CFP: Queer Youth Cultures Editors Susan Driver Contemporary Studies Wilfrid Laurier University [log in to unmask] Mocha Jean Herrup Radio-Television-Film Austin Community College [log in to unmask] We are inviting submissions for an interdisciplinary collection on queer youth cultures. From the everyday worlds of queer youth self-representation and community involvement to spectacular displays of performative transgression, we are interested in essays that engage with the rich textures of contemporary queer youth cultural formations. We are gathering together essays that explore a broad range of queer youth cultural issues through multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives. Overview Academic discourses have historically worked to exclude gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning youth from their research practices and theoretical frameworks. This has resulted in a predominance of heteronormative ways of understanding youth experiences and creative cultural activities. It has also worked to reinforce a gap between academic knowledges and the complex worlds of youth who challenge and exceed binary sex/gender/sexual categorizations. Our aim is to expand critical thinking about youth cultures by compiling essays attuned to the specific contexts, communities and subjectivities of queer youth. Over the last decade a broad range of queer youth cultures have emerged to transform relations of production and reception, as well as expanding public spaces and textual forms through which youth make meaning for themselves. At this historical moment it becomes important to develop tools to recognize and engage queer youth cultures in ways that are respectful and supportive, and that remain open to and enabling of emerging social articulations. Our goal is to challenge generalizing images of youth through representations and analysis of queer youth cultures that utilize detailed textual and ethnographic methods. Reflexive forms of writing are also encouraged as a way to question and bridge relations between youth and researchers. Creative visual artwork, comics and photography will also be considered as an important element to enhance the field of queer youth cultural representation. We are especially looking for new theoretical and methodological approaches to studying youth that enable innovative practices of interpretation. Topics We are interested in papers which deal especially (but not exclusively) with the following topics: -grrrl bands -transgender youth -online identities and networks -community/festival organizing -theorizing queer youth cultures -youth produced video -film and television representations -grassroots activism -performance cultures such as drag kings, burlesque and spoken word -practices of self-representation -alternative sexual cultures -creative fictions by/for/about queer youth -queer youth visual cultures Submission Guidelines Please send a 500 word abstract by November 1, 2004. Send your submission as an email attachment in word along with a brief C.V. or bio to both editors: [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] Please feel free to contact us for further information. ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu