Call for Submissions
Southern Spaces invites scholars, critics, writers, health care providers, public health practitioners, activists, media producers, community organizers, and patients to submit 1,000-word blog posts, as well as longer articles and media productions, that address the continuing public health and political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Queries and abstracts are also welcome.
Southern Spaces is an open access, multimedia journal publishing innovative work on regions, places, and cultures of the US South and their global connections. We welcome submissions that creatively examine real and imagined spaces and places through the use of textual, visual media, archival, and ethnographic materials—including artistic expressions.
The COVID-19 series examines relationships between pandemic public health and specific geographies in the US and global South. We encourage interdisciplinary perspectives, critical approaches to space and place, and work that foregrounds the pandemic perspectives and experiences of BIPOC and other marginalized groups.
We are especially interested in individual experiences of Covid that address larger societal questions both in the US and globally, such as:
- How are individual and collective memories shaping and being shaped by conflicting historical narratives of the Covid pandemic?
- How has Covid exacerbated racial, gender, ethnic, and class disparities in healthcare systems and public health infrastructure?
- How did the politicization of Covid impede mobilization for the crisis, affect vaccination strategies and distribution efforts, and/or shape conflicting narratives of the pandemic in the US and globally?
- How has the Covid pandemic differed from previous pandemics such as HIV, polio, the 1918 influenza pandemic, smallpox and yellow fever?
- How is Covid impacting modes of expression for artists and writers?
- How have diverse forms of media carried, shaped, and spread political ideas and religious beliefs related to Covid?
- What are representative symbols and sites of this pandemic (e.g. masks, vaccines, ventilators, Zoom/virtual meetings)?
- How have individuals experienced affective dimensions of the pandemic, including transformative expressions of grief, loss, community, and connection?
- How did the pandemic transform the urban landscape, e.g. occupancy of office buildings; closure of retail stores; restructuring of restaurants and pedestrian spaces?
- How are the over one million lives lost to Covid in the United States being remembered?
How to Submit
Submissions, queries, and abstracts are welcome immediately and will be considered on an ongoing basis. The Covid series is part of Public Health in the US and Global South, edited by Dr. Mary E. Frederickson. Submit all inquiries and materials to Southern Spaces managing editor Mary Ann Robertson at seditor@emory.edu. See the Southern Spaces submissions guidelines for style and formatting. The pieces currently published in the Covid series can be found below under “Similar Publications.”