Call for Submissions

Issue 2, Summer 2025: “Palestine and Campus Movements: Sites of Transnational Feminist Solidarities”

Deadline: Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio via the online submission form by November 15, 2024.

Since October 2023, university and college campuses across North America and around the world have become sites of increasing protests and actions in support of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. They vary in their form and focus, including teach-ins, walk-outs, and encampments that spotlight issues such as the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the occupation of Palestine, the ongoing displacement of Palestinian refugees, Israeli illegal settlement in the occupied territories, Israeli apartheid, the targeted decimation of schools and universities in Gaza (“scholasticide”), U.S. support of the war, and university investments in the state of Israel and businesses that operate in the occupied territories. Across disciplines and backgrounds, academics and activists have gathered and mobilized in support of the student movement and encampments across the globe, demanding their protection and the broader protection of speech on campus.

Scholars, students, and faculty–especially in women and gender studies programs–have been pushing the boundaries of public discourse, and we take inspiration from their work to produce this issue of Gatherings. (1) Solidarity with Palestine is often inspired by feminist values of intersectionality, anti-colonialism, human rights, social justice, global solidarity, and the critique of patriarchal and capitalist powers. (2) We see such visions of transnational feminist solidarities embodied in the words of June Jordan. As Therese Saliba writes, in her poems, Jordan “elides her marginalization as a Black woman and her identification with the Palestinians ... (and) in this process of becoming other, the lines between I/Palestinian, my/our merge in collective grief, moving toward a kind of home in the world.” (3)

“To be Palestinian right now is to feel betrayed by those who remain silent, whatever their reasons, and to feel gratitude and hope from those who have spoken up,” writes journalist Laila Al-Arian. (4) Solidarity movements with Palestine aiming to decenter settler and nation-state formations and institutions, illuminate how Palestinian liberation is connected with the liberation of all oppressed and marginalized people. Palestinians’ visions of freedom, steadfastness, and dignity have fueled and inspired these solidarity movements and actions. It is what Sarah Ihmoud describes as “decolonial Palestinian feminism” that teaches us love and care in the time of genocide. (5) It is an embodiment of revolutionary love and resistance amidst violence and oppression. (6) It is a feminism that continues to center on hope, persistence, and love as forms of resistance despite colonialism, genocide, and the great loss of lives and lands. (7) As Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Wahab, and El-Issa note in their 2022 essay, Palestine “is a global compass of feminist ethics, an intellectual tool for analyzing contours of injustice, and an intervention strategy for liberation.” (8)

Amidst the continuous and intensifying surveillance and criminalization of any speech in solidarity with Palestine on college campuses, a growing number of scholars and activists continue to advocate for Palestinian rights (for justice in Palestine). Many have called for a renewed commitment to transnational feminist solidarity, urging feminists to recognize and address the interconnectedness of their struggles with those of Palestinians. (9) Loubna Qutami reminds us that “a feminist practice of bearing witness means we defiantly record, remember, survive, and resist.” (10) In that spirit, Gatherings invites scholars, artists, and activists to reflect on this campus-based transnational activism. We encourage various modes of discourse, including research articles, memoir, video essays, digital art, interviews and more. Potential topics for submissions include, but are not limited to:

Campuses as Sites of Political Action, Protest, and Solidarity

Transnational feminism as a framework for solidarity and campus protests.
Encampment organization and outreach as community building, organizing and mobilization.
Intersectional solidarity and student activism, particularly among LGBTQ2SIA+, Black, and Indigenous individuals and organizations. Direct and indirect relationships between campus protests and feminist organizations.
Forms of solidarity among various campus stakeholders–undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni.

Campus as Institution, and the Impact on Movements

The limits of protected speech and assembly on university campuses.
The campus as a physical, geographically delimited space and how this impacts protest movements.
Campus protests and the student body (both physical bodies and metaphorical student bodies as collectives, communities).
Economics of campus protest such as demands for divestment and alumni threats of defunding.
Alternative organizational formations, principles, guidelines, strategies, and norms in encampments and other protest strategies.

Issues of Power, Oppression, and Repression

Academic freedom, pedagogies of protest, and the Palestine exception.
Responses to the protests, including police violence, demonizing media campaigns, repression by university administration, surveillance and control, suspicion of students, threats of deportation and/or withdrawal of student funding, and political accusations, aiming to suppress activist efforts.
The role of anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination in universities’ disciplinary actions against protestors.
The use of criminal law and institutional violence against students, faculty, and community members.
Tensions, conflict, and reflections within movements, particularly as they relate to continuous evaluation and adaptation.

SUBMISSION FORMATS & DEADLINES

We welcome submissions in the form of traditional research articles, as well as essays, memoir, interviews, video or audio pieces, artwork, and other formats that can be published digitally. We encourage contributors to engage with Palestinian-created and allied work, including social media, journalism, works of art, popular culture, and critical theory. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio via the online submission form by November 15, 2024. Accepted abstracts will be notified by November 15, 2024, and files for peer review will be due by March 15, 2025. Following a round of revisions, the target publication date for the issue is July 15, 2025.

INCLUSIVE AUTHORSHIP

We welcome submissions from students (both undergraduate and graduate), faculty, staff, independent scholars, artists, community members, alumni, and allies. We especially encourage submissions from marginalized students, faculty, and activists. We also encourage submissions that challenge the individualism of academic publishing through co-authored/co-created pieces. We acknowledge and work to undo the hierarchies within academic institutions in the Global North as well as the structural and historical inequities around publishing related to race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and social locations.

QUESTIONS OR INQUIRIES

If you have questions or inquiries about this CFS or Gatherings, please email gatheringsjournal@gmail.com and a member of our editorial board will respond.

ISSUE CO-EDITORS

This issue of Gatherings is co-edited by Besan Jaber and Asmaa Malik. Link to bios.

1. Ihmoud, Sarah, “Palestinian Feminism: Analytics, Praxes and Decolonial Futures,” Feminist Anthropology 3, no. 2 (2022): 284–98, doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12109. 293-4.
2. Ibid, 284.
3. Saliba, Therese, "June Jordan’s Songs of Palestine and Lebanon,” The Feminist Wire, March 24, 2016.
4. Al-Arian, Laila, “What does it mean to be Palestinian now?” The Nation, Jan. 25, 2024.
5. Ihmoud, Sarah. "Love in a Time of Genocide: A Palestinian Litany for Survival Download Love in a Time of Genocide: A Palestinian Litany for Survival." Journal of Palestine Studies (2023): 1-8.
6. Ihmoud, (2022): 284-98.
7. Ihmoud, (2023): 7.
8. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera, Stéphanie Wahab, and Ferdoos Abed-Rabo Al-Issa. “Feminist Except for Palestine: Where Are Feminist Social Workers on Palestine?” Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, vol. 37, issue 2 (2022), doi.org/10.1177/08861099221079381.
9. Qutami, Loubna. “A Feminist Practice of Bearing Witness to Genocide.” Feminist Studies, 49.2 (2023): 531–533.
10. Qutami, 531–533.

We hope the Journal, and this issue, provides inspiration and practical insight to carry on the work ahead. We look forward to gathering with you in the digital pages of this Journal. Please be on the lookout for announcements about our future issues and send feedback to gatheringsjournal@gmail.com.