Call for Papers (2025)

Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique

Special Issue: “Reframing Resistance”

Resistance presses forward: it leans into conflict, into refusal, into struggle. To resist is to be seen and situated, to become legible, often on terms not of one’s choosing. Resistance troubles power, but it also moves through it, shaped by those who see, name, fear, and locate hope in it. This issue of Colloquy invites contributors to trace the complexities of resistance. “Reframing Resistance” is not a call to dismiss or undo resistance but an invitation to hold it differently. We encourage contributors to dwell in its forms, failures, contradictions, and quiet ruptures. We welcome work that finds resistance where it is least expected—in the minor, the everyday, the embodied, the messy.

Areas of inquiry might include, but are not limited to:

• What is resistance? How is it brought into being, named, and/or misrecognized?
• Narrations of resistance: How they circulate, fracture, and disappear.
• When resistance ceases to resist: On commodification, capture, and management.
• Minor resistances and their complicities: Uneasy intersections and reluctant solidarities.
• Undoing and remaking: When resistance inadvertently reproduces the structures it seeks to unsettle.
• The affect, aesthetic, and performance of resistance: How it feels, moves, and fractures bodies and time.
• Silence, refusal, disobedience: Where do these gestures converge, and where do they rupture the grammar of resistance?
• Resistance as non-neutral: Shaped by history and saturated by positionality. What appears as resistance from one vantage point may register as betrayal, disturbance, or violence elsewhere.

Who can submit?

Colloquy welcomes cross-disciplinary submissions from within literary studies, cultural theory, political philosophy, gender and sexuality studies, media and digital studies, Indigenous studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, migration and diaspora studies, and related fields. We encourage contributions from PhD students, emerging scholars, and early-career researchers. Please review our submission guidelines before submitting your work.

Submission Guidelines

Academic Articles
Submissions should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words. Pieces outside this range should be discussed with the editors before submission.

Review Articles
Review articles (2,000–5,000 words) may engage multiple recent works in relation to broader literary or critical contexts. Please include a title, full publication details (including ISBN), and cite reviewed texts using in-text page numbers (e.g., 80).

Book Reviews
Book reviews must not exceed 1,000 words. We typically do not consider reviews of books published more than 24 months ago. The review title should reference the book (including ISBN), and all references should appear as in-text page numbers only. Avoid citing additional sources.

Creative Writing
We accept short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, and graphic narratives. Submissions must not exceed: 4,000 words of prose, 80 lines of poetry, or eight pages of graphic narrative.

Translations (with Scholarly Introduction)
Translations of literary, poetic, or theoretical works are welcome (subject to the same word/length limits as above). A scholarly introduction (min. 1,000 words) must accompany the translation, outlining the original’s context, the rationale for the translation, and the translator’s methodology.
Translators must secure and declare copyright permissions for publication. All translations must include the original text and a copyright statement affirming the translator holds the rights to publish under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license, or a negotiated alternative. Inclusion of the original text is evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Visual Materials & Reproductions
Images must be submitted in JPG or TIF format at 300 dpi, with appropriate copyright permissions secured by the author. Authors must also obtain permissions for any significant reproduced content (e.g., complete poems, short stories, or substantial excerpts), as these are not covered under fair dealing.

Submission Format

Submissions must be sent in .doc or .docx format and anonymised for peer review. Alongside your submission, include:

• Author’s name and institutional affiliation
• Contact email
• Abstract (max. 150 words)
• Up to 10 keywords
• Short bio (max. 100 words)
• Any acknowledgements
• A statement confirming the work is not under review elsewhere
• A statement affirming acceptance of the journal’s policies

All submissions must follow MLA style (9th edition) for referencing, include a Works Cited list, and use double quotation marks throughout (single quotation marks for quotes within quotes). Block quotes should be used for quotations of four or more lines.

Spelling may follow American, British, or Australian conventions, but must be consistent throughout.

Submit your work to: arts-colloquy@monash.edu by July 31, 2025.

About Colloquy

As an international, peer-reviewed journal, Colloquy especially welcomes submissions from scholars across various national, institutional, and linguistic contexts. Publishing with Colloquy provides early-career academics with global visibility, editorial support, and the chance to engage in dialogues that cross disciplinary and geographic boundaries.