[ATTW-L] #CFP: Symposium: The Homosexual Imagination: A Fifty-Year Retrospective

Fri Aug 25 12:49:22 UTC 2023

Dear Colleagues,

Please see the Call for Proposals for a Symposium on The Homosexual Imagination: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, available at https://ncte.org/resources/journals/college-english/cecalls/ and below.

Thank you,

Michael J. Faris & T J Geiger II
Symposium: The Homosexual Imagination: A Fifty-Year Retrospective
Guest editors: Michael Faris and TJ Geiger
Call for Proposals
In 1974, Louie Crew and Rictor Norton published a special issue of College English on The Homosexual Imagination(issue 36.3). This issue opens with their editorial, “The Homophobic Imagination,” which outlines how homophobia has shaped the literature that is written and read, the scholarship and criticism that is published, and the practices of English teachers. They call for “gay criticism,” which challenges normative literary judgment and aesthetics and affirms “the essential ambiguity of all human experience” (286), and for an activist and inclusive English studies. As they conclude their editorial, “The appearance of a gay space in this issue of College English is more than a refreshingly novel turn of the tables: it is a step towards human liberation.” The rest of the special issue includes artwork, interviews, essays on gay literature and pedagogy, poetry, an interview with Allen Ginsberg (reprinted from the newsletter Gay Sunshine), and a checklist of resources. This issue was, according to then-editor Richard Ohmann, “the first issue of a scholarly or professional journal ever on that subject [of homosexuality]” (quoted in Williams 60). Not surprisingly, the special issue led to much backlash, including multiple letters to the journal (printed in subsequent issues) and objections from the College Section Committee of NCTE, who were “deeply upset … that the homosexuals were now in College English,” according to Ohmann (quoted in Williams 60). The issue also earned praise at the time (e.g., Ken Macrorie wrote the journal in support), but over the last 50 years, memory of this special issue, its radicalness (both for its time and even for now), and its importance has waned. We hope to remember the issue’s significance as an achievement in the history of English studies and recognize its importance as a site of possibility in the present moment.

We are proposing a symposium that commemorates and reflects on The Homosexual Imagination and its 50th anniversary, and we invite proposals that commemorate, respond to, reflect on, and extend the contributions of The Homosexual Imagination. We are particularly interested in proposals that respond to the following questions:
●      How might we place the special issue in historical/activist context? (It is no accident that both Crew and Norton also wrote for gay activist newsletters and that the special issue was published 5 years after Stonewall and the subsequent founding of the Gay Liberation Front.)
●      How might we situate the special issue in conversation with other historical aspects of the field? For example, a contributor might address “Students’ Right to Their Own Language,” which was published in the same year (1974) in CCC (and the following year in College English). (Indeed, a 1975 letter to the editor decried NCTE for passing SRTOL, passing a resolution against textbook censorship, and publishing the special issue on The Homosexual Imagination; Pixton.) 
●      How might we extend the discussion of “the homophobic imagination” to today, placing current homophobic, queerphobic, transphobic, racist, and ableist discourses in conversation with Crew and Norton’s discussion?
●      How might we explore intersections between gay liberation in the 1970s and other issues of difference related to the profession?
●      Given the multimodal nature of the issue (including essays, artwork, and poetry), how might scholars respond to the original issue using a variety of modes and genres (e.g., comics, stencil art, collage, open letters)?
●      How might we identify models of intersectional activism in the history of the profession? (The same year the special issue was published, Crew also founded Integrity, the gay and lesbian inclusion ministry within the Episcopal Church, and he and Ernest Clay entered into an interracial marriage.)
●      How might this 1974 special issue help us reimagine possibilities for meaningful writing and action within English studies today?

Please send proposals of roughly 400-500 words to Michael J. Faris (michaeljfaris at gmail.com <mailto:michaeljfaris at gmail.com>) and T J Geiger II (tj.geiger at ttu.edu <mailto:tj.geiger at ttu.edu>) as a .docx file by Friday, October 6. College English has asked that the entire symposium be 8,500–11,000 words long, so we’re looking for final contributions that are the equivalent of roughly 1,500–2,500 words.

Commitment to Anti-Racist Scholarly Practices
Both symposium editors have read and committed to following Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors <https://tinyurl.com/reviewheuristic>. We ask that potential contributors read this document and commit to following these practices as well.

Timeline
We’re looking at the following timeline for publication of this symposium:
●      Friday, October 6: Proposals due
●      Friday, October 13: Proposals accepted/rejected
●      Sunday, December 31: First drafts due
●      Monday, January 15: Symposium editors’ feedback and instructions to authors
●      Monday, March 11: Revisions due back to symposium editors for approval
●      Monday, April 8: Additional revisions due if necessary
●      Wednesday, May 1: Full symposium with abstract, bios, permissions, editors’ intro, and completed citation checks due to College English editorial team

Some Useful Resources for Potential Contributors
●      We’ve compiled the entries of the 1974 special issue in this Google Drive folder <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UPEAE5Z81mInil4agylmW9UCtOD1XxXp?usp=sharing>. 
●      We’ve compiled letters to the editor published in College English in this Google Drive folder <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AOa5huZmVlLBhnh92hcbLSwQaabAqNye?usp=sharing>.

Dr. Michael J. Faris
Associate Chair, Department of English
Incoming Chair, Department of English
Associate Professor, Technical Communication and Rhetoric
Texas Tech University
Editor, Kairos, http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/

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