*CFP* "GENDERS AND SEXUALITIES IN ASIAN CINEMAS", SPECIAL ISSUE, KRITIKA KULTURA

The circulation, commodification, and repression of discourses on genders and sexualities within and among Asian countries has been a constant feature of regimes of modernization, from colonial through neocolonial and postcolonial periods. Aptly enough, it is mainly through the modern vehicle of cinema where these discourses play out. Kritika Kultura will be initiating a forum on the filmic representations of issues on genders and sexualities in the Southeast Asian region, in line with its commitment to the pursuit and development of cultural and media studies, slated for the journal’s February 2021 issue.

The forum invites scholars of gender, media, and culture to formulate topics that inspect and submit to critical evaluation, instances where Asian film products embodied controversies on gender and/or sexuality, as either local or as cross-cultural phenomena. The approaches will be premised on sex-positive feminist representation, as first articulated in the March 1985 special section of Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media by editors Chuck Kleinhans and Julia Lesage (“Sexual Representation,” issue 30), and developed as well as debated by scholars and activists of feminisms, LGBTQ movements, and new masculinity studies.

The forum seeks to respond to the following questions: How are Asian concepts of genders and sexualities configured vis-à-vis Western social, psychological, and sexological formulations? How were these ideas imaged in audiovisual media (technologies that were similarly foreign in origin)? Within specific national histories of political and developmental upheavals, what choices did producers, artists, and audiences make by way of acknowledging liberative and/or progressive ideals in the depiction of genders and sexualities? How did Asian cinemas seek to advance their filmic discourses of genders and sexualities in relation or in opposition to Western or regional influences?

Coverage

Possible topics may cover (but need not be limited to) the following:

• National, regional, and/or global sex film trends 
• The political economy of sex-film production 
• Porn vs erotica: censorship and the sex-themed film 
• Early stirrings: beginnings of sex-themed films in national film experiences 
• Figures of desire: the sirens and/or studs of sex films 
• Extraordinary passages: distribution circuits of film erotica 
• LGBTQ+ elements in film productions 
• Gender and/or sexuality as political masquerade in cinema 
• Perversion as transgression (or as containment) in film phenomena 
• Vanilla behavior, asexuality, self-pleasure, repression: desires as absences 
• Pain, pleasure, kinks, and consensualities in non-normative onscreen sex practice 
• Transgenderisms, transsexualities, genderqueerness, and identity controversies in film 
• Racialized (colonial or postcolonial) passions 
• Innovations in digital production and/or distribution of sex-themed cinema 
• Film trends on the imaging of queerness, femininities, masculinities, and/or non-binary sexualities 
• Othering the Other: the gaze of Westerners toward Asian sex films 
• The sexualization of Asians in Hollywood (or global) cinema

Submission Guidelines

Paper proposals should be submitted electronically to the forum editor, Joel David, at joelsky2000@yahoo.com (cc: kk.soh@ateneo.edu), no later than February 29, 2020. Any contribution will be acknowledged within 48 hours of receipt. All communication should use "genders and sexualities" as subject heading.

Proposals should consist of no longer than a two-page submission, comprising the following: title of the submission; name, affiliation, and short description of each author [up to a maximum of two authors per article]; three or four keywords (not mentioned in title or abstract) that describe the submission; contact information including mailing address, email address, and phone number; a single-paragraph paper proposal of up to 200 words; and a preliminary list of works to be cited (texts, websites, films/videos). Kindly note that audience or text (including big-data) survey studies may be considered, but the presence of theoretical engagement will be essential to the purposes of the journal.

Authors whose proposals are accepted should finalize their articles (7,000 to 8,000 words including works cited, observing the eighth edition of the Modern Language Association handbook), on or before July 31, 2020. These articles will then undergo the standard process of double-blind peer review for academic journals. For further inquiries on matters not mentioned in this CFP or on the journal website, please contact the forum editor and Kritika Kultura (joelsky2000@yahoo.com and kk.soh@ateneo.edu; subject heading: genders and sexualities).

About Kritika Kultura

Kritika Kultura is acknowledged by a host of Asian and Asian American Studies libraries and scholarly networks, and indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Clarivate), Scopus, EBSCO, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP). For inquiries about submission guidelines and future events, visit the website or email kk.soh@ateneo.edu.