The Mechademia series continues twice a year from the University of Minnesota Press, edited by Frenchy Lunning and Sandra Annett.
All submissions should be sent to the Mechademia submissions editor. Please indicate the title of the volume you are submitting to as follows: “Submission–[volume name]” in the subject line.
Submissions should be 5,000-7,000 words and follow the Mechademia style guide, which is based on the Chicago Manual of Style.
Vol. 11.1: Childhood
The first volume of Second Arc will be published in autumn 2018.
Vol. 12.1: Transnational Fandom, guest ed. Andrea Horbinski
The second volume of Second Arc will be published in spring 2019.
Vol. 12.2: Materialities Across Asia, guest ed. Stevie Suan
The third volume of Second Arc will be published in autumn 2019.
Vol. 13.1: Queer(ing), guest ed. James Welker (due 1 June 2019; published spring 2020)
Japanese manga, anime, and games culture is associated with excessive sexuality and gender-bending that have unsettled cultural norms in multiple, often queer, ways. The appeal of such queer(ing) and hypersexual attributes has at least partially driven the spread of these media and fan practices around Asia and beyond. In spite of the ongoing strong association with Japanese popular culture, however, Japan is but one of multiple centers of queer(ing) media and fan practices in contemporary Asia.
This issue of Mechademia: Second Arc will focus on queer(ing) comics, animation, and games, and other related media as well as their fandoms in Asia. The editors invite papers of 5000 to 7000 words which offer new insights on queer aspects of popular media and fandoms, or alternatively new queer(ing) perspectives on media and practices that are not self-evidently queer. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Asian media and fandoms and intersectional queer studies
- Fujoshi and fudanshi fan cultures
- Boys love/yaoi, and slash media
- Yuri/girls love, and femslash media
- Representations of queer identities (transgender, intersex, bisexual, pansexual, gender-fluid/genderqueer/nonbinary/X-gender, asexual, lesbian, gay, etc.)
- Queer(ing) pornographies (“hentai,” tentacles/“consentacles,” BDSM/fetish media, etc.)
- Queer(ing) fan practices (crossplay, maid cafes, butler cafes, etc.)
- Flows of queer(ing/ed) media and fandom practices around Asia