Autoethnographies and (Auto)Biographical Narratives, Settler Colonial Canada, Imperialism and Transnational Deliberations

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to challenge and negotiate with settler colonialism, racism, heteropatriarchy, and imperialism in Canada and globally through interventions that explore biographical narratives from diasporic, refugee and Indigenous peoples. Canada, as a settler colony that has a history of displaced and perpetrated genocidal violence experienced by the land’s original Indigenous inhabitants, is often taken for granted as a “land of immigrants”, but we are yet to see racialized immigrant narratives being fully represented and embraced as “Canadian”. Indigenous people have also experienced a sense of exile, having been subjected to violent forced removals, displaced even within their original land. Undergirding our interest in creating this collection is the need to address the following topics: the changing geopolitical conflicts and militarism that create new forms of oppressions; tensions and contradictions between looking back and looking forward in the reconstruction of our histories and biographies; questions of nation-state hierarchy and nationalism on the one hand vs. globalization, borderlessness and diasporic identities on the other; and the problems that arise out of strategic essentialism. We are interested in scholarly interventions as well as (auto)biographical narratives or autoethnographies from Indigenous, diasporic, migrant, and other voices exiled by various forms of colonialism, that speak to negotiations with various articulations of belonging, constructions of home, remakings of “Canada” and local and diasporic communities, discourses of identities, and activisms that attempt to intervene in contemporary local, national and international politics.

We seek diverse representations, theorizations, affiliations, embodiments, sexualities, abilities, religions and histories; therefore, we are especially interested in critiques and unconventional (auto) biographies and ethnographies that can highlight and unsettle the multiplicities of settler colonial constructions, the legacies and ongoing permutations of imperialisms, and various oppressions that arise from heteropatriarchies, and uncover the unsanctioned and emergent “intimacies” that can be rehistoricized and reorganized to challenge violence from various fronts to forge new alliances. We encourage contributions that are decolonial, antiracist, transnational feminist, and anti-imperialist. Selections will provide insights into how individuals and communities strategically re-narrate their histories and preconfigure their futures; how communities decolonize academic and hegemonic knowledge production through (auto)biographical narratives and (auto)ethnographies; how subjects attempt to become multilingual in each other’s histories and contexts;  how politics are reconfigured through transborder thinking that challenges essentializing categories, identities, divisions, spaces and histories;  and how transgressive community building can militate against closures such as “Canada”, or local and global hierarchies built on taken-for-granted crystallizations that exclude and oppress.  Personal writing must be fully embodied and embedded socially, and locally or/and in international contexts.

We welcome a range of essays and (auto)biographical narratives or autoethnographies of 4000 words each.  Submissions will be reviewed by guest editors, before moving on to peer reviewers in double-blind reviews.  Please email your submission to the guest editors by 31 July 2023.

For more details about this Special Issue, please contact the guest editors of the Special Issue.

Jane Ku, Associate Professor, Sociology, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Windsor, janeku@uwindsor.ca

Richard Douglass-Chin, Associate Professor, English, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Windsor, rdc@uwindsor.ca

Rudhramoorthy Cheran, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Windsor, cheran@uwindsor.ca

To submit a manuscript, please follow the guidelines of the journal, which can be found at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy/instructions.

Dr. Jane Ku
Dr. Richard Douglass-Chin
Dr. Rudhramoorthy Cheran
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• autoethnography
• (auto)biography
• diaspora
• transnationalism
• identity
• indigeneity
• immigrants
• transnational feminism