CFP Special Issue:
Body Modification and Gender Anarchy in Media Theory and Practice

deadline for full submissions: April 20, 2025 (for publication in May 2026)

Guest Editors:
Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University)
Cla Calabresi (Johns Hopkins University)

This special issue of MAST Journal explores practices of the body and embodiment in relation to media theory from both diachronical and synchronical perspectives. We welcome submissions concerning the body in media theories from the 21st century and from the digital turn onward. In particular, we are interested in analyses of a “post-body” informed by theories of post-genderism, gender anarchy and posthumanism in the context of digital media technologies, not only transporting the values of a “post-body,” but also enabling and creating such a body and embodiments. We invite cultural case studies and close readings of forms and expressions of embodiments and notions of the body from a historical, comparative, and non-Eurocentric viewpoints. We also welcome interpretations that move beyond the traditional canon of Western humanistic body theories—such as phenomenology, ethnography, structuralism, and post-structuralism—or challenge the concept of historical linearity.

We invite theorizations and explorations of the following questions through media practice: How is the queer body shaped or affected by the post-gender era? Do body modifications, such as sex changes, contribute to the creation of an anarchic or post-gendered body? How do contemporary technologies redefine the concept of a cyborg body? In what ways might the post-body resonate with non-Western, post-colonial understandings of embodiment?

We theorize the body as a technical image presenting a world and understanding its meaning and orientation within it (in the spirit of Vilém Flusser), or as a bio-political phenomenon questioning political views and rupturing norms and hierarchies (in the spirit of Paul Preciado). We conceptualize the body as both human and non-human, as trans- and inter-sexual, as symbolic, real, and representational, and as an atemporal living environment encompassing a contemporaneous fusion of future, past, and present—such as in indigenous understandings of non-time-based corporeal practices. We are particularly interested in essays addressing feminist and queer embodiments, the racialized body, trans bodies, and memoirs of the transitioning body (in the vein of Paul Preciado’s or McKenzie Wark’s body-essays). Topics may include body modifications that incorporate cyborgism from the digital turn onward, queer, intersectional, and feminist post-body practices of empowerment, and other flamboyant body performances and transformations over the past 30 years. We also welcome submissions from Disability Studies, Film Studies, Performance Studies, Technology Studies, Brain Studies, and AI Studies.

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

  • Gender anarchy

  • The non-human body

  • Non-time-based corporeality

  • The body’s face and interface

  • Celebrations of the flamboyant body

  • Writing and performing the trans body

  • AI generated body modifications

  • Analogue and Digital bodies

  • 20th and 21st century medical technologies and body modifications

  • The body and the memoir

  • Biofabrication

  • Gender and bio-hacking

  • Technologies of the human corpse

  • Technologies of disembodiment 

We invite full submissions in the below categories:

  • Long Essays (5000-6000 words)

  • Practice-based Studies: Short essays (1,000-2,000 words) that are composed around at least one historical or original media art project.

- All essays will be assessed based on the originality of theoretical argument and relevance to the scope of the journal and the themes of special issue. Essays must be previously unpublished to be considered. In the case of practice-based studies, parts of the projects may have been previously exhibited or published, but the written components must be original and unpublished. All copyrights for published images and artworks must be cleared by the authors themselves before the publication date.

 - All submissions must also include a 200-words abstract, 3-5 keywords and the author’s info (name, institution of affiliation, a 100-word bio, and a valid email address). All aspects of the submission should be included in one Word document file. Authors are encouraged to include 3-4 images of the work (and if applicable, a link to the work in its entirety).

- For formatting, style, and full submission guidelines, please visit Submission Guidelines.

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Please send your submissions (and questions) to editors@mast-journal.org with the subject heading BODY MODIFICATION AND GENDER ANARCHY by no later than April 20, 2025.

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Important Dates:

  • Deadline for full submissions: April 20, 2025.

  • Notification of acceptance/rejection: May 15, 2025.

  • If revisions are needed, revised essays need to be submitted by: November 15, 2025.

  • Publication date: May 2026.

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About Guest Editors:

Bernadette Wegenstein is an Austrian-born author, and a critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker based in Baltimore. She is a professor of media studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she also serves as the director of the Center for Advanced Media Study. Her films combine feminist thought with human-centered storytelling techniques. She has produced and directed several award-winning documentary features and shorts, including Devoti tutti (2023) and The Conductor (2021), which was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. Wegenstein is the author of Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory (MIT Press), and The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (MIT Press). Her most recent publications include the anthology Radical Equalities: Global Feminist Filmmaking (co-edited with Lauren Mushro) with Vernon press, and her forthcoming monograph on Jane Campion for the Philosophical Filmmaker Series, published by Bloomsbury Press.

Cla Calabresi is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University. Her research centers on developing a “hybrid” sociosemiotic and Post-Lacanian feminist-queer analysis, focusing on the dynamics of gender-based discrimination and violence as depicted in contemporary Western science fiction cinema. In 2022, she completed her M.A. from the Faculty of Communication and Media Culture at the University of Turin, Italy, with a Master’s thesis titled “I’d Rather Be a Cyborg than a Goddess: Cinema, Sociosemiotics, Science Fiction, and Feminisms.” Before that, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies. Cla actively participates in international semiotic conferences and serves as the artistic co-director of Electropark, a performing arts festival based in Genoa, Italy.