Issue 56: September 2020: Travel Writing: A Mode of Constructing Knowledge [Last date for submission: 31 July, 2020; Date of publication: 1 September, 2020]
Guest-Editor: Raeesa Usmani, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, India.
Concept Note: “The world is a book. Those who do not travel read only a page.” – Saint Augustine
Travel locates our worldly progression. Traveling is one thing everyone does at various levels, in various forms. Travel makes one less prejudiced, adaptable and tolerant about the pool of ideas, peoples, and objects. It makes one more independent, as the traveller breaks away from familiar people and places while residing among unknown people, on an unknown space. While encountering variety of foreign customs and traditions, travel makes one aware of different culture, history, religion, belief, tradition, and life style of the residents living at distant places. One might end up exploring, in the process; more about one’s own self, culture, society, which might lead one to appreciating one’s own culture and customs. Moreover, as Flaubert observes, “travelling makes one modest – you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world” (Flaubert 220).
The previous year 2019 was celebrated as the 300th anniversary of the publication of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and its literary legacy. The incredible combination of fact and fiction in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe has established the foundation of the realistic fiction, all the while evincing the close interrelationship between novel and travel writing.
The proposed guest issue of Café Dissensus aims to address various facets of travel writing unfolded over the period. Travel Writing is a contemporary, potential developing genre with a number of possibilities to explore and investigate. Hence, the proposed issue intends to bring in travel writings with its different interesting factual and fictitious permutations. The issue invites articles, papers on, but not limited to, the below mentioned themes:
Travel writing and knowledge construction
Travelling to write (narrative, memoir and essay)
Travel writing and exploration (inwardly and outwardly)
Travel writing and gender studies
Travel writing: writing as a gendered Self/Other
Travel writing: public sphere and private sphere
Travelling, migration, forced migration and diaspora
Travel writing: fiction, fact and poetry
Travel writing and (auto)biography
Submission guidelines:
- Original, previously unpublished personal repertoires, papers, articles, photo-essays (maximum 15 photos), interviews, conversations written between 2500-3000 words are welcome
- Kindly take note that the magazine aims at the academic but mostly non-academic target readership. Hence, keep minimal in-text citations, in the form of the name of an author or an idea etc., and do not attach reference list at the end of the paper
- Please make sure to attach your brief bio-note (200 words) with as the submission
The issue will be live on 1 September, 2020. The last date of submission is 31 July, 2020.
Kindly email the submissions at raeesa.travelwriting@gmail.com by 31 July, 2020.
General Submission Guidelines:
1. We are ideologically neutral and invite submissions from the perspectives of all ideologies – right, center, left etc. – as long as a piece makes a reasoned argument.
2. While emailing your pieces, please write ‘Magazine Piece: Issue No.’ in the subject line. Send submissions and queries to email ids of individual guest editors listed with concept notes.
3. The pieces should be around 2000-2500 words. We are open to making exceptions to this rule, if a particular piece deserves more space.
4. We are open to audio-visual submissions (in the form of interviews, conversations etc.). The audio-visual files must not be more than 20 minutes in duration. Again, we are open to making exceptions to this rule in some cases.
5. We invite Photo Essays on the given topic of a particular issue. We will include a maximum of 15 photos in a Photo Essay.
6. In case the authors are making submissions to multiple magazines, blogs, and newspapers, they must inform Cafe Dissensus the moment the piece is accepted elsewhere. Once Cafe Dissensus accepts a piece and starts working on it, it cannot be published in another magazine, blog, and newspaper.
7. The materials on Cafe Dissensus are protected under Creative Commons License. Once a piece is published in Cafe Dissensus, we will retain exclusive copyright for a period of 30 days, from the date of publication. Within this period, the piece cannot be re-published elsewhere even in an adapted and modified form.Thereafter, it must be acknowledged that the piece was first published in Cafe Dissensus. Failing to comply with this and any unauthorized republication/reproduction of the piece will invite legal measures and prosecution.
8. We are a completely voluntary endeavor and we are unable to pay our authors.
Guidelines for Guest-Editing an Issue:
We invite our readers, teachers, scholars, students, journalists/media professionals, activists, professionals (practically, anyone who would like to!) to guest-edit an issue of Cafe Dissensus. Here are the guidelines for guest-editing an issue:
1. The Guest-Editor must send in a 150 word concept note/call for papers to the editors (Email: infocafedissensus@gmail.com) well in advance, describing the theme of the issue (along with raising some questions). We will put up the CFP/concept note on the magazine website and on the magazine social-media pages.
2.There must be at least 15-18 articles plus the guest-editorial.
3. Each article must be between 2000-2500 words. However, the guest-editor might include a few longer essays, if she/he feels necessary.
4. Since the magazine is geared toward non-academic readers, all footnotes and references must be taken out. The citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea etc. Please keep this readability factor in mind while soliciting articles and editing them.
5. We expect at least some of the pieces to be personal narratives, wherever possible. One of our aims is to weave the personal with the public/political.
6. Audio-visual content is one of our distinctive features. The guest-editors must include at least 3-4 audio-visual interviews, conversations etc. in the edited issue. For example, interviews and conversations recorded as audio-video or audio. We can help with the logistics of recording and editing the content.
7. The guest-editor will be in charge of collecting, selecting, and editing the articles. All articles will go through a final-edit by the Editors of the magazine.
8. The guest-editor must write an 800-1000 word editorial.