New Orleans:
A special issue on gender, the meaning of place, and the politics of displacement

The editors of a special issue of the NWSA Journal seek contributions offering feminist analyses of the meanings that New Orleans as a place has assumed in both historical and contemporary contexts—especially the contexts created by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Since the fall of 2005 New Orleans, as a place-name alone, prompts debates around race and class and has come to stand in for a host of issues and topics that go beyond the physical space to which the name refers. In most of these public debates, gender has not played as prominent a role as race or class, despite the fact that gendered ideas about crime, poverty, victimhood, refugee status, welfare and government aid, as well as home and homelessness implicitly inform such debates. We invite scholars as well as artists, writers and poets to submit work that explores the specifically gendered dimensions of the experience of place endured by inhabitants of the city of New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and other affected regions as it relates to the hurricane. We also welcome contributions that use feminist analytical tools to illuminate the varied meaning of New Orleans as a place set in various historical, comparative, and global contexts.

Send one e-copy and two print copies of your manuscript (20-30 pages, doubled spaced), with parenthetical notes and complete references page formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, by NOVEMBER 1, 2007 to:

Associate Professor TJ Boisseau
151 River Road
Edgecomb, ME 04556