Global Responses to the ‘War on Terror’
Guest editors: Michael C. Frank (Düsseldorf) and Pavan Kumar Malreddy (Goethe University Frankfurt)
This issue proposes a thematic shift from the widely discussed traumatic impact of the 11 September 2001 attacks themselves to the transformative impact of the ensuing ‘war on terror’. In particular, it identifies a conceptual gap in the existing criticism on ‘9/11’ and its cultural resonance, which tends to privilege Euro-American responses to the event, while considering trauma, grief and suffering as primarily transatlantic experiences. The corresponding Anglophone canon of ‘post-9/11’ fiction and nonfiction literature, documentary, drama, and film has failed to address the responsive violence incited by the decade-long military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the destabilisation of political regimes in the Middle East, and other clandestine operations in the Global South in the name of countering ‘terrorism’.
The aim of this issue is to de-centre the singularity assumed by ‘9/11’, and to draw attention to new sites of literary and cultural criticism that move beyond the destruction of the World Trade Center and the physical space of New York City to engage with the multiple crises related to the ‘war on terror’ on a global scale.
Contributions are invited from any sub-discipline in Anglophone cultures and might include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- transatlantic and diasporic responses to the ‘war on terror’
- intersections of European and postcolonial criticism in approaching the ‘war on terror’
- public discourses on terrorism and counter-terrorism
- responses to the war on terror in architecture, monuments, memorials, photography, visual arts, sculpture, rituals (commemoration), popular culture (internet, social media) and video-games
- terrorism in novels, poetry, and reportage narratives from the Global South and the Middle East
Detailed proposals (600-1,000 words) for essays of no more than 7,500 words, as well as any inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to both editors, Michael C. Frank and Pavan Malreddy.
Potential contributors are reminded that EJES operates a two-stage review process. The first is based on the submission of proposals and results in invitations to submit full essays from which a final selection is then made. THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS 31 OCTOBER 2016, WITH DELIVERY OF COMPLETED ESSAYS BY 31 MARCH 2017.