[Commlist] CfP Essachess n° 2(24)/ 2019/ Gender, Religions and Media: Emerging Themes and Perspective

ESSACHESS – Journal for Communication Studies is excited to announce 
the launch of the Call for Papers for its December 2019 issue on : 
Gender, religions and media: emerging themes and perspectives. Call for 
Papers is available below.

Guest editor: Magali DO NASCIMENTO CUNHA, Full Professor, Brazilian 
Society on Interdisciplinary Studies on Communication/INTERCOM, 
Communication and Religion Research Group, Media, Religion and 
Culture/MIRE Study Group, BRAZIL ((magali.ncunha /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(magali.ncunha /at/ gmail.com)>)

Important Deadlines


– April 2, 2019: submission of the proposal in the form of an abstract 
of maximum 2 pages. The proposal must include a list of recent 
references and 5 keywords;


– April 22, 2019: acceptance of the proposal;

–  July 15, 2019: full paper submission;

–  October 15, 2019: full paper acceptance.

Full papers should be between 6,000-8,000 words in length. Papers can be 
submitted in English or French. The abstracts should be in English and 
French (150-200 words) followed by 5 keywords. Please provide the full 
names, affiliations, and e-mail addresses of all authors, indicating the 
contact author. Papers, and any queries, should be sent to:

(essachess /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(essachess /at/ gmail.com)>

Authors of the accepted papers will be notified by e-mail. The journal 
will be published in December 2019.


CALL FOR PAPERS

Throughout the history of humanity, social groups have built ways of 
life and cultures, which determined specific roles for men and women. 
With the creation of such roles, a new ideology of patriarchy emerged in 
diverse cultures, which established that the basis for social 
organization and social order rests in the power of man as the leader, 
as the provider for the family, and even as the preserver of the 
species. As history demonstrates, this ideology was constructed, 
replicated and dispersed further through education, religion, law, and 
the media. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the aim 
of an ideology is to change the perception of reality and make things 
ostensibly natural so that men and women would embrace the new ideas and 
attitudes, reproduce them, and disseminate them further. Recalling the 
reflections of a Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, along with a new 
ideology comes always a culture of silence and domestication, which 
helps embed the new ideology into the social fabric to the point that 
when people are called to reflect on alternative paths, they would 
object to it by saying, “no, it has always been like this.”

Nevertheless, this ideology of patriarchy had been increasingly 
challenged in the West. The feminist movements, which during the 19th 
and 20th centuries have germinated new ideas on gender, along with the 
progress of science and technology, strengthened and consolidated a 
process of contestation. One outcome of this contestation was the 
emergence of the concept of gender beyond feminine and masculine, as an 
analytical scientific category, which derived from the reflections of 
philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who stated that “one is not born, but 
rather becomes, a woman.” Another outcome of this contestation was the 
development of the autonomy of sexuality from human reproduction.

Therefore, the concept of “gender”, as an analytical scientific 
category, challenges both social sciences and human sciences; making it 
possible to study the new meanings of “masculine” and “feminine” as 
genders, while also challenging what it means to be a “man” or “woman” 
from the perspective of the historical understandings of these fixed 
categories. In this sense, one may conclude that it is not the category 
of sex that determines the understanding of life, but the category of 
gender that challenges these fixed historic classifications conceived by 
the patriarchy on what it means to be a “man” or a “woman”. This dynamic 
also opens new understandings and perspectives on homosexuality and 
homoaffectivity.

Insofar as the contestation of the patriarchal ideology is concerned, 
throughout history, there have been some advances in gender justice 
(e.g. gender recognition, gender representation, women rights, etc.), 
much remains to be developed in the social life. In this process, 
organized religions play a prominent role, especially those entrenched 
into patriarchal ideology, which either repress movements for 
gender justice, or are open to change.

Media represented and engaged the dynamics of patriarchal ideology 
throughout their tensions and progress by affirming it or by opposing it 
through various communicational processes such as journalism, 
advertisement, entertainment, social media, and so on. As such, 
organized religions had been identified not only as participants to the 
narratives and discourses on patriarchal ideology, but also as their 
protagonists or producers.

Although interdisciplinary studies on media and religion have been 
successfully consolidated in the areas of teaching and research, their 
intersection with the gender studies is still underdeveloped. Little 
attention has been given to the subject of women and the feminine in the 
study of the relationship between media and religion, and extremely 
deficient attention was given to homoaffectivity. However, there is a 
significant research opportunity due to a rich range of themes and 
phenomena that occur between gender on one hand, and the intersection 
between religion and media on the other.

Therefore, this issue of the Essachess - Journal for Communication 
Studies attempts to help filling this gap by exploring emerging themes 
and perspectives that rest at the triple intersection between gender, 
religion and media. Paper proposals are welcome with theoretical 
approaches and case studies focusing on women’s issues, as related to 
the following research subjects (but not exhaustive):

(1) the representation, the expression and the identities of women in 
secular and religious media content;

(2) the way women relate to religious representations and expressions in 
secular and religious media content;

(3) the place (role, influence, authority, visibility, leadership) of 
religious women (in institutional and non-institutional settings) in 
religious media;

(4) the actions of religious women in the struggle for gender equality 
in religious and secular media;

(5) the approaches and the representations of gender equality in world 
religions by secular media;

(6) the approaches and the representations of gender equality in world 
religions by new media.



ESSACHESS, peer-reviewed and published two times per year is covered in  
Scopus Elsevier, ERIH+, ProQuest CSA, EBSCO Publishing, Ulrich’s, Gale, 
J-Gate, Index Copernicus, CEEOL, DOAJ, SSRN, DRJI, SSOAR, GESIS, 
Genamics, HCERES.




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