2020 Visions: Imagining (Post-) COVID Worlds
Call for Submissions
As the world approaches one year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Edge Effects invites contributors to reflect upon its impacts and to consider the new futures that might be made possible in its wake.
The ongoing public health crisis is deeply intertwined with overlapping crises of white supremacy, xenophobia, settler colonialism, ableism, and ecological degradation. Orders to “stay-at-home” and “shelter-in-place” have led to the creation of new and meaningful forms of connection for some people. For others, they’ve intensified risks: people who are incarcerated; people living in toxic environments; people experiencing houselessness, food insecurity, and dangerous “essential work” conditions in fields, shops, and factories. Exhortations to “get outside” for physical and mental wellbeing have inspired new intimacies with local environments; they’ve also spurred conversations about who “belongs” in—and has safe access to—nature, parks, and public space. With the benefit of hindsight and “2020 vision,” we hope to examine these and other aspects of the pandemic year with care and clarity.
With this reflection also comes preparation for an uncertain future, demanding renewed urgency in the struggle for hope and healing. What might healing look like beyond a framework of return? What futures become possible when going “back to normal” is no longer an option? What futures have already begun to emerge?
We welcome submissions on topics that can include, but are not limited to:
- Futures of climate, environmentalist, and environmental justice activism
- Ethics of care during a crisis
- Queer ecologies/crip ecologies that reject normative understandings of healing or cure
- Food, farming, and labor justice after COVID-19
- Gender, parenting, and other work-from-home geographies
- Indigenous sovereignty, survivance, and the pandemic
- Healing from white supremacy, anti-Black racism, Anti-Asian racism, and environmental injustices
- “Pleasure activism” and joy as resistance
- Carceral spaces, toxic prisons, and the prison abolition movement
- Mutual aid and community food projects
- Grief and mourning
- Stories of more-than-human intimacies during and beyond the pandemic
- Speculative future(s) and futurism(s)
Additional Details
Anyone is welcome to submit to this series. As always, we aim to highlight the research and writing of graduate students, postdocs, and early career scholars from a variety of disciplines, as well as work by practitioners and activists who work beyond academia’s walls. We especially welcome submissions by people of color, Black and Indigenous people, and those with underrepresented genders, including trans men, women (both cis and trans), and nonbinary, gender fluid, and two-spirit individuals.
Compensation is available for a limited number of pieces that align with our commitments to decolonial, queer feminist, and anti-racist practices. We anticipate offering $50/essay for up to eight unsolicited pieces. If you have questions or would like more information about this, please feel free to reach out to us at edgeeffects@nelson.wisc.edu.
How to Submit
- Deadline for submissions: EXTENDED: Sunday, February 21, 2021
- If you submit a previously unpublished essay (~1000 to ~2000 words), please send both a complete first draft of your piece and a brief pitch to the Edge Effects team at edgeeffects@nelson.wisc.edu. See our submissions page for pitch guidelines.
- If you submit an oral history or a creative piece—visual art, poetry, video, photo/comic/graphic essay, a hybrid or multimodal exhibit, etc—please send both your piece and a brief pitch to the Edge Effects team at edgeeffects@nelson.wisc.edu. See our submissions page for pitch guidelines.
- If your creative piece has been previously exhibited or published elsewhere, please let us know where and when in your pitch.
- We encourage those who are interested in submitting creative work to get in touch with us before submission to make sure that our website can accommodate your format.
- Before publication, anyone contributing a creative piece will be asked to write a brief introduction to their work; editors will be happy to work with you on this introduction, and the pitch will give us a good place to begin.
- If your creative piece has been previously exhibited or published elsewhere, please let us know where and when in your pitch.
- Please note that Edge Effects publishes for interdisciplinary and public audiences. Accepted pieces will move through our editorial process with this in mind.
If you have any questions about how or what to submit, feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to reading and listening to your work!
