Special issue of Journal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies

Queering Middle Eastern Cyberscapes

Guest Editors: Noor Al-Qasimi and Adi Kuntsman

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* by the 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 .