Call for Submissions: Fall 2020 Print Issue

Les soumissions sont maintenant ouvertes!

From tough beginnings (remember the looming threat of WWIII?) to more recent times of quarantine and social distancing, 2020 has been a year unlike any other. The COVID-19 crisis has surprised the world, transforming an invisible virus into a global threat, and one’s home into the safest of havens. It has highlighted the inequities that have long plagued our societies: from understandings of what exactly constitutes “essential workers”, to long-standing racism against black people and discrimination against minorities, from photographs of pollution and environmental degradation (or lack thereof) to confronting ongoing political unrest worldwide (or in some cases, their collapse). 

In light of this brave new world we find ourselves in, The Graduate Press is calling for submissions for its Fall 2020 Print Issue: titled the “SURREAL / SURRÉALISTE” issue. 

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, surreal is defined as something strange; seemingly unreal; like a dream, or even a fantasy. Perhaps it is fitting that the Surrealist art movement was born from the ashes of WWI and the Spanish Flu, as many tried to reconcile the multiple and strange realities that that themselves had lived through. In many ways, this sentiment does not feel so different from the present day, as we live and breath (both with and without masks) in a surreal world of uncertainty. After all, none of us know exactly what the future holds.

We are looking for submissions that seek to answer questions like: what does it mean to live through a historical moment, when the world seems to be turned upside down? Are the fields and disciplines we inhabit adapting to this new reality? Are they not? What is a personal experience of the surreal, wherever you might be in the world? Who experiences the surreal, and why?

We call for submissions that challenges the current thought, that creatively explore the absurd, and contemplate the surreal “historical moment” that we find ourselves in. You have full creative freedom: from political commentary to academic article, from poetic to prose writing. Send us your written or visual pieces, in whatever form you would like (essays, photographs, poetry, illustrations, and/or others). We especially encourage bilingualism, and accept submissions in both French and English. Email us your questions and/or submissions to gisa.thegraduate@graduateinstitute.ch.

Word limit (for written pieces): 1,200 words

Deadline: 15 August 2020

Submit to: gisa.thegraduate@graduateinstitute.ch

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