated clitoris of a 13-year-old Somali girl, and from the controversial 2012 self e-published young adult novel by Kelly Thompson, The Girl Who Would Be King, about two super-powered teenagers, one good and one evil, to the 2015 bestseller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins’s thriller with its strange mixture of feminist sensibility and (seemingly unrecognized) misogyny in the depiction of its protagonist, Rachel.
For this themed issue of Girlhood Studies we welcome articles that explore how the representations of girls in written or graphic texts invite us to think about girlhood(s) from new and/or different perspectives. We have in mind such exploration in novels, novellas, short stories, and poems (whether canonically approved or not, whether traditional or contemporary, and whether or not subversive and/or experimental) picture books, comics and graphic novels, and so on.
Contributions to this themed issue may address, among others, the following questions:
Are girls and girlhoods necessarily depicted differently in autobiographical or biographical works from how they are depicted in fictional works? What are the implications of these differences or the lack of them for how we view the girl as subject in the former and as protagonist, or perhaps antagonist, in the latter?
In a comparison of novels on a similar theme in relation to girls and girlhood do authors of Young Adult (YA) and cross-over texts (those apparently directed to young adults but widely read across a range of ages) have anything to offer authors of texts aimed at an older readership, and vice versa?
How do poems and rhymes, and picture books for younger readers represent girls and girlhood and what might be the consequences of such representation in playgroups and pre-school classrooms? How might these depictions affect the decisions of educational policy makers?
How, in the context of reader response theory and memory-work studies might we consider the significance of the question: “Who is the girl (reader) in the text?” How do girls read these texts? How do we remember having read them?
Guest Editor
Ann Smith is guest-editing this themed issue. The focus of her interest in literature has long been on literary theory in relation to texts, particularly those of popular culture.
Article Submission
Please direct inquiries to Guest Editor, Ann Smith (smithann1066@gmail.com) and send expressions of interest and/or abstracts to her by 31 July 2016. Full manuscripts are due by 15 January 2017.
Authors should provide a cover page giving brief biographical details (up to 100 words), institutional affiliation(s) and full contact information, including an email address.
Articles may be no longer than 6,500 words including the abstract (up to 150 words), keywords (6 to 8 in alphabetical order), notes, captions and tables, acknowledgements (if any), biographical details (taken from the cover page), and references. Images in a text count for 200 words each. Girlhood Studies, following Berghahn’s preferred house style, uses a modified Chicago Style. Please refer to the Style Guide on the website.
If images are used, authors are expected to secure the copyright themselves.