Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies on "Disability and/in/through fanfiction"

[Jay Dolmage]

Dear Friends and Colleagues: Please share! Please submit!

Call for Papers Special Issue

Disability and/in/through fanfiction                   

Fanfiction has been at the centre of the development of fan studies since Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (1992) and Nancy Baym’s work on online soap opera fan communities (1993); their texts examined fans as self-reflexive producers and critical consumers, and as participants in reciprocal and emotive community-building practices.  In recent years, fan-led projects such as those supported and initiated by the Organization for Transformative Works (Archive Of Our Own, fanlore, Open Doors, and their work on fan legal advocacy) have further encouraged the development of fan scholarship and the conservation and perpetuation of fan cultures. However, disability and accessibility have not been explored in either academic or fan scholarship as crucial aspects of fanfiction practices, and disabled fans and fanfiction writers have not been included as significant contributors to online fanfiction communities.

Yet, disability and fanfiction are in a complicated relationship with one another. Fanfiction loves its disabled characters ( Stiles from Teen Wolf, Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon, Homestuck, House, River Tam from Firefly), and loves to disable its characters (Harry Potter is iconic in this respect), to get all the feels, to explore all the possibilities, and because you hurt those you love, a lot, especially in fanfic.

Many fans and fan creators have identified online as disabled and/or people with disabilities/impairments. Fans are sharing their experiences and having discussions about disability representation in fandoms and fanfiction, about ableism and accessibility. How disability manifests in online fanfiction works and communities remains to be brought into play in critical disability studies and in fan studies.

This special issue invites works that explores disability in fanfiction, disability and fanfiction, and disability through fanfiction. How do disability and fanfiction interact with each other in fanfiction communities? How is disability represented in fanfiction and what meaning does/can/should it have? What roles do disabled fans play in how disability and disabled characters are understood in fandoms? How does white supremacy and heteropatriarchy/cissexism impact where disabled people feel included in online fanfiction communities? How do queerness, racialization, transness, gender, sexuality, class, as inseparable from our experiences of disability, inform and shape our love of fandom and fanfic? How do adaptive technologies influence the presence of which disabled fans can contribute in fanfic and in fanfic communities? What role does accessibility play in fanfiction communities, and for disabled fans?

This special issue aims to collect the work that has been done and is being done by disabled fans and aca-fans (and allies) that reflects on the multiple layers of meaning disability has in fanfiction narratives, processes, communities, and studies. We welcome the contributions of fans, aca-fans, community members (authors, betas, mods, readers, and lurkers), academics, non-academics, writers and reviewers. Contributions can take the shape of academic and non-academic, articles, commentaries, reflections, fanfiction, fanvids and other fan art and fan works that critically examines the roles, representations, deployments, reifications, subversions, challenges, queering and cripping of disability, illness, disease, (in all its multiple enactments and embodiments), cripness (criptitude?), accessibility, disablism, ableism, and fanfiction.

We welcome single and multiple authored pieces. Formats can be written, video (must be captioned), audio (must include transcript).

Possible themes:

·       Disability, gender, queerness and race: politics of intersectionality (and beyond) in fanfics

·       Disabled fanfiction writers and fans

·        Disability tropes in fanfiction

·       Writing disabled characters

·       Disability and Hurt/Comfort

·       Disability and/as kink in fanfic

·       Disability erotics in fanfic

·       Politics of accessibility in fanfic communities

·       Economies of desirability and disability

·       Fanfic and web accessibility/Adaptive Technology

·       Fan activism about accessibility/ ableism/disablism

·       Disability erasure by non-disabled fans

·       Disability fic as knowledge production/dissemination

·       Disability community making and fanfiction

·       Autism and/in fan fic

·       Madness and/in fanfiction

·       Deafness and/in fanfiction

 

Submissions are due 15 April 2016 and can be emailed to Cath Duchastel de M. at: electrocrip at gmail.com

Jay Dolmage, Ph.D
Editor, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies
Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies
Associate Professor of English
University of Waterloo
Department of English
Hagey Hall of Humanities Building
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519 888 4567 x31035
Fax: 519 746 5788
dolmage at uwaterloo.ca



On Oct 19, 2015, at 7:30 AM, Jay Dolmage <dolmage at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

> Dear Friends and Colleagues:
> 
> I am excited to announce that a new issue of The Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is now live:
> 
> http://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/issue/view/13
> 
> Please read, download, share, and respond.
> 
> Thanks as always to Reviews Editor Dr. Jen Rinaldi and Assistant Editor and Social Media Editor Sarah Gibbons.  The special issue Editors for this issue were Heather Shipley and Ravi Malhotra. Thanks to accessibility partner Accessibil-IT (http://accessible-it.com) and to George Lambrou for their work creating the most accessible PDF and HTML files possible.
> 
> As the special issue editors write in their introduction:
> "Public and policy challenges regarding disability rights continue to be highly contested, even with the recent implementation of policies such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Disability rights advocates point to the continued limitations of existing policy often compounded with the complete absence of considerations for persons with disabilities in multiple spaces. Adding further layers of complexity to the existing challenges of disability rights, the articles in this issue consider comparisons and conflicts when religion, disability and law are woven together. The intersections of religion, law and disability offer a vast spectrum of possible analytical interrogations. Yet the relationship of law, religion and disability is still an emerging research area; the overlapping challenges that are produced by barriers within religious and legal spheres offer insights regarding the lives of persons with disabilities within both religious and legal domains."
> 
> Here is the table of contents:
> 
> Introduction: Law, Religion, Disability
> Ravi Malhotra,	Heather Shipley	
> 
> Articles
> Entre l’accommodement de la croyance religieuse et l’accommodement du handicap en milieu scolaire: les tribunaux devraient-ils adapter leur analyse?	
> Marie-Eve Gagné	
> 
> Quakers and Disability: Theory and Practice in the 19th Century	
> Timothy Lillie
> 
> Reflections on Law in Light of Everyday Life at L’Arche	
> Thomas McMorrow	
> 
> Propter Deformitatem: Towards a Concept of Disability in Medieval Canon Law	
> Brandon Parlopiano	
> 
> Moving from the Implicit to the Explicit: ‘Spiritual Rights’ and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities	
> Russell Whiting, Sándor Gurbai	
> 
> Reviews
> Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Gawande	
> Caleb Berkemeier	
> 
> Review of Foucault, Power and Education by Ball
> Mark Castrodale
> 
> Review of Approaching Disability by Mallett & Runswick-Cole
> Diane Driedger
> 
> Review of Re-Membering by Millett-Gallant
> Sheila Jennings
> 
> Review of Psychiatry Disrupted by eds. Burstow, LeFrancois, & Diamond
> Andrea Nicki
> 
> Review of Disability and Passing by eds. Brune & Wilson
> Amber Reid
> 
> 
> Jay
> Jay Dolmage, Ph.D
> Editor, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies
> Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies
> Associate Professor of English
> University of Waterloo
> Department of English
> Hagey Hall of Humanities Building
> Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
> Tel: 519 888 4567 x31035
> Fax: 519 746 5788
> dolmage at uwaterloo.ca
> 

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