Call for Issue No. 57 - Women and intimacy in Portuguse Literature
Women and intimacy in Portuguse Literature
Guest editors: Vanda Anastácio (Universidade de Lisboa/Centro de Estudos Clássicos), Ana Comandulli (Unirio/PLLB) and Andreia Castro (UERJ/PLLB)
Submission deadline: until June 30th, 2026.
Issue scheduled for January 2027.
While women's history is a project under construction that often comes up against the silence of sources, the concealment of information and the difficulty in finding documents that allow us to reconstruct the trajectories and the written production of women in the past, the history of female intimacies seems to be an even less known territory. In this issue of the journal Convergência Lusíada, the aim is to encourage reflection on the ways in which the perception of women's intimate sphere is projected over time in the Portuguese Literature. Based on the assumptions that 1) the notion of intimacy can be historicized, varies over time and differs from society to society; 2) that intimacy is built in the negotiation between self-awareness and relations established with others 3) and that intimacy is negotiated on the limits of the public and the private, we ask researchers interested in this topic for their contribution to broadening the horizons of what is known about this area of human experience, in the feminine, in Portuguese.The nature and scope of the topic allows for approaches from multidisciplinary angles, and for the intersection of gender and class with values and experiences of different ethnicities, religious affiliations and social groups. Approaches of life stories relating to the female experience of immigration, women’s writings on intimacy and, also, the way various forms of intimacy are treated in egodocuments and in fiction – authored by men and women – are welcome. Research on taboos relating to issues such as sexuality, women’s fertility and infertility and the various forms and attempts of appropriation of the female body by figures of authority and instances of power, in the past and present are also welcome.
