FemSpec Special Issue: Call for Papers.

Femspec is now welcoming critical and creative contributions which address questions of

gender and/or sexuality in the dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, as part of the special

issue guest edited by Miguel Sebastián-Martín (Universidad de Salamanca, Spain).

Contributions may pay attention to those aspects of Black Mirror that are centrally and

ostensibly about gender and/or sexuality, but they may also focus on the gaps, omissions or

misrepresentations that conform with and/or reinforce patriarchal normativity. Regarding

creative contributions, we encourage writers to submit feminist rewritings of any episode of

Black Mirror, especially if they aim at deepening and/or amending the narratives (i.e. by

changing endings, revising specific aspects, giving voice to “background” characters, etc.). With

respect to critical contributions, we welcome essays that (a) do close critical analyses of

specific episodes, (b) reflect upon recurrent topics of the whole series, or (c) examine

the series’ own context of production.

Besides the above-mentioned questions, some possible topics for critical analysis and themes

for creative writing can be found in the following list. In any case, these topics should be

examined with a central emphasis on their intersection with questions of gender and/or

sexuality:

•  Algorithmic biases

•  Artificial creatures, androids, robots, and other Frankensteinian creatures

•  Bodily modifications and transhuman corporeality

•  Black Mirror and blackness

•  Black Mirror’s production (writers, actors, producers, etc.)

•  Digital control

•  Digital domesticity and domotics

• Digital (gendered) labor

•  Digital racialisation

•  Femininities, masculinities, and/or non-binary gender expressions

•  Intersectional perspectives and interpretations

•  Memory and history

•  Motherhood, fatherhood, and parenthood

•  New technologies in medical praxis

•  Private and public spaces in the digital age

•  Self and subjectivity in digital environments

•  Sex work and sexploitation

•  Sexuality and sexual orientations

•  Spectators and users, passivity and interactivity

•  Subversive and/or non-conforming practices

•  The mediated gaze

•  Virtual realities and cyberspaces.

All contributors are required to subscribe via the Paypal

forms available on the journal’s website, https://www.femspec.org/subscribe. Submissions must also be sent via Femspec’s Submission Form, https://www.femspec.org/submission-form, respecting the journal’s Submission Guidelines. The deadline for submissions

is January 1st, 2023.