On July 1, 2017, ESC: English Studies in Canada will be moving from its long-time home at the University of Alberta to its new residence at Western University. To mark this occasion, and as a parting editorial gesture, the Co-Editors will publish a special issue on the theme of “transitions.” The theme avails itself of multiple disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, cultural, political, historical, and other contextual investments. In recognizing that broad applicability, our capacious understanding of the term is designed to invite widespread and diverse interest.
Transition, one might contend, is central to some of the most pressing matters of cultural critique today. The politics of sexuality and gender, social justice, revolution, climate change, the anthropocene, carbon dependency, global migration, decolonization—some of the most critical intellectual commitments of the academy are predicated on the matter of change. At the same time, transition itself is an unstable theoretical concept: signifying at various moments mutation, adaptation, metamorphosis, transition, conversion, transposition, translation, migration, remediation, and so on, the concept is itself always in transition. As a theoretical problem, transition invites consideration of becoming, causality, and dialectical movement; as an historical category, transition invokes paradigm shift, periodicity, disruption, and continuity; as a political goal, transition requires we think more carefully about efficacies and outcomes.
At this turning point in the history of ESC, we invite full length papers (6000-9000 words in length) for submission no later than February 1, 2017. Please direct your correspondence to dms7@ualberta.ca and mo@ualberta.ca.
ESC: English Studies in Canada is a leading international journal in the fields of literary and cultural studies. ESC was founded in 1975 as an official publication of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE). The journal publishes articles that make a clear and original contribution to scholarly and theoretical debates of current interest and ongoing significance to members of the discipline of English Studies and the humanities more generally.
ESC operates as an Open Access journal with a six-month delayed window. Institutional libraries carry the journal worldwide, and ESC is distributed through four digital aggregators, including the preeminent Project Muse. ESC works to maintain its position as a venue of first choice for academic publication.
Categories: ESC, Non ACCUTE CFPs
