Call for Proposals - The Work and Legacy of Minnie Bruce Pratt

Call for Proposals: The Work and Legacy of Minnie Bruce Pratt

On July 2, 2023, Minnie Bruce Pratt died at the age of 76 after a brief illness resulting from a glioblastoma. (Obituaries are available here and here.) Pratt leaves behind an important body of creative, theoretical, and political work as a gift and legacy to scholars, activists, cultural workers, writers, poets, and readers.

While Pratt’s creative output has been examined in a number of scholarly works (a bibliography is available here), more work remains. A collective of scholars has come together to curate and edit an issue of The Journal of Lesbian Studies on the work and legacy of Minnie Bruce Pratt. This Call for Proposals is an invitation to think and write about Minnie Bruce Pratt, her work, and her legacy.

How did Pratt’s work create pathways for queer families to form? How are key texts by Pratt, such as Crime Against Nature and S/HE resonating with contemporary readers and activists? How does Pratt's political activism provide community organizing strategies for the contemporary moment? How does Pratt's writings about her relationship with Leslie Feinberg dialogue with recent work in trans studies? How does Pratt's feminist pedagogy inform contemporary methods for teaching in a time of political pushback against critical race theory and LGBTQ studies? What are Pratt's contributions to southern literature and literary traditions? Why are Pratt’s methods of collaboration and collectivity significant? What can we learn from Pratt’s collaborative work? What is the significance of Pratt’s teaching at a HBCU? How was Pratt situated (or not) in the neoliberal academy, and what can be learned from that?

For this issue, the editors (Taylor Marie Doherty, Julie R. Enszer, Laura Harris, Sy Heying, and Amanda Mixon) seek work that embraces and responds to the many elements of Pratt’s work and life. Yes, the editors invite articles about her poetry and creative prose, as are articles that engage her activism with LIPS, Worker’s World, Camp Trans, and other political formations. Yes, the editors imagine articles that consider Pratt’s theoretical interventions in feminist and lesbian theory through her essays in Yours In Struggle and Rebellion as well as material that examines her personal and political investments in the South or the women in print movement.

The editorial collective recognizes that Pratt’s work has been generative in a variety of academic locations. In women’s studies and queer studies, of course, her work is foundation; she also is an important thinker in feminist pedagogy, Jewish Studies, critical whiteness studies, poetics, and southern studies, among other academic disciplines. The editors hope that submitted work will emerge from a range of academic disciplines as well as from creative writers and artists.

Submissions, in the form of research articles (5,000 - 7,000 words), analytic or creative essays, interviews/transcriptions, creative works (poetry, prose, creative non-fiction) and other formats, might address, but are not limited to the following themes and topics:

• Lesbian motherhood/Queer families
• Lesbian politics
• Collectives and networks that included Minnie Bruce Pratt
• Feminist pedagogy
• Pratt’s experience in academia as a contingent faculty member
• Articles that consider her work–and the work of other lesbians and feminists–at HBCUs
• lesbian/queer/femme/transmasculinity
• Lesbian femme desire and love
• grief/grieving/body/tactile experiences
• Pratt’s poetics/Pratt’s writing process/pedagogies
• Situating Pratt and others in southern literary
• Situating Pratt’s work on femme, femininity, and gender in relationship to pornography and feminist debates about pornography
• Pratt’s activist commitments to anti-racism and anti-imperialism
• Pratt’s extensive writing and organizing with Worker’s World
• Camp Trans
• Pratt’s anti-klan work
• nature/ecologies/geographies of Pratt’s work

This issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies welcomes contributions of articles, essays, and creative works that consider, engage, grapple with, and celebrate Pratt’s work and her legacy. We invite you to join us in imagining the wide and capacious influence of Minnie Bruce Pratt.

Proposed abstracts of 500 words due January 15, 2024

Response from issue editors anticipated by February 15, 2024

Accepted articles of 4,000-7,000 words due August 15, 2024

Anticipated publication in 2026

Please email proposed abstracts to Amanda Mixon (amanda.mixon@austin.utexas.edu)

and Taylor Marie Doherty (tmdoherty@arizona.edu).

Special Issue Editors: Taylor Marie Doherty, Julie R. Enszer, Laura Harris, Sy Heying, and Amanda Mixon