CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS Becoming creative in researching gender and sexuality in childhood and youth

We are inviting proposals for a chapter for an international edited collection entitled "Creative research on gender and sexuality in childhood and youth” edited by Tuija Huuki, Suvi Pihkala, EJ Renold and Carol A Taylor.

There has been an emergence of creative methodologies in the past few years that take inspiration from feminist, queer, trans*, indigenous, decolonial, new materialist, and posthuman approaches to gender and sexuality research in childhood and youth studies (e.g. Leahy and Lupton 2021; Osgood and Robinson 2019; Gilbert and Fields 2023; Ringrose et al. 2018). These methodologies are radically re-defining and re-focusing what else gender and sexuality research with children and young people can be, in new ethical, political and transformative ways and across a variety of contexts. This proposed collection aims to surface and open up the challenges and affordances of what it means to become creative with doing gender and sexuality research Otherwise and in ways that are responsive and response-able with what comes to matter and affect in all aspects of the research process.

As editors, we are keen for the collection to gather and guide gender and sexuality researchers in the field of childhood and youth to journey with us in making chapters that can speculate and explore the ethical-political possibilities offered by creative, art-ful methodologies. Keen to foreground projects and practices that matter-realise response-ability, we invite reflections on methodologies that demonstrate a care-ful curiosity for how gender and sexuality research is configured, conducted and makes its way in the world. For us, this means taking seriously how ‘matters of concern and matters of care are shot through with one another’ (Barad, cited in Kleinman. 2012, 69) so that research (however defined and designed) is always already marbled with an ethical carrying capacity that is attuned to the relational ripples and forces of in/justice and in/equity that mediate the human and more-than-human landscapes of doing gender and sexuality research with children and young people. Being and becoming attentive to how creative research methodologies can spark and activate affirmative and transformative relations in this field is a problematic and a potential that this call is also particularly interested in nurturing.

In summary, the edited collection hopes to bring together creative, curious, ethical and transformative research/ers, who are cultivating new ways of doing gender and sexuality research Otherwise with children and young people and/or in the field of childhood and youth studies.

We encourage childhood and youth researchers who are making methodologies that attune and affirm the full ecology and diversity of experience in how gender and sexuality is becoming and mattering. Understanding childhoods and youth as emergent in material-affective assemblages, across time-space-age domains, potential contributors can both discuss work with children and young people but also approach the figure of the child and youth more widely. Matterphorical (Gandorfer and Ayub 2021) methodologies that explore how the concepts of ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ come to matter in the field of childhood and youth are also encouraged. Given the outline of our call above, and the ways in which the creative arts and artful methodologies traverse modes and paradigms, it will be no surprise that we anticipate contributions that are trans-disciplinary and located in and across a range of post-theory-doings (e.g. poststructural, postqualitative, posthuman etc). We also encourage explorations into the generative tensions of what it means to work creatively in a single discipline (e.g. health, education, leisure studies) or context (e.g. a school, a museum, a hospital ward) and welcome chapters that exploit and incorporate a range of expressions (e.g. image assemblages, insta-poems, speculative fiction etc.).

If this slightly unwieldy - wildy call interests you, the submission process is as follows.

Submission process:

For proposed contributions, please submit an abstract of 150 words with 5 keywords to suvi.pihkala@oulu.fi by June 5, 2023. You can download a template for abstracts here https://bit.ly/41XxORZ or use the template titles below.

• Title of Your proposal
• Author(s) Name, affiliation, email and bio of max. 100 words for all authors
• Abstract of 150 words
• Keywords max. 5 keywords
• Images (if applicable)
• Alternative formatting (e.g. poetry, if applicable)

Based on the abstracts, the editors will invite contributors to submit a full chapter of 4 000-7 000 words (including references) according to the timeline below. If you are including images or alternative formatting (e.g. poetry) in your chapter, please give as much detail as possible. We are currently negotiating the collection to be published in Routledge and will keep invited contributors updated on the process.

Expected timeline

• Abstract submissions deadline: June 5 2023
• Acceptance of abstracts: by June 30 2023
• Full paper first draft: 31st of January 2024
• First feedback from peer review: March 31 2024
• Full paper second draft: July 19 2024
• Second feedback for authors: Sept 30 2024
• Final drafts: December 1 2024
  

Editorial team

Assoc. Prof., Dr. Tuija Huuki, University of Oulu, Finland
Dr. Suvi Pihkala, University of Oulu, Finland
Prof EJ Renold, Cardiff University, UK
Prof Carol A Taylor, University of Bath, UK

For inquiries and abstracts, please contact Dr Suvi Pihkala, suvi.pihkala@oulu.fi

References

Fields, J. & Gilbert, J. (2023). Adventures in gender and sexualities education: theory as practice. Sex Education, 23:3, 239-244,

Gandorfer, D. & Ayub, Z. (2021). Introduction: Matterphorical. Theory & Event 24 (1), 2-13.

Kleinman, A. (2012) ‘Intra-actions’ (Interview of Karen Barad by Adam Kleinman). Mousse 34: 76–81.

Leahy, D. and Lupton, D. (2021). Creative Approaches to Health Education: New Ways of Thinking, Making, Doing, Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge.

Ringrose, J., Warfield, K. and Zarabadi, S. (Eds.) (2018). Feminist posthumanisms, new materialisms and education. London: Routledge.

Osgood, J. & Robinson. K. (2019). Feminists Researching Gendered Childhoods: Generative Entanglements. Bloomsbury.

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