CFP: Mechademia: Second Arc, Vol. 13.1: Queer(ing), guest ed. James Welker (due 1 June 2019; published spring 2020)

Japanese manga, anime, and games culture is associated with excessive sexuality and gender-bending that have unsettled cultural norms in multiple, often queer, ways. The appeal of such queer(ing) and hypersexual attributes have at least partially driven the spread of these media and fan practices around Asia and beyond. In spite of the ongoing strong association with Japanese popular culture, however, Japan is but one of multiple centers of queer(ing) media and fan practices in contemporary Asia.

This issue of Mechademia: Second Arc will focus on queer(ing) comics, animation, and games, and other related media as well as their fandoms in Asia. The editors invite papers of 5000 to 7000 words which offer new insights on queer aspects of popular media and fandoms, or alternatively new queer(ing) perspectives on media and practices that are not self-evidently queer. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

—Asian media and fandoms and intersectional queer studies
—Fujoshi and fudanshi fan cultures
—Boys love/yaoi, and slash media
—Yuri/girls love, and femslash media
—Representations of queer identities (transgender, intersex, bisexual, pansexual, gender-fluid/genderqueer/nonbinary/X-gender, asexual, lesbian, gay, etc.)
—Queer(ing) pornographies (“hentai,” tentacles/“consentacles,” BDSM/fetish media, etc.)
—Queer(ing) fan practices (crossplay, maid cafes, butler cafes, etc.)
—Flows of queer(ing/ed) media and fandom practices around Asia

Mechademia: Second Arc is now published twice a year by University of Minnesota Press. More on the journal, including the Mechademia style guide, can be found at Mechademia.net.

The deadline for submission of complete manuscripts is 1 June 2019, with expected publication in spring 2020.