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"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles
in it."
- Margaret Fuller
The field of women's studies has devoted increasing attention
to the ways in which women act as mentors for other women. Most
such scholarship has centered either on pedagogical approaches
to feminist mentoring in academia or on networks of professional
support between women. These two areas of inquiry, however, scarcely
account for the ways in which women mentor and are mentored by
other women-especially among "third wave" feminists.
For this issue of Women Writers, therefore, we would like to
examine the ways in which women create mentoring relationships
through the creation of and attachment to texts. We hope to bring
together a collection of pieces that will both celebrate and
interrogate these relationships.
We contend that productive educational and political relationships
take place between women and texts. Texts play a crucial role
in many women's self-construction as women and their coming to
consciousness as feminists. Identification with a particular
character like Jo in Little Women or Janie in Their
Eyes Were Watching God, for example, often gives women the
guidance and self-knowledge a real-life mentor would provide.
Such identification can extend beyond the text to a feeling of
apprenticeship under the author, often resulting in another form
of text-based mentoring. Autobiographical or nonfiction writing
provides an especially powerful form of textual mentorship, linking
women's lives across vast distances of time, geography, and subjectivity.
We are also interested in the ways in which texts help create
or facilitate mentoring relationships between real women. Mentoring
relationships between women writers have traditionally received
less attention than those between women artists and their more
experienced (or more recognized) male counterparts. Can men in
these situations act as feminist mentors-with or without intentions
of doing so? What valued and valuable relationships between women
artists deserve more attention, and what can we learn from them?
Sharing texts can also bring women together in professional and
academic mentoring relationships-as is the case for the co-authors
of this proposal, professor and student. We are interested in
further examination of the ways in which textual mentorship has
the potential to equalize power or modify the traditional structure
of the mentor/mentee dyad.
Finally, we are interested in textual representations of mentorship;
Amy Lowell's poem "The
Sisters" provides one clear example. We will invite
analyses of such texts as well as creative submissions that reflect
on or otherwise represent women and their mentors. We are also
interested in interviews between women and their mentors.
In the spirit of mentorship, we hope to especially encourage
collaborative or paired submissions by women and their mentors.
Potential areas of inquiry may include (but are not limited to):
- How is the process of coming to consciousness as a woman—and/or
a feminist—facilitated by textual mentors?
- What role do texts and their authors play in mentoring women?
- How do portrayals of women’s mentoring relationships
differ between male and female writers?
- What texts in particular have served as mentor-texts for
feminist readers? Which characters stand out as role models,
inviting personal relationships with readers?
- How do women’s reading groups take on mentoring functions?
- How do texts facilitate mentoring relationships between individual
women readers within and outside of academia?
- How does feminist mentoring differ from more traditional
female bonds like motherhood, sisterhood, or friendship? How
do these kinds of relationships inform or impact mentoring?
- How are they textualized in similar or different ways?
- What similarities and differences exist between relationships
of inspiration (Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, for example)
and relationships of mentoring?
- Who have been the mentors—real or textual—for women
writers? In what ways do patron/protégé relationships
act as (or act against) other models of mentoring?
- How do race, class, age, or sexual orientation influence
mentoring relationships? How are these factors mediated by textual
mentoring?
We also invite original creative works of fiction or poetry
taking on any aspect of women, mentoring, and texts. Interviews
between women and their mentors are also welcome.
We especially encourage collaborative or paired submissions by
women and their mentors.
Submissions are due no later than midnight EST on 1 May 2005.
Please see full submission guidelines at http://www.womenwriters.net/contribute.htm.
Submissions formatted for the web (.html, hypertext) will be
especially regarded, but are not required.
Contributions should be submitted to the Guest Editor in digital
form:
*text-based contributions should be saved as Microsoft Word documents
(.doc or .rtf), Word Perfect documents: (.wpd), or web-ready
documents (.html).
*images should be saved as jpegs (.jpg) or gifs (.gif)
For information about submitting material in media formats that
are not listed above, contact Kim
Wells
Please consult The MLA Manual of Style for proper manuscript
form. All manuscripts or correspondence regarding the submission
of manuscripts will be directed to the Guest Editor of the issue
to which you wish to contribute.
Women Writers is listed in the LOC, ISSN#: 1535-8402535-8402,
has had almost 60 MILLION viewers since its creation in 1998,
and is a peer reviewed publication that features original fiction
and poetry by women writers, scholarship on any aspect of women
writers and/or women's studies, personal essays, book reviews,
film reviews, and website reviews. This is an excellent opportunity
to expand your "service" events; most tenure committees
view web publication as equivalent to or slightly better than
conference attendance and participation. See the site's mission
statement for more information: http://www.womenwriters.net/editoralboard.html |
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