Call for Papers Issue 13 (February 2026)
Posted on 2025-03-14Beyond Celebration: Imaginaries Regarding Women’s Authorship and Literary Genealogies
On 25 May 2025, prestigious writer, philosopher, and diplomat Rosario Castellanos would have turned one hundred years old. Many are the reasons why we may and must celebrate the life and works of the author of Balún Canan (1957) and Woman Who Knows Latin… (1973), among others. The extraordinary number of events planned for her commemoration demonstrates the transcendence of Castellanos in the literary world. Rosario is the woman for whom the Glorieta de los Hombres Ilustres [Roundabout of Illustrious Men] was renamed Glorieta de las Personas Ilustres [Roundabout of Illustrious People] so that it could house her. Her name appears on the marquee of countless schools, cultural centres, bookstores, and libraries. When a name was sought for a new public university, hers was chosen as the appropriate one to demonstrate a gender-perspective renewal in the parameters of canon creation in Mexico.
In the decade when this literary Mexican figure was born, Virginia Woolf’s pioneering essay, A Room of One’s Own (1929), was also taking shape. In the latter text, the author addresses the problems faced by women when seeking to enter the world of literature. The concept that gives the book its title explains that a woman who intends to become a writer “must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” and Woolf’s development of the fictional character of Judith Shakespeare serves as a paradigmatic case to demonstrate how a woman, with the same original abilities as William Shakespeare, would not have had access to the spaces and tools to develop her literary art due to the apparently “simple problem” of being a woman. Woolf’s intellectual contribution remains, since then, a key in the configuration of what would later become Women Studies. Thus, both Woolf and Castellanos are figures in 20th-century literary history who are often invoked as examples and proof that women can, must, and are willing to enter the circuits of the literary world. What’s more, they prove that, in many cases, they were already present in said circuits.
In this regard, in issue 13 of Nuevas Poligrafías, we would like to take advantage of this opportunity not only to celebrate these well-known figures but also, and mainly, to reflect on the reasons behind the definition and understanding of what it means, and has meant, to be a woman writer. In literary and cultural studies over the last three decades, multiple reflections have arisen not only on how a woman writer is defined, but also on how the symbolic negotiations that make her legible in the literary and cultural fields are established. These questions have addressed issues regarding literary genres; the concept of authorship; the place and cultural standing of the body; the division between a public and a private (or even secret) authorial figure; the need to establish genealogies of women; and the ethical shifts that result from the reformulation of literary and cultural histories in terms of the concept of gender identity. Bearing these ideas in mind, Nuevas Poligrafías. Revista de Teoría Literaria y Literatura Comparada invites specialists in the fields of literature, the arts, and humanities in general to submit original, unpublished articles that address the topic of female authorship, its presence, and its genealogies.
Suggested (but not restrictive) topics include:
- Authorship and gender identity
- Women and literary histories: conversations and genealogies
- Women and translation
- Digital literature by women
- Women and urban spaces in literature
- Women, orality, writing and native languages
- Women and multi/trans/interculturality
- Women, writing and education
- Women and self-representation
- Women, bodies and desires
- Women and the writings of the self, or the “I” / first person writings
- Women biographers and biographed women.
All contributions must adhere to the general requirements and editorial guidelines established by the journal, and they should be submitted through the editorial manager of the journal’s website. Although we receive contributions all year round, the deadline for papers to be included in the 13th issue is August 4th, 2025. The publication of issue 13 of the journal is scheduled for February 2026.