Call for papers: Heterosexuality

2024-10-23

Call for abstracts: Heterosexuality

Guest editors:
Elin Abrahamsson and Jenny Björklund

The straight mind (Wittig), compulsory heterosexuality (Rich), and the heterosexual matrix (Butler)—from the start, queer theory has been all about heterosexuality. In the 1996 special issue of lambda nordica, introducing queer theory in Sweden, Don Kulick even argued that seeing normative heterosexuality as a problem that finally ought to be explained is the perspective that unites queer theories. Focusing our critical gaze on the norm, rather than studying its deviations, makes heterosexuality and its normative institutionalization appear less obvious, natural, and necessary. However, over the last decades sexual norms have both lingered and changed. Heterosexuality has been seen as in crisis (Ward) and theorized as base for an activism that seeks to reinstall the superiority of heteronormativity (Browne & Nash). New sexual identities and terms have emerged and gained visibility. Concepts such as homonormativity (e.g. Duggan) and heteroflexibility (e.g. Carrillo & Hoffman) have challenged the rigidity of sexual categories as well as their connections to queer or straightness. Moreover, queer studies has demonstrated that societal norms like coupledom and having children can be just as pervasive as gender and sexuality norms (e.g. Björklund; Roseneil et al.).

With this special issue of lambda nordica, we want to explore the breadth and scope of contemporary queer studies of heterosexuality—of heterosexual lives, texts, practices, and experiences. The issue is situated at the intersection of critical heterosexuality studies and queer theory, asking how changes in societal understandings of heterosexuality impact the way queer studies can and should engage with it. What can queer theory bring to studies of heterosexuality, and what can studies of heterosexuality bring to contemporary queer theory? What challenges and possibilities face us when we turn our queer(ing) gaze towards heterosexuality today?

Topics can include but are not limited to:

  • Queer ethnographic studies of heterosexual lives and practices
  • Queer readings of representations of heterosexuality in, for instance, art, film, and literature
  • Queerbaiting in popular culture
  • Heterosexual challenges to homo- and heteronormative reproductive coupledom and/or kinship structures
  • Theoretical discussions of heterosexuality and queer studies
  • Suggestions, discussions, and uses of alternative or complementary queer concepts e.g. skev (e.g. Jakobsson; Österholm), onanism (Sedgwick), wildness (Halberstam)
  • Heteroactivism and critical discussions of possible appropriations of queer theory for straight purposes
  • Queer activism and heterosexuality

We invite abstracts of approximately 200 words. Abstracts should be sent to special issue editors: elin.abrahamsson@lnu.se and jenny.bjorklund@gender.uu.se 


Deadline for abstracts:  January 15, 2025
Decisions on abstracts will be sent to authors: February 1, 2025
Deadline for first full drafts (6000-8000 words): August 31, 2025
Planned publication: Spring/Summer 2026

All articles will be subject to the regular review process organized by the journal. Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words including footnotes and references and should not have been published previously. The language of the special issue is English.

Please send queries and submissions to special issue editors. Contact details below. Welcome with your submission!


Contact details for special issue editors:
Elin Abrahamsson, PhD in Gender Studies, Senior Lecturer, e-mail: elin.abrahamsson@lnu.se, Department of Film and Literature, Linnaeus University

Jenny Björklund, Professor of Gender Studies, e-mail: jenny.bjorklund@gender.uu.se, Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University

References:
Björklund, Jenny. 2021. Maternal Abandonment and Queer Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Swedish Literature. Palgrave Macmillan.
Browne, Kath & Catherine Jean Nash. 2020. Heteroactivism: Resisting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Rights and Equalities. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
Carrillo, Héctor & Amanda Hoffman. 2020. ”’Straight with a pinch of bi’: The contours of male heteroflexibility*”. In Routledge International Handbook of Heterosexualities Studies, edited by James Dean & Nancy Fischer, p. 377-91. Routledge.
Duggan, Lisa. 2022. “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism”. In Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, edited by Russ Castronovo & Dana D. Nelson, p. 175-94. Duke University Press.
Halberstam, Jack. 2020. “Wildness”, lambda nordica, vol. 25 no 1, p. 172-176.
Jakobsson, Hilda. 2020. “Skev”,  lambda nordica, vol. 25 no 1, p. 150-154.
Kulick, Don. 1996. ”Queer Theory: Vad är det och vad är det bra för?”, lambda nordica, vol. 2 no 3-4, p. 5-22.
Rich, Adrienne. 1980. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”, Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985. W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.
Roseneil, Sasha, Isabel Crowhurst, Tone Hellesund, Ana Cristina Santos and Mariya Stoilova. 2020. The Tenacity of the Couple Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe. UCL Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1991. “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 4, p. 818-837.
Ward, Jane. 2021. The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. NYU Press.
Wittig, Monique. 1992. The Straight Mind And Other Essays. Beacon Press.
Österholm, Maria Margareta. 2022. ”The Pain and the Creeping Feeling: Skewed Girlhood in Two Graphic Novels by Åsa Grennvall”, European Comic Art, vol. 15 no. 1, p. 46-65.