Consent

Expressions of interest are sought for contributions to a planned special issue of Australian Feminist Studies (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) on ‘Consent’.

This proposed special issue offers a feminist examination of consent. It considers what consent is and the advantages and challenges offered by the concept of affirmative consent.

We seek contributions from across disciplines to examine theoretical concepts of consent in law, medicine, and other cultural domains.  We are also interested in how consent plays out in practice, including its socio-legal meanings amongst diverse stakeholders. This extends to its place in online environments.

By considering consent through the lens of multiple disciplines, this special issue aims to interrogate the many assumptions held about consent, allowing us to reconfigure the ways in which feminists might imagine consent in the future.

We seek contributions from scholars in any discipline, including but not limited to: women’s and gender studies, sociology, anthropology, criminology, Indigenous studies, legal studies, history, psychology, cultural studies, film, and literature. Contributions that cross disciplinary boundaries are particularly welcome. Contributions can be between 6,000 words and 8,000 words for research articles. Shorter polemical pieces up to 5,000 words can be considered for the ‘Feminist Debates’ section. Co-authored and multiple-voiced pieces are welcome. All submissions will be peer-reviewed as per the journal’s policies.

Guest contributing editors: Lisa Featherstone (UQ), Cassandra Byrnes (UQ), and Jennifer Maturi (UQ).

Possible topics

Potential areas for consideration include but are not limited to:

  • How we might imagine and reimagine a feminist vision of consent

  • The shifting meanings and interpretations of ‘consent’, in the present, past and future 

  • Understandings of ‘affirmative consent’ in law and/or culture

  • Challenges of working with a model of ‘affirmative consent’

  • Indigenous knowledges of consent

  • Feminist and survivor-focused law reform around consent 

  • Queer and Trans politics of consent

  • Feminist interpretations of violence and consent

  • Consent and sex education

  • Demands for information about consent by young people

  • Fear and consent

  • Informed consent and familial/domestic abuse

  • Consent and intimate partner violence

  • Consent and reproductive coercion

  •  Medicine and consent

  • Consent and sex work

  • Consent in the Global South

  • Anti-carceral feminism and consent

  • Consent debates and knowledge in media and popular culture

  • Consent, action and activism for a post- #MeToo world

Consent in contemporary politics

Your EOI
Your expression of interest (300 wds max) should indicate what questions or ideas you wish to address, proposed length of your submission, and your key words. Dot points can be used.

Please include contact details and a two-line bio note.

Timelines

Expressions of interest are due on 31 Jan 2023. EOIs should be emailed as word documents. Invitations to submit will be issued shortly after this date.

Full submissions will be due 30 June 2023.

Inquiries and EOIs should be emailed to:

afs.journal@sydney.edu.au