http://www.analize-journal.ro/call-for-papers-1

CALL FOR PAPERS

The editorial board of “Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies” (www.analize-journal.ro) is pleased to welcome submissions for the 2015 issue of the journal.
The topic for the upcoming issue is: “Unveiling the Feminisms of Islam”
Orientalist discourse imposed mainly an essentialized image of „Muslim woman”, a politicized symbol of all the immutable, barbaric determinations of Islamic religion, and by extension, of a culture and civilization that should be annihilated or/and reformed. That construction about the unique status of Muslim woman was used as a supreme proof of the incompatibility between Islam and modernity.
Postmodernist feminist discourses on hegemony, representation, pluralism and diversity generated an explosion of writings on Muslim women, including writings assumed by Muslim women themselves. The dynamism of real, common Muslim women’ lives, found at the intersection of different social, political, economic, cultural and historical forces, was emphasized and explained. A more complex analysis regarding the identity construction processes, influenced by various factors as race, ethnicity, nationality, region, historical period, emerged. The process itself of producing knowledge about Islam was questioned. The sacrality of the Qur’anic text was not contested, but its various interpretations, historically monopolized by men/males conditioned by different socio-political contexts were. The questions regarding the normativity or normativities of the Islamic religion became once again central to Muslim discourses. In this context, Islamic gender[ studies focused on the idea that there is no ideal, uniform Islamic tradition, but a diversity of complex interpretations.

Nowadays we can witness a variety of perspectives about Muslim women’s roles and status in society. Still visible and quite vocal are the defensive and excessively apologetic tendencies of the Salafi, traditionalist and neo-traditionalist Muslims, men or women, doubled by an aggressive attack on secular and even Islamic feminisms. Some Muslim feminists plead for preserving and exploiting in a new manner the categories and goals specific to Islamic traditional jurisprudence. Other Muslim feminists propose a radical reform of the fundamental suppositions and principles that informed pre-modern Islamic exegesis and jurisprudence. Another category of Muslim feminists prefers to adopt and integrate the discourses, approaches and terminology used by Western feminists, sometimes translating them into the Islamic idiom, other times importing them as such, even from a secular perspective.

No wonder, all these competing contemporary views on women in Islam(s) simply reflect a social reality as diverse, complex and ‒ not so rarely ‒ very tragic as ever. We can witness in different Muslim communities a quite popular „normative” denial of women’s autonomy and right to self-determination, expressed in various modalities, from the abject, stupefying revival of the institution of slavery to the daily, unquestioned routine of women being treated as creatures that must be under the „protection” ‒ read guardianship and subordination ‒ of males. On the other extreme, there are growing Muslim communities in which women leading the prayer in a mixed congregation or performing Muslim gay marriages are accepted practices.

The following themes suggest some of possible aspects that could be approached in the submitted articles for this new issue of Analize, but any contributions regarding the topic are welcomed:
· Is gender inequality in Muslim-majority countries a direct consequence of religion, here Islam?
· How do the religious, cultural, social, political contexts influence the gender dynamics in these Muslim dominated areas?
· Who can offer the most efficient and Islamic validated ‒ or not ‒ discourse that can improve Muslim women’s status?
· What power of defining Islam have women nowadays?
· Is Islamic feminism an oxymoron?
· What are the validity, efficiency and limits of Islamic feminisms?
· Can Islamic pre-modern exegesis and jurisprudence offer a functional paradigm for improving women rights?
· Could the Qur’anic text be exploited in order to promote an egalitarian view on gender relations in conformity with the contemporary necessities and realities? What about the Sunnah?
· What was the impact of the last century fundamentalist renewal movements on Islamic feminisms?
· What is the relevance of the differences between the so-called normative formulation of women status in Islam according to various Islamic schools of thoughts and the every day realities of Muslim women lives?
· What are the differences and commonalities between the classical roles attributed to women in Islam, in its various interpretations, and in other religions?
· How is Islam feminism related (in theory and practice) to “other” feminisms? What are the common grounds (if any) among all types of feminisms?
Information for Authors

1. The manuscript should be original and not published previously. Do not submit material that is currently being considered by another journal.

Submitted manuscripts should be written in academic English of international standard in order to be considered for review.

2. Manuscripts may be 5,000 – 8,000 words. They must include abstract (maximum 300 words), summary in English (maximum 500 words), keywords (maximum 5) and the author's short biography and current affiliation.

3. The manuscript should be in MS Word format, submitted as an email attachment to our email address (contact@analize-journal.ro). The document must be set at the A4 paper size standard. The document (including the notes and bibliography) will be 1.5-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. A 12-point standard font such as Times New Roman should be used for all text, including headings, notes and bibliography.
Submissions should conform to the notes and bibliography version of The Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).
4. The journal is committed to a double-blind reviewing policy according to which the identity of both the reviewer and author is always unknown for both parties.

Manuscripts should be sent at: contact@analize-journal.ro

Submission deadline is: 1st may 2015