Call for papers – no. 49 “Engendering (Repurposing) / Genrer (la réutilisation)”

Call for papers

n° 47 (Spring 2027)

Intermediality. History and Theory of the Arts, Literature, and Technologies
Intermédialités. Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques

Editors:

Rosanna Maule, Concordia University

Caroline Bem, Université de Montréal

Engendering (Repurposing)

This special issue of Intermédialités builds on the concept of repurposing from a gender-informed, situated perspective. Inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of bricolage, repurposing describes derivative and appropriative practices. Within alternative and counterculture contexts, it points to critical interventions on mainstream texts, media, and infrastructures (Anderson 2009; Arnold & Blackman 2023; Caldwell 2006; DelFanti & Södenberg 2018; Maule 2023; Renzi 2020). This issue, then, proposes an interdisciplinary revisitation of the concept of repurposing from the standpoint of feminist and LGBTQIA+ activism, focusing on the ways in which it may serve the creation, consolidation, and preservation of collaborative, resistant, and relational practices and actions across various disciplines, fields, and media. Moving beyond the singular context of feminist film production, we ask how “repurposing” can be seen as a generative concept geared at approaching transhistorical intersections of gender and media from an intermedial perspective.

Context
In a cultural industry that, as Benjamin Anderson argues, repurposes all critique, the imperative of oppositional media is to remain “grounded in praxis and not simply in ideology” (2009, 23–24).

The medial possibilities of repurposing extend well beyond film and video art. For instance, by embracing repurposing as a creative practice, feminist and queer artists address ecological concerns that reject wastefulness and value the afterlives of materials. A key early land art piece by Agnes Denes, who transformed degraded land into a flourishing environment in Wheatfield—A Confrontation (1982), illustrates how repurposing can serve as an intersectional, politically engaged, and ecologically aware practice that defies capitalist consumption and promotes sustainability. Repurposing also takes the form of a central concept in the archival remediation of documents and media framed within dominant discourses (Brunow 2021; Eichhorn 2013; Rahman & Pratiwi 2023).

In keeping with Intermédialités’s editorial line of testing action-concepts against a wide range of media objects, we invite contributors to consider how, rather than simply attempt to respond to a changing media environment, repurposing practices offer wide-ranging opportunities for social change and critical intervention. By bridging artistic, ecological, and theoretical spaces, our proposed theorization of repurposing provides us with a robust tool for understanding how gender, media, and materiality intersect in powerful acts of reclamation and resistance.

Theoretical framework
The editors invite contributors to theorize “repurposing” drawing on concepts and approaches from the fields of both media and gender studies. These might include:

• Accounts that build on imaginings of repurposing of preexisting spaces for queer experience building, such as, amongst others, José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia (2009) and the work of queer practitioners, such as Sadie Benning, who reconceptualized filmic space through the use of repurposed image capture technologies;
• Aesthetics and art practices that reuse, appropriate, and reutilize texts, narratives, and artworks from a decolonial perspective — contributors are invited to consider repurposing practices by individuals, collectives, and communities that view repurposing as a strategy of cultural restitution, counter-genealogy, ontogenesis, and social justice;
• Within the context of media archeology, reflections on how repurposing might work as a means of resisting linear or teleological views of history by emphasizing fragmentation, palimpsest, and heterogeneity — qualities that parallel the fractured, often nonlinear expressions found in feminist and queer art practices;
• Transmedia storytelling, which encourages narratives to evolve across various platforms and forms (Jenkins 2006), as a model through which repurposing can be seen as an inherently adaptive, fluid practice that allows for multiple, intersecting perspectives;
• Contributions that turn to the work of feminist posthumanist scholars like Donna Haraway (2007) and Stacy Alaimo (2016), who argue for an ethics of “trans-corporeality” — the recognition of interconnectedness between human and non-human agents.

Contributions might focus on one of four main axes of investigation while maintaining an intermedial approach consistent with the journal’s mandate:

• Engendering repurposing: towards an intermedial theory of gender in media;
• Repurposing and the transgenerational history of gendered media;
• The geopolitics of repurposed gender and media practices;
• Ecologically informed critical theory and repurposed gendered media practices.

Possible contributions might focus on — but are not limited to — the following objects and themes:

• Gender-informed repurposing media practices in painting, photography, video, film, TV, internet art, video games, etc. such as the New Queer Cinema, alt porn, DIY video games, LGBTQ+ film and media festivals, media production collectives, etc.;
• Embodied representations within gender-informed media practices;
• Narratives of self (gender, trauma, illness etc.) within gender-informed media practices;
• Repurposing gender-informed media practices in the Global South and/or from an Indigenous perspective;
• Gender-informed media archaeology;
• Alternative gendered media histories;
• Media materiality and gender.

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Intermédialités/Intermediality is a biannual journal, which publishes original articles in French and English evaluated through a blind peer review process.

Proposals (350–400 words) in English or French should include an abstract, a preliminary bibliography (five books or articles), and a brief biographical note (discipline, fields of interest, 5–10 lines). Proposals will be evaluated based on the originality of the approach, thematic relevance, and fit with the journal. They should be sent to the guest editors (caroline.bem@umontreal.ca and rosanna.maule@concordia.ca) by January 10, 2026.

Completed texts will be due August 1, 2026. They should be no longer than 6,000 words (40,000 characters, including spaces) and can incorporate illustrations (audio, visual, still, or animated) whose publication rights should be secured by the authors.

***

Bibliography:

Alaimo, Stacy, Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times, Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 2016.

Arnold, Carol & Shane Blackman, « Retrieving and Repurposing: A Grounded Approach to Hyperlocal Working Practices through a Subcultural Lens », Digital Journalism, vol. 11, n° 6, 2023, p. 1065–1083.

Anderson, Benedict, « Opportunity in Crisis: Alternative Media and Capitalist Legitimation », Crisis & Social Change: Toward Alternative Horizons, Cambridge, University of Cambridge, September 2014.

Anderson, Benjamin, « Rising Above: Alternative Media as Activist Media », Stream: Culture/Politics/Technology, vol. 7, n° 1, 2009, p. 22–33.

Balsom, Erika, After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation, Film and Culture, New York, Columbia University Press, 2017.

Bilge, Sirma, « The Fungibility of Intersectionality: An Afropessimist Reading », Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 43, n° 13, 2020, p. 2298–2326.

Bolter, David J. & Richard A. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002.

Brunow, Dagmar, Remediating Transcultural Memory: Documentary Filmmaking as Archival Intervention, Media and Cultural Memory/Medien Und Kulturelle Erinnerung 23, Berlin & Boston, De Gruyter, 2021.

Caldwell, J. T., « Critical Industrial Practice: Branding, Repurposing, and the Migratory Patterns of Industrial Texts », Television & New Media, vol. 7, n° 2, 2006, p. 99–134.

Clark-Parsons, Rosemary, Networked Feminism: How Digital Media Makers Transformed Gender Justice Movements, Oakland, University of California Press, 2022.

Delfanti, Alessandro & Johan Söderberg, « Repurposing the Hacker: Three Cycles of Recuperation in the Evolution of Hacking and Capitalism », Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organizations, vol. 18, n° 3, 2018, p. 457–476.

Eichhorn, Kate, The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2013.

Federici, Silvia, Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism, Oakland, PM Press, 2020.

Fotopoulou, Aristea, Feminist Activism and Digital Networks: Between Empowerment and Vulnerability, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Gajjala, Radhika (dir.), Cyberculture and the Subaltern: Weavings of the Virtual and Real, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2012.

Haraway, Donna, When Species Meet, Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 2007.

Jenkins, Henry, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University Press, 2006.

Jones, Feminista, Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets, Boston, Beacon Press, 2019.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, La pensée sauvage, Paris, Librairie Plon, 1962.

Maule, Rosanna, Sustainable Resilience in Women’s Film and Video Organization: A Counter-Lineage in Moving Image History, London, Routledge, 2024.

Megarry, Jessica, The Limitations of Social Media Feminism: No Space of Our Own, Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Muñoz, José Esteban, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York, New York University Press, 2009.

Rahman, Lisabona & Julita Pratiwi (Kelas Liarsip), « On Decay: Reflections on Working with Neglected Films », Stefanie Schulte Strathaus & Vinzenz Hediger (dir.), Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Future with Remnants of the Past, Lünenburg, Meson Press, 2023, p. 221–227.

Renzi, Alessandra, Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

Siapera, Eugenia, « Affective Labour and Media Work », Mark Deuze & Mirjam Prenger (dir.), Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2019, p. 275–286.

Simondon, Gilbert, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Minnesota, Univocal Press, 2017.

Wiens, Brianna I. & Shana MacDonald, « Feminist Futures: #MeToo’s Possibilities as Poiesis, Techné, and Pharmakon », Feminist Media Studies, vol. 21, n° 7, 2021, p. 1108–1124.

Yeatman, Anna, « Feminism and the Technological Age », Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 29, n° 79, 2014, p. 85–100.