[Commlist] Call for Papers - Impregnable

*CALL FOR PAPERS*
*Impregnable:  Mediated Meanings of the Body in Resistance*
Impregnability has many strong meanings - not becoming pregnant but also 
capable of withstanding assault.  It's a term that lives in connotative 
alignment with infertility, of non- and un-reproducibility, but it also 
carries presence over absence, power over victimization. Think 
protesters who link arms to create an impregnable wall of resistance.  
Think castles that cannot be stormed.  Indeed, the word literally means 
“unable to be defeated or destroyed; unassailable.”
Increasingly, we argue, to be impregnable is a position of political 
potentiality amidst a social and legal reality of restricted 
reproductive rights, rampant transphobia, heightened surveillance, 
brutal terrorization, and the removal of basic health care options that 
have made sexual experience and experimentation fraught for those who 
are fertile.  We are interested in examining how media as largely 
imagined (film, television, the internet, podcasts, etc.) has recently 
become fixated with the impregnable body — from the AI world of robot 
sex or computer girlfriends, to contemporary discourses on trans and 
queer bodies and panics over (pre-pubescent) children, to the post-Roe 
rise of menopausal memoir and romance, to popular resistance 
movements.  Indeed, in the context of abortion rights, we would argue 
that while Roe has been overturned, the fight for reproductive freedom 
and gender justice continues to play out in and through representation.
We seek essays for a book that will engage with and expand 
Impregnability as a concept and analytical framework in and through 
media.  These might include mediated narratives about:

  * Forced or elective sterilization
  * AI companions
  * Abortion
  * Infertility
  * Childlessness by choice
  * Queer and Trans futurity
  * Extermination of the AWFUL (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal)
  * Feminism as a Means of Limitation and/or Empowerment
  * Resistance through recalcitrance

We have strong interest from a highly respected university press and 
will move to secure a contract as soon as our roster of authors is set.
If interested, please send a title and 500-word abstract to Brenda Weber 
(breweber /at/ iu.edu); Jen Maher (jemaher /at/ iu.edu); and Emmy Vaught 
(emvaugh /at/ iu.edu) by March 21, 2026.  Final essays will be 5,000 words; due 
January 15, 2027.

We are happy to consult with interested authors in advance of submission.

Brenda R. Weber, Provost Professor and Jean C. Robinson Scholar, 
Department of Gender Studies, Indiana University
Emerald Vaught, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Gender Studies, 
Indiana University
Jennifer E. Maher, Professor of Gender Studies, Indiana University


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