Call for Papers for MAST Special Issue with deadline on May 31st.

Guest Editors:
Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University)
Cla Calabresi (Johns Hopkins University)

This special issue of MAST Journal explores practices of the body and embodiment in relation to media theory from both diachronical and synchronical perspectives. We welcome submissions concerning the body in media theories from the 21st century and from the digital turn onward. In particular, we are interested in analyses of a “post-body” informed by theories of post-genderism, gender anarchy and posthumanism in the context of digital media technologies, not only transporting the values of a “post-body,” but also enabling and creating such a body and embodiments. We invite cultural case studies and close readings of forms and expressions of embodiments and notions of the body from a historical, comparative, and non-Eurocentric viewpoints. We also welcome interpretations that move beyond the traditional canon of Western humanistic body theories—such as phenomenology, ethnography, structuralism, and post-structuralism—or challenge the concept of historical linearity.

We invite theorizations and explorations of the following questions through media practice: How is the queer body shaped or affected by the post-gender era? Do body modifications, such as sex changes, contribute to the creation of an anarchic or post-gendered body? How do contemporary technologies redefine the concept of a cyborg body? In what ways might the post-body resonate with non-Western, post-colonial understandings of embodiment?

We theorize the body as a technical image presenting a world and understanding its meaning and orientation within it (in the spirit of Vilém Flusser), or as a bio-political phenomenon questioning political views and rupturing norms and hierarchies (in the spirit of Paul Preciado). We conceptualize the body as both human and non-human, as trans- and inter-sexual, as symbolic, real, and representational, and as an atemporal living environment encompassing a contemporaneous fusion of future, past, and present—such as in indigenous understandings of non-time-based corporeal practices. We are particularly interested in essays addressing feminist and queer embodiments, the racialized body, trans bodies, and memoirs of the transitioning body (in the vein of Paul Preciado’s or McKenzie Wark’s body-essays). Topics may include body modifications that incorporate cyborgism from the digital turn onward, queer, intersectional, and feminist post-body practices of empowerment, and other flamboyant body performances and transformations over the past 30 years. We also welcome submissions from Disability Studies, Film Studies, Performance Studies, Technology Studies, Brain Studies, and AI Studies.

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

Gender anarchy

The non-human body

Non-time-based corporeality

The body’s face and interface

Celebrations of the flamboyant body

Writing and performing the trans body

AI generated body modifications

Analogue and Digital bodies

20th and 21st century medical technologies and body modifications

The body and the memoir

Biofabrication

Gender and bio-hacking

Technologies of the human corpse

Technologies of disembodiment

We invite full submissions in the below categories:

Long Essays (5000-6000 words)

Practice-based Studies: Short essays (1,000-2,000 words) that are composed around at least one historical or original media art project.

• All essays will be assessed based on the originality of theoretical argument and relevance to the scope of the journal and the themes of special issue. Essays must be previously unpublished to be considered. In the case of practice-based studies, parts of the projects may have been previously exhibited or published, but the written components must be original and unpublished. All copyrights for published images and artworks must be cleared by the authors themselves before the publication date.
• All submissions must also include a 200-words abstract, 3-5 keywords and the author’s info (name, institution of affiliation, a 100-word bio, and a valid email address). All aspects of the submission should be included in one Word document file. Authors are encouraged to include 3-4 images of the work (and if applicable, a link to the work in its entirety).
• For formatting, style, and full submission guidelines, please visit Submission Guidelines.

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Please send your submissions (and questions) to [email protected] with the subject heading BODY MODIFICATION AND GENDER ANARCHY by no later than May 31, 2025.

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Important Dates:

Deadline for full submissions: May 31, 2025.

Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 15, 2025.

If revisions are needed, revised essays need to be submitted by: November 15, 2025.

Publication date: May 2026.