On the Politics of Ugliness seeks to provide the first anthology that centralizes ugliness as a political category. It explores the various ways in which ugliness is deployed against those whose bodies, habits, gestures, feelings, expressions, or ways of being deviate from social norms. It argues that ugliness is political in at least two ways: (1) it denotes inequalities and hierarchies, often serving as a repository for all that is “other;” and (2) it is contingent and relational, taking shape through the comparison and evaluation of bodies. This collection asserts that it is only in facing ugliness as a political category that we can agitate routinely harmful ways of seeing, understanding and relating.
The editors are seeking an array of contributions that will center the politics of ugliness as it relates to bodies, feelings, gestures, habits, things, spaces, sounds, intimacies and their operations alongside ability, race, gender, class, sexuality, body size, age, health, or animality. Specifically, they invite submissions of academic papers; however, they will also consider art-based work, memoirs, cultural commentaries, and creative pieces (short stories, poetry, photo essays) from scholars, writers, and artists. The editors welcome approaches informed by (but not limited to) critical disability studies, critical race and postcolonial studies, feminist theory, literary theory, art history, cultural studies, queer and sexuality studies, science and technology studies, critical psychology, environmental studies, musicology, and performance studies.
Submissions should engage with the politics of ugliness. Topics of inquiry may include:
- interrogations of ugliness as violence against bodies
- the ethics of engaging with ugliness
- feminist explorations of ugliness, “ugly” engagements with feminism
- ugly methodologies, reading practices, and modes of inquiry
- representations of ugliness, “ugly” bodies, body parts, and “ugly” behaviors
- phenomenological encounters with ugliness: feeling ugly, being “ugly,” embodying ugliness
- ugly intimacies, feelings, and dispositions (e.g., Ngai; Sharpe)
- genealogies, archives, temporalities, and histories of ugliness
- the fashionizing of ugliness, ugly fashion
- ugly development practices, environmental ugliness
- visual, sensorial, and tactile pollution in relation to spaces and geographies
- theoretical considerations of ugliness as a political category
- reclamations and tactical repositionings of ugliness (e.g., Eileraas)
The deadline for chapter proposals (maximum of 500 words) is January 15, 2015. Please forward proposals or questions to Ela Przybylo (przybylo@yorku.ca) and Sara Rodrigues (sararod@yorku.ca) with the subject heading “On the Politics of Ugliness.”