“Queerly Canadian: Changing Narratives”—Special Issue of Canadian Literature—will highlight scholarship that explores fictional and non-fictional narratives that document individual, political, community and cultural change through the very act of enunciation. Specifically, we invite contributions to the special issue that ask how queer narratives have changed, not only the changes from l/g to l/g/b to l/g/b/t to queer, but broad shifts in codes, contexts and practices of complex identification in relation to society and to history.
We invite articles that address historical, contemporary and emergent forms of queer narrative—diverse genres, aesthetics, relevance and appeal. Contributions that explore narratives of identification from a wide range of different perspectives as well as representations and social constructions of sexual diversities through time and space are welcomed. Wide and diverse interpretations of the themes ranging from the predictable to the surprising are encouraged. Papers might address such topics as the cultural impact of Jane Rule’s fiction, the trope of desire in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For, representations of alterity in Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, or literary history in Billeh Nickerson and John Barton’s Seminal: Canada’s Gay Male Poets, queer poetics in Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child. Or, they could look at themes such as queer cultural production and globalization, queering ‘coming out’ narratives, queer readings of post-colonial Canadian narratives of (im)migration, queer representations of sexuality and censorship in Canada etc.
Essays should follow the submission guidelines of the journal: www.canlit.ca/submissions.php. Cover letters should indicate that the article is to be considered for this Special Issue.