Indigenous Feminisms Across the World - Special Issue of Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism

Indigenous Feminisms Across the World - Special Issue for Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism

Organizer
Basuli Deb, Columbia University; Ginetta E.B. Candelari, Smith College
ZIP
MA 01063
Location
Northampton
Country
United States
From - Until
01.10.2023 -
Deadline
15.03.2022
By
Connections Redaktion, Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics, Universität Leipzig

This new special issue on transnational feminist approaches to Indigeneity intervenes in conversations where “decolonial feminism is often associated with Indigenous scholars and those from the Americas, and postcolonial feminism with scholars from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.” We hope to bring together conversations about Indigeneity from across Asia and Africa as well as Australia, Europe, and the Americas.

Indigenous Feminisms Across the World - Special Issue for Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism

Vol. 22, No. 2 - Fall 2023
Edited by: Basuli Deb and Ginetta E.B. Candelario

Several years ago Meridians joined many academic organizations and institutions in the United States in issuing a land acknowledgement, recognizing that our Western Massachusetts-based offices are on Nonotuck land. In this we formed part of a wave of solidarity with Indigenous peoples that necessarily begins with recognition of how settler colonialism is deeply ingrained, embedded, and naturalized in every way, from place naming conventions to thought structures.

Thus, as a first step toward moving from acknowledging to acting in the spirit of redress and forum building, Meridians undertook an audit of the content we have published in the twenty years of our existence. We found a shocking (if all too common) lack of Indigenous feminists and/or Indigenous feminist work in our ouevre to date. As a result of this data, and by way of beginning to transform our practice, we have endeavored to increase the participation of Indigenous feminist scholars and knowledge producers as peer reviewers and contributors to the Meridians project. Candelario’s preliminary efforts yielded several publishable submissions focused largely on the Americas. Rather than intersperse
these among other issues, we decided to include them in an entire issue devoted to Indigenous Feminisms Across the World.

Meridians also invited several Indigenous scholars with long-standing ties to the journal to guest edit or co-guest edit a special issue with Editor Ginetta Candelario, whose scholarly expertise includes racial formation in the Americas, but none were able to take on this project. However, one of those Indigenous consultants suggested that Basuli Deb, a Bengali scholar who works on materialities of Indigenous and transmigrant lives and who has published in Meridians, would be well suited to the role. So it was that Deb and Candelario began their collaboration as co-editors of this special issue, which we hope will not only inspire submissions to this issue, but to Meridians in general. Likewise, we hope this will inspire proposals for future issues guest edited by Indigenous feminist scholars of feminism, race, and transnationalism.

This new special issue on transnational feminist approaches to Indigeneity intervenes in conversations where “decolonial feminism is often associated with Indigenous scholars and those from the Americas, and postcolonial feminism with scholars from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.” We hope to bring together conversations about Indigeneity from across Asia and Africa as well as Australia, Europe, and the Americas. A transnational comparative approach to Indigeneity between the Americas and the “elsewhere” as a philosophical category enables a productive decentering of the Western Hemisphere. Thus, our goal is to explore the praxis driven possibilities of activist, creative, and epistemic engagements within and across hemispheric Indigenous politics, economies, histories, and peoples.

In that spirit, the editors of this issue of Meridians invite activist, creative, and scholarly submissions, as well as overlaps of these, that speak to perspectives that both include and decenter the Americas in thinking about Indigeneity. We seek submissions that will create space for voices about gendered Indigenous epistemologies and practices grounded in experiences from other transnational, regional, and local experiences that are regularly marginalized in conversations about Indigeneity in the Americas. Submissions focused on New Zealand, Australia, Kenya, DRC, Somalia, South Africa, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Palestine, Kashmir, Okinawa, and Ainu are especially of interest to us.

Submissions may include single or collaboratively authored works (scholarly essays; framed, transcribed, and translated speeches; interviews) as well as solo and collaborative creative works (visual art, artists’ documentation of performative projects, poetry, short stories, excerpts of novels). State of the Field, Media Matters, and Culture Works features are particularly encouraged; see https://sophia.smith.edu/meridians/submissions/ for more information.

Please upload your submissions by March 15, 2022 to Meridians’ Editorial Manager
submissions system: https://www.editorialmanager.com/meridians/default.aspx.

Be sure to select “Indigenous Feminisms Across the World” from the drop-down list. Please note that submissions must be formatted using Chicago Manual Style 17, must include an abstract and keywords, and must not include any author identifying information, as all manuscripts are double-blind peer reviewed.

For questions about the manuscript review process, email: meridians@smith.edu

Contact (announcement)

meridians@smith.edu

https://sophia.smith.edu/meridians/submissions