Call for Chapters: Gender, Sexuality, Information: A Reader

Call for Chapters: Gender, Sexuality, Information: A Reader

While information needs and behavior have become a central research concern in library and information studies, the particularities of gender and sexuality have yet to be centered in the field. Bringing queer and feminist theories into conversation with current LIS research, Gender, Sexuality, Information: A Reader addresses this gap, gathering existing research along with new scholarship on the intersection of gender and sexuality and information use. Contributors address a range of concerns, including paradigms of information needs and behavior research, methodological challenges, and current approaches to assessing and meeting LGBTQ and women’s information needs. Responding to emergent critiques of positivism and behaviorism in LIS scholarship, this collection also seeks to trouble what we think we mean when we talk about gender and sex, as well as “information” and “behavior,” as settled, stable constructs.

Critical and Interdisciplinary Focus
Current work in disciplines as diverse as legal theory, literary criticism, design, anthropology, and technology studies exercise a profound impact on LIS research. At the same time, the somewhat nebulous sub-disciplines within our field, such as information seeking behavior, information structures, archival studies, museology, information retrieval, and information policy, have been connected by researchers in new and innovative ways. LIS scholarship has also sought in recent years to challenge traditional approaches and suggest new directions for research into the purposes, practices, phenomenon, and organization of information. This reader serves as a comprehensive multidisciplinary anthology where different epistemologies and methodologies meet. It offers a timely and reasoned contribution to feminist and queer LIS research and promotes perspectives that can serve the cause of social justice.

Possible topics
Manuscripts can cover a range of topics, both professional and theoretical. The editors strongly encourage submissions concerning the intersection of gender and sexuality with race, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economics. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following: cataloging and classification, assessing user needs, information behavior, alternative social science methods, records management, preservation, documentation, oral history, collection development, curatorship, digital libraries and archives, Internet studies, human-computer interaction, sexual health, sex positive perspectives, activist or oppositional new media, informatics, queer or feminist zines, web design and digital aesthetics, computer coding, digital humanities, censorship and intellectual freedom, information technology policy, children and young adult services, international and comparative LIS issues, grant writing, administration and management, and history of the book and publishing.

Submission Guidelines
The editors encourage practitioners, activists, and both established and emerging scholars to submit manuscripts by September 1, 2011. Manuscripts should rage from 5,000-8,000 words and use the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago University Press, 2010). Manuscripts should be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) to gsireader.submissions@gmail.com.

About the editors

Rebecca Dean and Patrick Keilty are PhD candidates in information studies with a concentration in women’s studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Contact

UCLA Department of Information Studies
GSE&IS Building, Box 951520
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520
Phone: (310) 825-8799
Dean’s email: becdean [at] gmail [dot] com
Keilty’s email: pkeilty [at] gmail [dot] com