Call for Papers: DSQ Theme Issue on Freakery
Disability Studies Quarterly announces a Call for Papers for a theme issue on "Freakery." Since the 1996 publication of the anthology Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, the freak no longer occupies the margins of interdisciplinary scholarly discourse. Many scholars, following Leslie Fiedler's framing of the "Tyranny of the Normal" paradigm, have commented on freakery's applicability to and usefulness in a wide variety of academic, social, and political discourses. This special issue of DSQ seeks to represent the current use of freak research by today's scholars.
Scholarly papers (up to 6,000 words) in this theme issue should demonstrate familiarity with disability studies perspectives. The guest editor seeks papers from a wide variety of disciplines and national cultures. These may include, but are certainly not limited to, performance/film/literary theory and criticism, ethnography, anthropology, history, culture studies, theatre studies, sociology, psychology, photography, and linguistics. Topics might include:
- Theoretical approaches to freak performance
- The role of the freak show in representations of race and class "Otherness"
- The rifts between freakery and the performance of "normalcy"
- The influence of the medicalization of bodily difference on freakery (or vice versa)
- The effect of freak performance on disability rights activism (or vice versa)
- The effect of freak performance on the lived reality of disability (or vice versa)
- Reflections on the works of Freud, Foucault, Erving Goffman, Leslie Fiedler, Robert Bogdan, Elizabeth Grosz, or others regarding abnormality, stigma, and the spectacle of the extraordinary body.
All research papers will be peer-reviewed. In addition to full-length scholarly manuscripts, the editor seeks the following:
- Commentary or essays relating to freaks (3,000 words)
- Freak-related book, film, video or DVD reviews (1,000 words)
- Short fiction, poetry, or other topical creative works (length may vary)
Questions regarding the suitability of a topic or any other concerns are welcome, and should be addressed to Theme Issue Guest Editor Michael M. Chemers via email at chemers@andrew.cmu.edu or at 412-268-9777.
All submissions should be of interest to the broad range of DSQ's multidisciplinary scholarly readership. All submission should be written in standard U.S. English following 5th edition APA publication format. Deadline for submissions is MARCH 1, 2005.
Please send your submission by email to chemers@andrew.cmu.edu, or via hard copy (with disk) to Michael M. Chemers, Theme Issue Editor, Disability Studies Quarterly, 217 Purnell Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
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