‘Black Women/Superheroes’
Special Issue: Transition Magazine

According to Kimberlé Crenshaw intersectionality theory draws attention to Black women’s experiences of intertwined structures of power and oppression, including racism, misogyny, classism, heterosexism, discrimination based on immigration status, ableism, transmisogyny.  That said, Black women fight everyday of their lives to survive, but also to receive acknowledgment and recognition.

Image courtesy of Transition Mag.

Grounded in Black feminist theory, this special issue of Transition Magazine seeks to engage a dynamic conversation on the topic Black Women/Superheroes. This issue will explore the notion of Black women’s persistence within a globalized, racialized and gendered contemporary world.

Transition Magazine invites submissions that investigate, discuss, critique, and complicate the interaction of race, ethnicity and gender in comics, as both a visual and written genre. There is also interest in interrogating social constructions and caricatures of Black womanhood, including the “strong Black woman,” trope and, most importantly, the humanity and lived realities of Black women in the world. Transition Magazine invites both critical and creative contributions around these ideas, and encourages writers, poets, artists, designers, musicians, and scientists to submit their work for this issue.

Image courtesy of ComicVine

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Afrofuturism
• Comics as coded texts (eg. survival manuals, confessional space, cautionary tale, subversive, fantasy, experiment)
• Black bodies and representations of beauty in comics
• Discussions of power, powers and superpowers
• Conceptions of evil or villains in comics
• Role of science and philosophy in comics
• Conceptions of gods, goddess, religion spirituality and the occult in comics
• Comics as an unmediated, autonomous feminist space
• Notions of flaws in superheroes

The deadline is November 30th 2018. 

Please see here for more details on submission.

Follow the link to find out more about Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

And follow the Magazine on Twitter @Transition_Mag 

Categories: Calls for & opportunities, Research, Studies, Teaching

Tags: African science fiction, African superheroes, African women writers, afrofuturism, Call for papers, Call for submissions, feminism, gender, globalisation, humanities and social sciences, literary magazine, Politics, power, race, Superheroes, theory, Transition, women