Call for Blog Posts
Southern Spaces is an open access, multimedia, peer-reviewed journal publishing innovative scholarship on regions, places, and cultures of the US South as well as their global connections. With the impending November 2020 elections, this call requests blog post submissions on voting, politics, political organizing, and similar subjects, emphasizing spatial interpretation and digital media. While articles or other submission types are always welcome, we’re specifically requesting blog post submissions to enable quick turnaround, as we anticipate publishing successful submissions during the fall 2020 election season.
Southern Spaces welcomes submissions that:
- critically and creatively examine real and imagined spaces and places
- make connections and comparisons between southern regions and/or locales and sites in the wider world
- use textual, visual media, archival, and ethnographic materials—including artistic expressions—to address past or present questions of voting rights, disenfranchisement, public policy, political representation, campaign technologies, redistricting, etc.
Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to):
- Political boundaries (redistricting; gerrymandering; voter suppression; voting patterns)
- Pandemic voting (voting rights; ballot initiatives; mail-in voting; voter access; United States Postal Service)
- Political activism (social justice; movements and mobilization; countermovements; grassroots efforts; the construction of group consciousness/group formation)
- De jure disenfranchisement (impacts of voting policy on local representation; disenfranchisement of social groups, including imprisoned or ex-convicted people, immigrants)
- De facto disenfranchisement and regional politics (examining how social groups redefine or reimagine political engagement; how space/place, public policy, policing, socioeconomics, or other factors affect political participation)
- Political representation (disparities between constituents and their representatives; the ethics of a representative government)
- Media and politics (news and social media; the geography of political awareness)
- Political intersections (identities and identity-based politics)
- The history of suffrage and voter suppression
- Print culture and protest (pamphlets, broadsides, flyers, picket signs, graffiti)
- Politics in fiction and popular culture
Examples
Southern Spaces continually accepts submissions within several genres of multimedia scholarship, including articles, monographs, interviews, photo essays, reviews, videos, and presentations. While all submission types are welcome, this call particularly requests blog posts, which are shorter, less formal essays or announcements of interest to the critical study of space, place, and southernness. Southern Spaces blog posts are non-peer-reviewed publications that are often topical and timely pieces of commentary, and/or descriptions of websites, exhibitions, or events that we believe to be of interest to readers of Southern Spaces. Although blog posts are not peer reviewed, they are subjected to a thorough internal review by Southern Spaces staff, and when appropriate, by external subject matter experts. View selected blog post examples below:
- Solomon, Eric. “Love and Death in Mississippi.” Southern Spaces, August 16, 2018. https://ssredesign.ecdsdev.org/2018/love-and-death-mississippi/.
- Suitts, Steve. “States’ Rights Resurgent: The Attack on the Voting Rights Act.” Southern Spaces, August 29, 2013. https://ssredesign.ecdsdev.org/2013/states-rights-resurgent-attack-voting-rights-act.
- Wilkerson, Jessica. “You Can’t Eat Coal, and Other Lessons from Appalachian History.” Southern Spaces, March 12, 2019. https://ssredesign.ecdsdev.org/2019/you-cant-eat-coal-and-other-lessons-appalachian-womens-history/.
Submit all inquiries and materials to Southern Spaces managing editor Madison Elkins at seditor@emory.edu. Submissions are especially welcome before October 1, 2020.
There is no submission fee or article processing charge. Visit our submissions page for more information. Southern Spaces does not consider previously published work or simultaneous submissions. At the time of publication, authors may choose to retain copyright of their work or select a Creative Commons license. All publications, along with their associated media, are securely archived by the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship.