CFP: Divination, Myth, and Art

Call for Papers for a Femspec Special Issue:

Divination, Myth, and Art

Femspec, an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, announces a call for material on divination, myth, and art. These materials may deal with the speculative aspects of divination through any means including Tarot – particularly representations of Tarot and other readings in film, speculative literature, art, poetry, and popular culture. They may also deal with creative writing, women artists, feminist myth scholars, and ancient mythic archetypes appearing in fiction or framing artistic production.


We are particularly looking for publishable critical and creative material that explores women’s reclamation of myth from our own and other cultures, plus the creation and use of new myth. Who made those images? What is the relationship between powerful goddess archetypes and the lives of women in the cultures that produced and worshipped them? We are also interested in submissions that focus on the divination reading process and the spiritual medium reader using whatever tools at hand.

Submissions may include:

• critical analysis
• short stories, poetry, and excerpts from longer works
• personal accounts of working as a reader, mythic explorer, ritual writer, artist, fiction writer, etc
• memoirs and autobiographical accounts of spiritual and divination readers scholarly papers about speculative fiction, cultural products or ethnographies exploring women’s experience of the spiritual or mythic
• participant observation/autoethnography projects
• commentaries on representations of the spiritual reading in any aspect of popular culture, including the evolution of contemporary decks in the women's spirituality movement, the practice of palmists or phone psychics, art, film, Tarot reading shops, booths on boardwalks or at carnivals and festivals such as Renaissance Fairs
• as well as discussion of technology, divination, myth, and the arts, like the phenomenon of internet readers, digital artists’ collective, and cyber-mythmaking

We also seek reviews of films, books, and any media including jewelry, popular culture, television shows, and music using myth, divination, and the creative to challenge the gender stereotypes of today.

DEADLINE: October 15th, 2012

MLA format required. See the Femspec website (femspec.org) for paper submission format. For more information, contact femspec@aol.com. The cover artist will receive two free copies of the issue. All submitters must have active subscriptions throughout the submission, review, and publication process.