Writing in the Backlash

Dear Colleagues,

If the arc of history bends towards justice, as liberals like to avow, then history is playing a very long game. Women worldwide are facing an erasure of rights that took centuries to achieve, with patriarchy re-asserting itself across the globe. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have enacted ever more oppressive gender laws, forbidding women to study, work, and even speak in public. The Iranian “Women, Life, Freedom” protests continue, resisting what Amnesty International have labelled a “war on girls and women”. In sub-Saharan Africa, civil wars have seen militias and government troops alike using rape and gendered violence as instruments of terror against women on an unprecedented scale. In Russia and Hungary, legislation protecting women against rape and domestic violence has been rolled back, and rigid gender roles have been prescribed as the antidote to Western ideologies. In the West, the rise of hard-right ideology has seen feminism and equal rights recast as “gender ideology”, and an unremitting war against trans people is underway. In the USA, the repeal of Roe v. Wade has led to a concerted assault on reproductive rights, a repeal of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, and the emergence of pronatalist ideologies. On social media, the rise of “tradwife” influencers and extremist men’s rights activists reveals an ongoing cultural fascination with the subjugation of women. Twenty-first-century women’s writing reflects this maelstrom, writing within and in response to the global conservative backlash. Experimenting with form, genre, voice, and narrative, women’s writing and feminist literature responds to conservative restrictions on women’s rights and contributes to resistance efforts against the narrowing of political liberty.

This Special Issue of Humanities considers how contemporary women’s writing operates in and resists a reactionary global political climate. Papers reflecting on twenty-first-century women’s writing from all corners of the globe that are informed by an expansive understanding of gender are particularly encouraged.

Suggested topics for papers could include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Women’s literary responses to the new right/alt-right;
• Women’s literature from the Global South;
• Women’s contemporary writing as resistance;
• Feminist literary production and de/colonial politics;
• Literary representations of women’s experience of reproduction and the body;
• Contemporary literary depictions of motherhood and/or ageing;
• Women’s writing and precarity;
• Literary form and feminist politics;
• Diasporic women’s writing and women’s refugee narratives;
• Marginalized genders and literary voice;
• Genders and genre fiction;
• Twenty-first-century women’s life-writing;
• Women and contemporary literary digital culture.

Dr. Maggie Tonkin
Dr. Brydie Kosmina
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• women’s writing
• feminist literary production
• literary representations