We are very pleased to announce the launch of CFC Intersections, a new sister journal to Contemporary French Civilization (CFC). The new journal aims to provide a new publishing outlet for scholarship related to intersectionality and the broader associated notion of intersections in French and Francophone studies.

CFC Intersections will be edited by Denis Provencher (University of Arizona) and supported by an excellent team of Associate Editors:

Jennifer Boittin, The Pennsylvania State University
Siham Bouamer, Sam Houston State University
Charles Forsdick, Liverpool University
Mame-Fatou Niang, Carnegie Mellon University

The first issue will be published in July 2022.

In the late 1980s, intersectionality emerged as a new theoretical paradigm — particular to the United States — to address and explore the connections between the multiple and oft-devalued positions that stand in contrast to whiteness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and middle-class western values. Kimberlé Crenshaw convincingly advanced this framework, initially in the context of legal studies for Black women. Intersectionality grew into a theory that focused upon those excluded from a dominant (white, middle-class) feminism, exposing their invisibility and the multifarious facets of their marginalities.  Over the past three decades, this approach has come to inform the lives of women, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), the working class, LGBTQ communities, people with disabilities, and those in other marginalized and minoritized groups; and indeed the research has expanded into multiple fields including among others Africana and Black studies, anthropology, cultural studies as well as gender, sexuality and queer studies, literary studies, sociology, and social work.

The journal will also encourage comparative and transnational understandings and invites explorations of intersections in a variety of new social, political, geographical, cultural and ideological niches. Some excellent work has already emerged in French and Francophone studies. The journal aims to provide a platform to exclusively showcase and publish research (in both French and English) on intersectionality with the broadly inclusive term “intersections.” Indeed, CFC Intersections will highlight the value of contemporary literary, sociolinguistic, ethnographic, cinematic, and other forms of cultural production informed by the complex intersections of identities that impact the everyday lives of people living throughout the French-speaking world. This will form part of a wider project of decolonizing French studies. It is clear that intersectionality informs both historical and contemporary moments and hence the journal aims to illustrate a wider chronological perspective by also publishing work on the contextual roots of intersectionality as a term. Hence, the adoption of “intersections” as the journal title aims to ensure contributions from researchers — working in postcolonial, transnational, translingual, and other contexts — who may already be studying the Francophone world from an intersectional perspective without necessarily recognizing it or being recognized as such.

Call for Papers: 

Editor-in-Chief, Denis Provencher, and Associate Editor, Siham Bouamer, invite submissions for an inaugural virtual conference.

Deadline for Submissions: 15^th June 2021
Date of Virtual Conference: 24^th-25^th September 2021

Read the full Call for Papers here.