[Commlist] Call for papers: A ‘postfeministsensibility’ 20 years on - Examining transformations in contemporary media cultures

Special Issue call for papers: A ‘postfeminist sensibility’ 20 years on: 
Examining transformations in contemporary media cultures

Guest editors Katrin Schindel, Christina Scharff, and Simidele Dosekun 
are seeking submissions for a Special Issue in the European Journal of 
Cultural Studies to mark the 20th anniversary of Rosalind Gill’s 
influential piece, ‘Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a 
sensibility’ (2007).

Feminist media scholars have critically examined postfeminism as a 
powerful cultural force in structuring femininity under neoliberalism 
for quite some time now (see for instance Negra and Tasker, 2007; 
McRobbie, 2009; Gill and Scharff, 2011; Winch, 2013; Dobson, 2015; 
Dosekun, 2020; Jia, 2026). In her generative and widely cited article, 
Gill (2007) characterised postfeminism as a ‘distinctively new 
sensibility’ circulating in popular culture and media. Highlighting 
various ‘elements’, Gill (2007) noted the centring of the female body, 
women’s self-surveillance and -monitoring, as well as a focus on 
individualism, choice, and empowerment as emblematic of a postfeminist 
sensibility. Importantly, a key element is postfeminism’s ambivalent 
relation to feminism, where, in Angela McRobbie’s (2009) formulation, 
‘feminism is taken into account’ while simultaneously ‘repudiated’ (see 
also Scharff, 2012). Since then, the notion of a postfeminist 
sensibility has been widely taken up. Critical feminist scholarship 
extended the analysis of postfeminist subjects intersectionally (Dolan 
and Tincknell, 2012; Butler, 2013; Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 2017; 
McNicholas Smith and Tyler, 2017; Hill, 2023) and conceptualised 
postfeminism as ‘transnational culture’ (Dosekun, 2015) which circulates 
globally (Dutta, 2021; Yang, 2023), demonstrating its malleability and 
adaptability. The notion of a postfeminist sensibility has also 
increasingly been understood in terms of a psychological register 
encompassing affects such as ‘confidence’, ‘resilience’, and 
‘positivity’, which are expected from women and marginalised groups in 
times of wider global crises, foregrounding individual psychological 
transformation over structural change (Dobson and Kanai, 2019; Orgad and 
Gill, 2022).
A decade after her groundbreaking article, Gill (2016; 2017) reviewed 
the continued analytical relevance of a postfeminist sensibility. 
Fuelled by a rise of digital activisms (Mendes et al., 2019; Jackson et 
al., 2020), ‘popular feminism’ (Banet-Weiser, 2018) and ‘neoliberal 
feminism’ (Rottenberg, 2018) had gained new currency in mainstream and 
digital media and celebrity cultures (Kanai, 2020; Lawson, 2022; Raun 
and Christensen-Strynø, 2022). Despite these ‘new feminist 
visibilities’, Gill (2016) concluded that postfeminism had not lost is 
‘analytical relevance’ and, indeed, had become ‘virtually hegemonic’ 
(2017). As we approach the 20th anniversary of ‘Postfeminist media 
culture: Elements of a sensibility’ (Gill, 2007), it appears that a 
postfeminist sensibility continues to be pervasive in contemporary 
digital cultures – albeit often in adaptive ways that embrace feminism, 
anti-racism, and intersectionality much more openly (Banet-Weiser et 
al., 2020). Recent feminist scholarship has shown how postfeminist 
vocabularies are increasingly employed both in left-wing (Schindel, 
2026) and more reactionary and nostalgic engagements with feminism (Kay, 
2025; Martin, 2025), while others have described a ‘turn away from 
popular feminism’ (Skyes, 2025) and a ‘popular feminist fatigue’ (Fehr 
et al., 2026).
We therefore ask: In which ways are postfeminist vocabularies 
articulated in contemporary global digital and popular media cultures? 
To what extent does the concept of a postfeminist sensibility remain a 
useful one for feminist theory, and in which ways should it, including 
its individual elements, be reconceptualised? Noting that ‘”feminist 
times” are never singular’ (Dosekun, 2021), we are interested in 
submissions exploring the following areas:

  * Reflections on ‘popular feminist fatigue’ (Fehr et al., 2026), and
    whether this means a return to postfeminist ideals or other new trends
  * Postfeminist and popular feminist ‘mutations’, such as ‘nihilistic
    feminism’ (Whiteside, 2026) or ‘reactionary feminisms’ (Kay, 2025)
  * Postfeminism and the interplay with neoliberal and popular feminism
    (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Rottenberg, 2018)
  * Postfeminism and the politics of inclusion / exclusion (Butler, 2013)
  * Left- and right-wing uses of postfeminism
  * Postfeminism and the manosphere / anti-feminism
  * Postfeminism and digital platforms / algorithms / AI
  * Postfeminism as transnational culture (Dosekun, 2015)
  * The psychic and affective life of postfeminism
  * Postfeminism and the body

We are looking for:

  * Research articles (7000 - 8000 words)
  * Shorter articles / comment pieces for the /Cultural Commons /section
    (1500 - 3000 words)
  * Book reviews relevant to the Special Issue theme

Abstract submission and timeline:
Please submit your abstract / suggestion for a book review and short 
author bio through this form: _https://forms.gle/k9HvbTgZrZmhxtaq6_ 
<https://forms.gle/k9HvbTgZrZmhxtaq6>. Please send any queries to 
(katrin.schindel /at/ kcl.ac.uk).
Closing date for abstracts is Friday, 30th October 2026. We will aim to 
confirm whether we would like to go ahead with your full submission by 
mid-December 2026. Full submissions will be due Monday, 14th June 2027. 
No payment from the authors will be required for publication in the 
special issue.

References
Banet-Weiser S (2018) /Empowered: Popular feminism and popular misogyny. 
/Durham: Duke University Press.
Banet-Weiser S, Gill R and Rottenberg C (2020) Postfeminism, popular 
feminism and neoliberal feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and 
Catherine Rottenberg in conversation. /Feminist Theory /21(1): 3-24.
Butler J (2013) For white girls only? Postfeminism and the politics of 
inclusion. /Feminist Formations /25(1): 35-58.
Dobson A (2015) /Postfeminist digital cultures: Femininity, social 
media, and self-representation. /New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dobson AS and Kanai A (2019) From “can-do” girls to insecure and angry: 
affective dissonances in young women’s post-recessional media. /Feminist 
Media Studies /19(6): 771-786.
Dolan J and Tincknell E (2012) /Ageing femininities: Troubling 
representations. /London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Dosekun S (2015) For Western Girls Only? Post-feminism as transnational 
culture. /Feminist Media Studies /15(6): 960-975.
Dosekun S (2020) /Fashioning postfeminism: Spectacular femininity and 
transnational culture. /University of Illinois Press.
Dosekun S (2021) Reflections on “thinking postfeminism transnationally”. 
/Feminist Media Studies /21(8): 1378–1381.
Dutta N (2021) “I like it clean”: Brazilian waxing and postfeminist 
subjectivity among South Asian beauticians in London. /Frontiers in 
Sociology /6(646344): 1-10.
Fehr C, Rodriguez LGV and Ringrose J (2026) From hot-girls to femcels: 
Algorithmic logics and (popular) feminist fatigue on TikTok. 
/Postdigital Science and Education/. DOI: 10.1007/s42438-025-00620-6.
Gerodetti N and McNaught-Davis M (2017) Feminisation of success or 
successful femininities? Disentangling ‘new femininities’ under 
neoliberal conditions. /European Journal of Women’s Studies /24(4): 351-365.
Gill R (2007) Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. 
/European Journal of Cultural Studies /10(2): 147-166.
Gill R (2016) Post-postfeminism?: New feminist visibilities in 
postfeminist times. /Feminist Media Studies /16(4): 610-630.
Gill R (2017) The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism: 
A postfeminist sensibility 10 years on. /European Journal of Cultural 
Studies /20(6): 606-626.
Gill R and Scharff C (2011) New Femininities: Postfeminism, 
Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hill S (2023) Locating disability within online body positivity 
discourses: An analysis of #DisabledAndCute. /Feminist Media Studies 
/23(4): 1311-1326.
Jackson SJ, Bailey M, Welles BF, et al. (2020) /#HashtagActivism: 
Networks of race and gender justice. /MIT Press.
Jia X (2026) /Gender and Postfeminism in Chinese Reality Dating Shows. 
/Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kanai A (2020) Between the perfect and the problematic: Everyday 
femininities, popular feminism, and the negotiation of 
intersectionality. /Cultural Studies /34(1): 25-48.
Kay JB (2025) The reactionary turn in popular feminism. /Feminist Media 
Studies /25(8): 1853–1870.
Lawson CE (2022) /Just like us: Digital debates on feminism and fame. 
/Rutgers: Rutgers University Press.
Martin J (2025) /Feminism and domesticity in times of crisis: The rise 
of austerity celebrity. /London: Bloomsbury Academic.
McNicholas Smith K and Tyler I (2017) Lesbian brides: post-queer popular 
culture. /Feminist Media Studies /17(3): 315–331.
McRobbie A (2009) /The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social 
change. /London: Sage.
Mendes K, Ringrose J and Keller J (2019) /Digital feminist activism: 
Girls and women fight back against rape culture. /Oxford University Press.
Negra D and Tasker Y (2007) Interrogating postfeminism: Gender and the 
politics of popular culture. Duke University Press.
Orgad S and Gill R (2022) /Confidence culture. /Durham and London: Duke 
University Press.
Raun T and Christensen-Strynø MB (2022) ‘We belong to something 
beautiful’: Julie Vu’s and Madeline Stuart’s use of minority identity as 
a popular feminist self-branding strategy on Instagram. /Information, 
Communication & Society /25(12): 1790-1807.
Rottenberg C (2018) /The rise of neoliberal feminism. /Oxford University 
Press.
Scharff C (2012) /Repudiating feminism: Young women in a neoliberal 
world. / Farnham: Ashgate.
Schindel K (2026) The politics of ‘including everyone’: Popular 
intersectionality as new feminist sensibility in digital feminism. 
/European Journal of Cultural Studies/. DOI: 10.1177/13675494261421520.
Skyes I (2025) From ‘girlboss’ to #stayathomegirlfriend: The 
romanticisation of domestic labour on TikTok. /European Journal of 
Cultural Studies /28(3): 830-848.
Whiteside A (2026) Feminism, so confusing: Charli XCX’s Brat and 
nihilistic feminism. /Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies/. DOI: 
10.1080/14791420.2026.2637426. 1–18.
Winch A (2013) /Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood. /London: 
Palgrave Macmillan.
Yang F (2023) Post-feminism and chick flicks in China: Subjects, 
discursive origin and new gender norms. /Feminist Media Studies /23(3): 
1059–1074.
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