Current Issue

As we write this call for papers, both human and inhuman forces threaten the bodies of millions with severe illness and death. Massive #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality are sweeping across the world while a pandemic spreads among the populations of all continents—hitting hardest at the most marginalized and vulnerable communities, both in terms of infection rates and economic consequences. News cycles in the Global North during the first half of 2020 featured uncontrollable wildfires in Australia, the locust plague in East Africa, the accelerated destruction of the Amazon and the consequent threat to its indigenous peoples, escalating violence against Kurds, Palestinians, Yemenis, Uyghurs, and others, the official exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and of course the heavily mediatized racist murder of George Floyd that sparked the current global anti-racist protest movements. Surely, even a casual observer cannot escape the anxious feeling that something is coming to a head; yet, what this “something” might be is not always immediately obvious, nor is it accurate to speak of a singular “thing”. Systems, cycles, feedback loops, discourses, identities, species, temporalities, and bodies intersect in innumerable ways. They are mutually constitutive and interdependent, but they can also disrupt each other’s configurations—they can be thrown into disarray. For instance, we see this paradoxical dynamic with the COVID–19 crisis: it came about under the current conditions of global capitalism, but has also called the future of that same system into question.

We invite graduate and postgraduate students of the Humanities to contribute to the next issue of Junctions, titled ‘Bodies in Disarray’. From all fields, we welcome submissions that engage with this subject and the issues that stem from it.

Check out the full call for papers here! (Deadline 11th of September 2020)

This issue of Junctions is a collaboration with Utrecht University’s Humanities Graduate Conference, entitled “What’s the Point? Impact and the Future of the Humanities. ” We welcome papers and book reviews, inviting authors to engage with the question of ‘value.’ This includes, but is not limited to, exploring different ways in which the humanities can contribute to science and society, and engaging with meta questions on the necessity of value and valorisation, asking if evaluating knowledge production is possible and if so, what standards should be used to assess it. We also welcome submissions engaging with current societal crises in which authors reflect thoughtfully and explicitly on the impact of their own research. All junior scholars can submit, not only conference participants.