[Commlist] Vista: call for papers on “Aesthetics in Distress: Gender-Based Violence and Visual Culture”

  Vista: call for papers on “Aesthetics in Distress: Gender-Based
  Violence and Visual Culture”

Between May 1 and July 30, is open the call for papers for 
/Vista/ journal on “Aesthetics in Distress: Gender-Based Violence and 
Visual Culture”. The issue is edited by Ece Canli (CECS, University of 
Minho) and Nicoletta Mandolini (CECS, University of Minho).

Gender-based violence (GBV), a social issue that involves acts of 
physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse exercised towards a subject 
based on her/his/their gender, remains one of the most long-standing and 
challenging problems of our times. On the one hand, the last decades 
have witnessed increasing visibility and public awareness of 
gender-based violence, thanks to feminist, queer and trans* activism, 
anti-violence efforts at a grassroots level, social media mobilisations, 
enactments of transformative justice, and the momentous shift incited by 
the #MeToo. On the other hand, the changing façade and breadth of 
violence, accompanied by the intractable depth of digital 
communications, escalating financial precarity, worldwide political 
turmoils and environmental crises, ongoing colonial practices of land 
grab, arm conflicts and the rampant displacements thereof, as well as by 
the recent COVID-19 pandemic, have exposed vulnerable groups to 
gender-based violence in sites that are not only homes, streets and 
workplaces, but also the cyberspace, camps, detention centres, 
industrial complexes, prisons, borders, and so on. Considering the 
severity and complexity of such a deeply-rooted phenomenon that needs to 
be addressed, examined and counteracted further, with this thematic 
section, we aim at providing a platform for academic, artistic and 
activist research that works at the intersection of gender-based 
violence studies and visual culture.

The visual modality has always been crucial to the perpetuation of and 
resistance to the patriarchal symbolic order from which sexist violence 
originates. Visual arts and media such as film, painting, plastic arts, 
comics, advertisement and design have notoriously been recognised as 
sites for the reproduction of GBV through the biased representation of 
binary gender categories, the infamous male gaze, the objectification of 
feminine/gender non-conforming bodies, and the fetishisation of 
violence. Simultaneously, over the last half-century, the visual has 
reached a status of privileged battlefield for cultural interventions 
carried out by feminist, LGBTQI+, intersectional and decolonial artists 
and media activists interested in confronting, and possibly subverting, 
the aforementioned sexist regime of representation.

For this thematic section, we invite scholars to submit (full-length in 
text format) articles, reviews, interviews and visual projects on 
representational, material and affective aspects of gender-based 
violence. Topics include but are not limited to:

  * art-based research on gender-based violence from artistic fields
    that deal with visuality and representation (e.g. plastic arts,
    performing arts, cinematography, multimedia arts, etc.);
  * the violence of spectatorship, male gaze and scopophilia in cinema
    and visual narratives;
  * the possibilities and power of the female gaze, queer gaze and
    oppositional gaze;
  * practice-based research on the materiality of gender-based violence
    through designed mediums (e.g., images, objects, symbols, spaces and
    digital constructions);
  * the visual aspect of (de)coloniality of gender and visual narratives
    from the margins;
  * the symbolic dimension of gender violence in media and visual culture;
  * representations of embodied violence (e.g. reproductive violence,
    injury-inflicting abuse, labour exploitation, domestic violence,
    sexual assault);
  * visualisation and materialisation of violence against women, girls,
    LGBTQAI+, non-binary and trans* folks in the arts and the media;
  * the role and performativities of femininities and masculinities in
    the context of gender-based violence;
  * intersectionality of gender-based violence in arts, media and visual
    culture;
  * historical research or up-to-date analysis of visual aspects of
    gender-based violence;
  * portrayal and perpetuation of GBV in digital communication platforms
    and new media;
  * arts, design and media as counter-hegemonic and emancipatory realms
    to combat gender-based violence.

*IMPORTANT DATES*

*Submission* (full manuscript): from May 1 to July 30

*Journal publication date*: continuous edition (July to December 2022)

*LANGUAGE*

Proposals may be submitted in Portuguese or English. After the peer 
review period, the authors of proposals accepted for publication must 
ensure the translation of their manuscripts into Portuguese or English, 
respectively. The editors will make the final decision on the 
publication of the paper.

*EDITORIAL POLICY AND SUBMISSION*

Vista is an open-access academic journal, following demanding 
peer-review standards, based on a double-blind review process. After 
submission, the papers will be forwarded to two reviewers, previously 
invited to evaluate them according to their academic quality, 
originality and relevance to the journal’s objectives and scope.

Originals must be submitted through the journal’s website 
<https://revistavista.pt/>. If you are accessing Vista for the first 
time, you must register before submitting your manuscript (instructions 
for registration here 
<https://revistavista.pt/index.php/vista/user/register>).

The guidelines for authors are available here 
<https://revistavista.pt/index.php/vista/about/submissions>.

For further information, please contact: (vista /at/ ics.uminho.pt) 
<mailto:(vista /at/ ics.uminho.pt)>

No payment from the authors will be required.

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