Over the last 15 years, Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies and other publications have featured a range of writing and scholarship about queer issues, identity and representations related to the Whedonverses but there has not yet been a publication dedicated solely to queer Whedon studies. A renewed interest in feminism and queer identities in mainstream culture and academia, alongside greater public recognition for LGBTQ issues and more attention being paid to popular culture across media: all suggest that the time is right for a concentrated examination of the Whedonverses from the perspective of queer theory and queer identities as they overlap but also differ, in all their complexity as they exist within an intersectional world. The editors of this Slayage special issue thus invite proposals for papers on any aspect of queerness and the Whedonverses, in specific national or international contexts.

Contributions may focus on, but are not restricted to:

  • Queer sex and sexualities
  • Queer bodies
  • Queering as a discourse or position of subversion or “troubling” normativity
  • Queer studies, the Whedonverses, and the academy
  • Teaching queer studies via Whedonverse texts
  • Subject-specific approaches to queering the Whedonverses
  • Intersectional approaches to queerness within the Whedonverses
  • Production and creation
  • Acting and performance
  • Audiences, reception, consumption
  • Fan activity and production
  • Formats, platforms and media—are some more open to being queered than others?
  • Aesthetics (including sound and music)
  • Comparative studies of Whedonverse productions, or the Whedonverses and, e.g., the Marvel Universe
  • Genres and genre-queering: comedy, musical, melodrama, horror, Gothic, action, science fiction, superheroes
  • Tropes, stereotypes and the same old stories
  • Cult and mainstream, high and low culture, taste and ‘quality’

Send a 200-300 word proposal and a short bio by 16 December 2016 to Lorna Jowett (lorna.jowett@northampton.ac.uk) and Hélène Frohard-Dourlent (helenefd@gmail.com), who will notify you early in January 2017 if your proposal is accepted. If your proposal is accepted please note that a first draft will be due in April 2017.