Queering Middle Eastern Cyberscapes Special issue of Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies http://sites.google.com/site/queeringmideasterncyberscapes/home Guest Editors: Noor Al-Qasimi and Adi Kuntsman Call for Papers Digital media and cybercultures have long been explored as fields of identity formation, cultural contestations, and political tensions. Digital mediascapes have also been of particular interest to scholars of gender and sexuality for their potential to transform some gendered, racial, and sexual power structures while reaffirming, and often violently reinforcing, others. This special issue of Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies aims to bring feminist and queer analysis of media and communication technologies (the Internet, mobile phones, surveillance technologies, digital television, and telecommunication) to the field of the Middle East as both a geo-cultural space and a political entity. Our intention is to examine the intersections, tensions, and co-constitutions of queer sexualities and communication technologies; queerness as a form of digitalized affect and as a political practice; mediated violence and violence of mediation; new technological frontiers and frontiers of identities; and practices of everyday use and digitalized imaginaries. We hope to explore these and other phenomena as they emerge in Middle Eastern countries and communities and their diasporas. In recent years, much work has focused on media in the Middle East, and gender/sexuality in the Middle East; however, there is a paucity of scholarship on the intersection of these fields. Still less work has emphasized queering as a political metaphor in relation to the field of Middle East Studies. The aim of this special issue is to acknowledge the utility of a postcolonial queer critique as applied to this region and its diasporas. We are soliciting work that engages with the intersection of media and sexuality with reference to the Middle East. Possible topics thus include: Surveillance, war on terror The policing of sexuality Orientalism in new media cultures Governmentality, biopolitics, and the Middle East Sexuality and media censorship Media technologies (e.g., YouTube, mobile phones, bluetooth, picture/video messaging) and queerness Queer and/or social networking websites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) Queer Middle Eastern diasporas in cyberspace HIV/AIDS-related online communities Homophobia LGBT and NGO activism Drag, cross-dressing, butch/femme identities, other queer subjectivities Gay imperialism We welcome abstracts of articles to be considered for inclusion in this special volume. Please send a bio and a 500-word abstract detailing the topic of your article, the overall context, your material, methodology, and theoretical argument by the 1st of February 2010 to qmecissue@googlemail.com . Authors will be notified by the 15th of February 2010 of the outcome of their submissions. If accepted, full papers should be submitted bythe 1st of July 2010. Papers will then be reviewed individually in the standard double-blind review process. We also welcome shorter pieces of creative or analytical writing (up to 1000 words, or 4000 words for interviews) or visual material on the theme of this special volume. These pieces may be topical and/or polemical. They are not sent out to be peer-reviewed but are selected by the editors of the issue. If you would like to submit a short piece, please contact us to discuss the format and deadlines. Abstracts and inquiries about this issue should be sent to qmecissue@googlemail.com .