[Commlist] Call for Papers: Transnational Queer Cultures and Digital Media

Call for Papers

Transnational Queer Cultures and Digital Media

Special Issue of/Communication, Culture & Critique/
Co-Editors: Yener Bayramoğlu, Łukasz Szulc, Radhika Gajjala

Extended Abstracts (about 1,500 words, excluding references) Deadline: 
1st June 2023
Complete Manuscript (max. 7000 words, including references) Deadline: 
1st Sept 2023
Publication Date: September 2024

Extended abstracts should be emailed to: (y.bayramoglu /at/ mmu.ac.uk), 
(lukasz.szulc /at/ manchester.ac.uk) & (radhik /at/ bgsu.edu) (include all email 
addresses).

Queer cultures have long been transnational. People not conforming to 
traditional gender and sexual roles have long exchanged letters, 
magazines, or films across borders and traveled to different places to 
fulfill themselves or meet others (Loist, 2018; Szulc, 2018). 
In times 
of rapid technological developments, large migration flows, and intense 
cross-cultural exchange, queer connections take on new forms and 
meanings that develop at the intersection of intertwined scales: urban, 
regional, national, continental, and global; physical and digital 
(Friedman, 2017; Pain, 2022; Ramos & Mowlabocus, 2020).

While exciting new research into queer digital cultures has been growing 
exponentially in the last three decades—including works that go beyond 
the dominant Anglo-American and Eurocentric perspectives—most academic 
studies on the topic fall within the confines of national case studies. 
Nations have not faded into oblivion in the 21st century as they 
continue to shape the legislative, political, and social conditions, and 
provide meaningful cultural contexts for queer lives. However, other 
scales—as well as their imbrication—remain equally important; especially 
now when, arguably, digital technologies accelerate the transnational 
interactions and transformations of culture (Brunton, 2022; Szulc, 2023).

Rethinking digital queer cultures from the vantage point of the 
transnational inevitably foregrounds the modes of becoming beyond gender 
and sexual identity. The transnational perspective does not only bring 
questions of how queerness is imagined, experienced, and practiced 
through digital media across time and space but also how it is entangled 
with postcoloniality and digital border regimes (Bayramoğlu & Lünenborg, 
2018; Boston, 2016; Shield, 2019). As the worrying developments in 
several countries over the last decade have shown, digital media open 
doors for equally transnational and digital mobilizations fueled by 
anti-queer and anti-trans ideologies, racism, and hate speech (Nash & 
Browne, 2020; Righetti, 2021). Moreover, digital media technologies turn 
queer lifeworlds into data (Bivens, 2017; Guyan, 2022), ready to be used 
and abused by national state institutions, international organizations, 
and multinational corporations.

This Special Issue will address the ambivalences of contemporary queer 
cultures by zooming in on their intrinsic transnational and digital 
condition. We invite research-based, theoretically informed, and 
critically oriented contributions on queer digital cultures that go 
beyond methodological nationalism. Single or comparative national case 
studies are welcome insofar as they contextualize the national in 
relation to other relevant scales of analysis. We seek contributions 
that highlight the importance of queer transnational cultures, 
especially in contexts that are underrepresented in Anglophone academia, 
and that challenge the tendencies towards universalizing digital queer 
cultures of the Global North.

There are no article processing charges required.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Global platforms, infrastructures, and data affecting queer cultures
- Queer transnational counterpublics and safe spaces on the internet
- Queer digital activism and solidarity across national borders
- Hybridization and creolization of queer cultures through digital media
- Queer content creators and their international audiences
- Queers’ use of local, national, and global social media platforms and apps
- Queer films, shows, and videos on transnational digital media platforms
- Queering digital diaspora, digital border, and migration
- Mediated transnational and migrant cultures of sex, romance, and dating
- Digital gender diversity, trans cultures, and anti-trans campaigns
- Digital media and queers in times of conflicts, disasters, and 
displacements
- Race, ethnicity, nationality, language, and religion in queer digital 
cultures
- Postcolonial and decolonial perspectives on queer digital cultures

Yener Bayramoğlu (he/him) is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral 
Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. His 
research focuses on queer migration, digital media, communication 
history, borders, hate speech, and disinformation. His current work 
explores media practices of belonging within queer diaspora. He is the 
author of Queere Un/Sichtbarkeiten (Queer In/Visibilities: The History 
of Queer Representation in Turkish and German Tabloid Journalism) and 
co-author of Post/pandemisches Leben (Post/Pandemic Life: A New Theory 
of Fragility), both published in Germany. His work has been published in 
several peer-reviewed journals including Media, Culture & Society and 
Ethnic & Racial Studies.

Łukasz Szulc (he/him) is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 
Digital Media and Culture at the University of Manchester, United 
Kingdom. He specializes in critical and cultural studies of digital 
media at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and transnationalism. 
His publications include a monograph Transnational Homosexuals in 
Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines 
(Palgrave, 2018), an edited collection LGBTQs, Media, and Culture in 
Europe (Routledge, 2016), and articles in such journals as Communication 
Theory, New Media & Society, and Social Media + Society. Łukasz sat on 
the board of directors at the International Communication Association 
(ICA) and was a co-chair of ICA’s LGBTQ Studies interest group between 
2017 and 2021. He is a member of editorial boards at the International 
Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, and 
Communication, Culture & Critique.

Radhika Gajjala (she/her) is a Professor of Media and Communication and 
of American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, United 
States. Her books include: Digital Diasporas: Labor and Affect in 
Gendered Indian Digital Publics (2019), Online Philanthropy in the 
Global North and South: Connecting, Microfinancing, and Gaming for 
Change (2017), Cyberculture and the Subaltern (Lexington Press, 2012), 
and Cyberselves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women (Altamira, 
2004). She has co-edited collections on Cyberfeminism 2.0 (2012), Global 
Media Culture and Identity (2011), South Asian Technospaces (2008) and 
Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice (2008). She has been co-editor of the 
journal Ada: A Journal of Gender and New Media and continues with the 
Fembot Collective as Managing Editor. She is currently working on a book 
with Rutgers Press on Global South Activist Digital Publics.

Detailed Publication Timeline

1st June 2023           Deadline for extended abstracts (1,500 words)
15th June 2023          SI editors get back to authors with decisions
1st September 2023            Deadline for the first full drafts sent to 
SI editors (7,000 words)
1st October 2023        SI editors get back to authors with feedback
1st December 2023             Deadline for the final submission to the 
journal
September 2024          Publication date

References

Bayramoğlu, Yener & Lünenborg, Margreth (2018). Queer migration and 
digital affects: Refugees navigating from the Middle East via Turkey to 
Germany. Sexuality & Culture, 22(4), 1019-1036.
Bivens, Rena (2017). The gender binary will not be deprogrammed: Ten 
years of coding gender on Facebook. New Media & Society, 19(6), 880-898.
Boston, Nicholas (2016). Libidinal cosmopolitanism: The case of digital 
sexual encounters in postenlargement Europe. In: S. Ponzanesi, and G. 
Colpani (Eds.) Postcolonial Transitions in Europe: Contexts, Practices 
and Politics (pp. 291–312). Rowman & Littlefield.
Brunton, Douglas-Wade (2022). The digital Creole. International Journal 
of Cultural Studies, 25(5), 492-499.
Friedman, Elisabeth Jay (2017). Interpreting the Internet: Feminist and 
Queer Counterpublics in Latin America. University of California Press.
Guyan, Kevin (2022). Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data 
for Action. Bloomsbury.
Loist, Skadi (2018). Crossover dreams: Global circulation of queer film 
on the film festival circuits. Diogenes, 62(1), 57-72.
Nash, Catherine Jean & Browne, Kath (2020). Heteroactivism: Resisting 
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Rights and Equalities. Zed Books.
Pain, Paromita (Ed.) (2022). LGBTQ Digital Cultures: A Global 
Perspective. Routledge.
Ramos, Regner & Mowlabocus, Sharif (Eds.) (2020). Queer Sites in Global 
Contexts: Technologies, Spaces and Otherness. Routledge.
Righetti, Nicola (2021). The anti-gender debate on social media. A 
computational communication science analysis of networks, activism, and 
misinformation. Comunicazione Politica, 23(2), 223-250.
Shield, Andrew DJ (2019). Immigrants on Grindr: Race, Sexuality and 
Belonging Online. Palgrave Macmillan.
Szulc, Łukasz (2018). Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: 
Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. Palgrave Macmillan.
Szulc, Łukasz (2023). Culture is transnational. International Journal of 
Cultural Studies, 26(1), 3-15.


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