English Studies Forum

The electronic English Studies Forum publishes innovative critical and creative writing.  Critical papers should conform to M.L.A. style and include a bibliography, if appropriate.

We are currently considering submissions for the forums listed below.  The conversations are only beginning; as ESF adds new forums, we will continue to accept submissions to existing forum sites. 

Writing/Life: We invite manuscripts investigating the complex intersections of writing and    living.  Critical and creative submissions may address the writing life, life-writing, bio-texts, biography and autobiography, writing environments, and reading life, among other topics.  (ongoing)

Spaces: Critical and creative work submitted to this forum should address any of the manifold dimensions of space(s), including (but not limited to) physical, imaginative, public, private, personal, political, local, global, marginal, mainstream, urban, rural, textual, gendered, or disciplinary sites.  (ongoing)

Mind and Matter: This site will be devoted to writing that explores the interrelated discourses of mind and matter within a variety of cultural and theoretical contexts.  We are especially interested in submissions that offer interdisciplinary considerations of mind/matter.  Work might address issues of consciousness, embodiment, materiality, and their presence in networks of cultures, bodies, objects, languages, and texts.  (ongoing)

Parody / Play / Performance: Submissions to this forum might address all forms of parody, play, and/or performance.  We are interested in manuscripts that theorize these concepts, as well as those that are themselves parodic, playful, or performative.  (ongoing)

The Individual in War:  This forum invites submissions that deal with the literature of war and its relation to the experience of individuals (rather than, say, "great men" or "troops"). Papers might deal with literature, history, film, or other subjects in the humanities, where the primary focus is on how single individuals might relate to war in practice or in retrospect.  (ongoing)

The Postmodern Imagination and Beyond: Writing for the 21st Century: "What are we imagining, and how?"  This site explores the postmodern imagination as well as the postmodern understanding of the nature/role of imagination in contemporary literature and culture.  What is post-postmodernism?  (ongoing) 

The Forum Reviews: Each issue of ESF will include several substantial reviews of fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction, theory, and/or criticism. Books reviewed may (but need not) engage with a featured forum. Interested reviewers should contact the editor with a cv and description of their interests.
 

Send inquiries or submissions to:

Trey Strecker, Editor

English Studies Forum

Department of English

Ball State University

Muncie, IN 47306-0460

email: tstrecker@bsu.edu