Forthcoming Issues
The Body: Aesthetics, Perceptions and Representations
Abstract Deadline: October 1, 2024
Article Submission Deadline: May 1, 2025
The body can be a vessel for the self, a subject of power structures, an object that can be manipulated and stimulated, and a site of cultural, religious, and political practices and conflicts. This issue of Alif aims to problematize three concepts related to the body: what constitutes an “ideal” body, how are certain body images in turn valued and propagated over others, and how does this reflect on the way we perceive bodies? For instance, how are certain bodies centralized, marginalized, and/or fragmented culturally? What role does new media play in the formulation of such representations? How are beauty and ugliness, ability and disability, and health and ailment/deformity presented in literary and visual arts? How are stereotypes about feminine and masculine bodies created, reinforced, and disseminated? How do bodies get commodified, physically or metaphorically, within certain power relations? This issue of Alif invites original, both analytical and theoretical, contributions that explore the body in a variety of cultural productions. Contributions from various fields of the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and media studies, are welcome.
Article topics might include but are not limited to:
- The “ideal” body and how it is constituted
- The impact of literary, artistic, and (social) media representations on body perceptions
- The body as a site of racial, ethnic, gendered, and sexual conflicts
- Violence, torture, and corporal punishment
- (De)Colonizing the body
- Ability and disability in literature and visual arts
- Illness, healing, and medicine
- The body as a commodity
- Beautifying/mutilating the body
- The body is a site of transactions (prostitution, human trafficking, seeking refuge, etc.)
- Shaping femininity and masculinity in fashion and advertisements
- Religion, mythology, and the body
- Burial and mummification rituals
- Philosophical approaches to the body
Key Dates
October 1, 2024 | Deadline for submission of abstracts (300 words) |
May 1, 2025 | Deadline for submission of full articles |
Spring 2026 | Publication date |
Alif is a refereed, annual, multi-lingual, and multi-disciplinary journal published by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. Each issue revolves around a theme or a problem, bringing together the views and approaches of scholars from all over the world.
Alif is electronically available on JSTOR and indexed on a number of prestigious databases, including Scopus, MLA International Bibliography, SAGE, Index Islamicus, EBSCO, Project Muse, and Literature Resource Center (GALE).
Submission instructions: An initial 300-word abstract should be submitted by 1 October 2024, accompanied by the author’s email address, telephone number, and postal address. Articles based on accepted abstracts should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words and may be submitted in Arabic, English, or French by electronic mail to alifecl@aucegypt.edu, together with an abstract of 100 words and a 50-word biographical note on the contributor. Authors should consult the Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook 9th edition for style in preparing their manuscript.
Only original articles that do not duplicate previously published work, including the authors, and are not under review by another journal or collection will be considered.
Cultural Perceptions of Animals: Old and New
Abstract Deadline: October 1, 2023
Article Submission Deadline: May 1, 2024
Animal studies have evolved over the years with a particular line of inquiry in mind, that of how representing animals can help shape humans’ understanding of nature and themselves in literature, art, and the sciences. Since time immemorial, animals have been prefigured in various forms of the arts. The initial stories and tales early humans chose to depict on cave walls were those of animals. This issue of Alif invites contributions from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds to explore the ways in which animals have been put in conversation with the contexts they reside in and with us as human beings. Contributions may address the way animals have been represented in fables, folk-tales, or religious mythology, among others; how animals open up a nuanced space for representation and embodiment culturally, politically, and socially during times of censorship, enlightenment, etc.; and how they spurred humans’ scientific and intellectual pursuit of knowledge during the modern era. Alif also encourages contributors to question the extent to which animal representations and depictions (in many forms) have come to develop and diversify the ways we conceive of the world and identify with it.
Article topics might include, but are not restricted to, the following:
- Animal symbolism and censorship
- Mythological animals
- Literary representations of animals (allegorical, satirical)
- Animals and the sacred: Ceremony and sacrifice
- Perceiving animals in popular and folk culture
- Human-animal encounters beyond the Anthropocene
- Animals and Ecology
- Animal rights, vegetarianism, and human exploitation
- Anthropological and cultural perceptions of animals
- Animality as a metaphor for human desire
- Scientific classification and representation of animals
- Philosophical views on animals
Key Dates
Deadline for submission of abstracts (300 words) | October 1, 2023 |
Deadline for submission of full articles | May 1, 2024 |
Publication date | Spring 2025 |
Alif is a refereed, annual, multi-lingual, and multi-disciplinary journal published by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. Each issue revolves around a theme or a problem, bringing together the views and approaches of scholars from all over the world.
Alif is electronically available on JSTOR and indexed on a number of prestigious databases, including Scopus, MLA International Bibliography, SAGE, Index Islamicus, EBSCO, Project MUSE, and Literature Resource Center (Gale).
Submission instructions: An initial 300-word abstract should be submitted by 1 October 2023, accompanied by the author’s email address, telephone number, and postal address. Articles based on accepted abstracts should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words and may be submitted in Arabic, English, or French by electronic mail to alifecl@aucegypt.edu, together with an abstract of 100 words and a 50-word biographical note on the contributor. Authors should consult the MLA Handbook 9th edition for style in preparing their manuscripts.
Only original articles that do not duplicate previously published work, including the authors, and are not under review by another journal or collection will be considered.
Food as Culture: Literary and Artistic Approaches
Abstract Deadline: October 1, 2022
Article Submission Deadline: May 1, 2023
Food is the center of our lives. Beyond being the most basic means of survival, it is also a communal activity. Cultural and religious practices are suffused with food preparation rituals, and social gatherings inadvertently revolve around food or drink. While food enriches social bonds, it can also deepen social and cultural rifts. In the words of Guatemalan activist and Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú, “We only trust people who eat what we eat.” While the delight of an exquisite meal can lead to a heightened state of almost spiritual ecstasy, it can also expose grave inequalities, with the excess of ancient Roman feasts as a striking example. Food can create a sense of cultural belonging, but it can also be used as a form of obliteration/discrimination and appropriation/exclusion. A simple meal consumed contains layers of history, social commentary, and memory.
The centrality of food has made it inevitably present in works of literature and art since antiquity. This interest in the significance of food is evidenced in the upsurge in culinary studies in recent academic scholarship. This issue of Alif seeks to contribute to this scholarship from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It welcomes original articles on the varied representations and meanings of food and invites contributors to explore how literature and art expand our relationship to food and what questions they raise about it.
Article topics might include, but are not restricted to, the following:
- Food, history, and memory
- Food and hunger: adequacy and scarcity
- Mythological representations of food
- Anthropological approaches to food
- The psychology of food: eating disorders, self-images and so on
- Food and emotional bonding, sensuality, and eroticism
- Food and gender
- The economy of food distribution and access
- The future of consumption, the environment, and animal rights
- Food media: cooking shows, cookbooks, and social media
- Food in/as visual art
- Cannibalism and violence
Key Dates
Deadline for submission of abstract (300 words) | October 1, 2022 |
Deadline for submission of full articles | May 1, 2023 |
Publication date | Spring 2024 |
Alif is a refereed, annual, multi-lingual, and multi-disciplinary journal published by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. Each issue revolves around a theme or a problem, bringing together the views and approaches of scholars from all over the world.
Alif is electronically available on JSTOR and indexed on a number of prestigious databases, including Scopus, MLA International Bibliography, SAGE, Index Islamicus, EBSCO, Project MUSE, and Literature Resource Center (Gale).
Submission instructions: An initial 300-word abstract should be submitted by 1 October 2022, accompanied by the author’s email address, telephone number, and postal address. Articles based on accepted abstracts should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words and may be submitted in Arabic, English, or French by electronic mail to alifecl@aucegypt.edu, together with an abstract of 100 words and a 50-word biographical note on the contributor. Authors should consult the MLA Handbook (9th edition) for style in preparing their manuscripts.
Only original articles that do not duplicate previously published work, including the authors, and are not under review by another journal or collection will be considered.
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Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Department of English and Comparative Literature American University in Cairo |