Ocean Feminisms
Guest Editors: Celia Tagamolila Bardwell-Jones (University of Hawai‘i at Hilo), Stephanie Nohelani Teves (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa), and Joyce Pualani Warren (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa)
Publication Date: Planned for Fall 2022
Submission Requirements: 5,000-6,000 words (not including endnotes), due November 1, 2021
This special issue aims to center Indigenous epistemologies of the sea alongside settler responsibilities through transoceanic reflections. The guest editors recognize as a starting point the importance of the elemental sea, Moananuiākea, as the basis of identity for many people of Oceania. Centering the sea also invites dialogue with feminist scholarship emerging from the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and other ocean-centered Indigenous communities. Though this project is rooted in and routed through Oceania, oceanic flows invite us to think about feminisms that move beyond cartographic boundaries and academic disciplines, and we seek contributions that develop better models of decolonizing feminisms as well as models that center Indigenous feminist practices in the diaspora. Moreover, the editors take seriously the critiques of settlers of color made by Native Hawaiian activists, such as Haunani-Kay Trask, and Moana feminists, such as Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Maile Arvin, and Teresia Teaiwa. Hence, the special issue aims to develop a decolonial conceptual framework that deeply examines how epistemic practices of knowing oceans and waterways aid in cultivating ethical orientations that are critical of settler colonial occupation within Oceania and reconstruct alternative conceptions of the sea as generative/birthing pathways that are anchored to modalities of place-based ecologies, to evade colonial logics that render the sea as passive. Navigating the terrain of the space between oceans requires a trans-oceanic placental consciousness. As Epeli Hauʻofa reminds us, a “sea of islands” invokes a trans-oceanic consciousness that navigates across oceans, dives deep into the womb of the sea, and finds landings on the liminal ecologies of the sand, the coral, and the tides.
We seek critical essays and articles as well as creative non-fiction, first person accounts, poetry, and visual art that engage the intersections of settler responsibilities and Indigenous epistemologies of the sea. Possible topics include:
• Indigenous epistemologies, cosmogonies, or ontologies of the sea (ocean literacies, waves of knowledge, epistemic resistance, philosophical conceptions)
• Black, Indigenous, people of color critical perspectives of the sea
• Oceanic rematriation projects
• Queer theorizations of the ocean and diaspora
• Birthing practices in Oceania
• Indigenous feminism in Oceania (ie, Mana Wahine, Mana tama’ita’i)
• Women of Color feminisms
• Black Indigenous Pacific feminist scholarship (centering Melanesian and/ or Afro-diasporic perspectives)
• Decolonizing allyship (settlers of color, Asian Settler colonialism)
• Ecologies of the ocean and climate change
• Water rights
• Surfing, paddling, fishing, swimming, diving, sailing, wayfinding, and activism
• Militarization across oceans
• Imaginings of the sea through art, poems, song, performance
Submission Guidelines and Review Process
Please submit your paper at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ramj/default.aspx. There, you can find author instructions for uploading your submission, which requires a user account.
The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editorial staff and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
• Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
• Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
• Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
Please contact Arnold Pan, Associate Editor, with any questions regarding your submission: arnoldpan@ucla.edu.
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