Call for Papers

"States of Insecurity and the Gendered Politics of Fear"
Special Issue of the National Women's Studies Association Journal (Fall 2005)
Co-editors: Dr. Carol Stabile and Dr. Carrie Rentschler
Women's Studies Program, University of Pittsburgh
Deadline for Submissions: 1 July 2004

Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. attack on Iraq, the concept of security has taken on a meaning distinct from previous uses. Where prior meanings of security denoted employment and social security, and general public welfare, today, the military/prison/industrial complex has hijacked the term "security" to provoke fear and anxiety among the domestic population through specifically gendered means. Official public debates about fear and global security issues often use women as a screen for militarization, and a lever for militarized action on behalf of the military/prison/industrial complex.

This special issue will look at the ways in which discourses of fear engendered by the security state dovetail with gendered ideologies of victimization. Following Cynthia Enloe's (2000) lead in her book Maneuvers, this special issue calls for a renewal of feminist theorizing and practice that directly challenges the militarization of insecurity and fear. We are interested in submissions that examine how discourses of fear and insecurity are gendered, and the ways in which feminists are responding to them. We are particularly interested in submissions that de-center September 11th and the way it stands in for "global insecurity" and "fear."

Contributors might consider these topics: global trade and trafficking in women and weapons, the international deployment of private security forces, the booming U.S. prison industry and the burgeoning numbers of imprisoned women, the ways the category of "woman" is invoked by elites to justify military violence, how victim status is unequally distributed across categories of social difference, examples of policymaking that do or do not reproduce privileged categories of victimhood, the construction of nationhood through narratives of gendered victimization, specific feminist responses to security policy, and media representations of gendered fear and insecurity, among others.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 150 words along with completed essays of no more than 30 pages, including notes and references. Submissions can be sent to Dr. Carrie Rentschler and Dr. Carol Stabile, Women's Studies Program, 2E30 WWPH, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Send three copies of the manuscript. Style guidelines for the NWSA Journal are available at www.nwsaj.engl.iastate.edu. Inquiries can be directed to Carol Stabile at cstabile+@pitt.edu.