Submissions

Scroll down to see the guidelines for guest-editing an issue and our forthcoming issues/concept notes:

General Submission Guidelines:

1. We are ideologically neutral and invite submissions from the perspectives of all ideologies – right, center, left etc. – as long as a piece makes a reasoned argument.

2. While emailing your pieces, please write ‘Magazine Piece: Issue No.’ in the subject line. Send submissions and queries to email ids of individual guest editors listed with concept notes.

3. The pieces should be around 2000-2500 words. We are open to making exceptions to this rule, if a particular piece deserves more space.

4. We do not accept creative writing (poems, short stories, etc.) for magazine issues, unless an issue is specifically devoted to creative writing.

5. We are open to audio-visual submissions (in the form of interviews, conversations etc.). The audio-visual files must not be more than 20 minutes in duration. Again, we are open to making exceptions to this rule in some cases.

6. We invite Photo Essays on the given topic of a particular issue. We will include a maximum of 15 photos in a Photo Essay.

7. In case the authors are making submissions to multiple magazines, blogs, and newspapers,  they must inform Cafe Dissensus the moment the piece is accepted elsewhere. Once Cafe Dissensus accepts a piece and starts working on it, it cannot be published in another magazine, blog, and newspaper.

8. The materials on Cafe Dissensus are protected under Creative Commons License. Once a piece is published in Cafe Dissensus, we will retain exclusive copyright for a period of 30 days, from the date of publication. Within this period, the piece cannot be re-published elsewhere even in an adapted and modified form.Thereafter, it must be acknowledged that the piece was first published in Cafe Dissensus. Failing to comply with this and any unauthorized republication/reproduction of the piece will invite legal measures and prosecution.

9. We are a completely voluntary endeavor and we are unable to pay our authors.

Guidelines for Guest-Editing an Issue:

We invite our readers, teachers, scholars, students, journalists/media professionals, activists, professionals (practically, anyone who would like to!) to guest-edit an issue of Cafe Dissensus. Here are the guidelines for guest-editing an issue: 

1. The Guest-Editor must send in a 150 word concept note/call for papers to the editors (Email: infocafedissensus@gmail.com) well in advance, describing the theme of the issue (along with raising some questions). We will put up the CFP/concept note on the magazine website and on the magazine social-media pages.

2.There must be at least 15 articles plus the guest-editorial.

3. Each article must be between 2000-2500 words. However, the guest-editor might include a few longer essays, if she/he feels necessary.

4. Since the magazine is geared toward non-academic readers, all footnotes and references must be taken out. The citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea etc. Please keep this readability factor in mind while soliciting articles and editing them.

5. We expect at least some of the pieces to be personal narratives, wherever possible. One of our aims is to weave the personal with the public/political.

6. Audio-visual content is one of our distinctive features. The guest-editors must include at least 3-4 audio-visual interviews, conversations etc. in the edited issue. For example, interviews and conversations recorded as audio-video or audio. We can help with the logistics of recording and editing the content.

7. The guest-editor will be in charge of collecting, selecting, and editing the articles. All articles will go through a final-edit by the Editors of the magazine.

8. The guest-editor must write an 800-1000 word editorial.

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2023 Cafe Dissensus Issues

Issue 68: April 2023: (Re)storying Indian Handloom Saree Culture [Last date for submission: 28 February, 2023; Date of publication: 1 April, 2023]

Guest-Editor: Dr. Anindita Chatterjee, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English, Durgapur Government College, West Bengal, India.

Concept Note: Would Handloom saree stories perish on the face of overpowering Powerloom culture? Although powerloom weavers produce ten times faster than the handloom weavers impacting the livelihood, ethos, and lifestyle of the handloom weavers in India in substantial ways, the ontology of Indian handloom saree culture is a complex and evolving phenomenon. Being the second-largest employment provider for the rural population in India, handloom emerges as one of the oldest and the most enduring symbols of traditional Indian culture. Indian handloom weavers have been celebrated worldwide for their workmanship, cultural authenticity, and cultural transformations. Handloom saree in India is varied and culture specific. Its branches and subbranches are connected to the very notion of peoplehood as an individual and community: Each stratum of Indian handloom saree is a tangible representation of its indigenous identity, subjectivization of oral culture, unique response to environmental values, and political being and belonging. Indian handloom industry survives mainly on its aesthetics, uniqueness, and craftsmanship. Dermatologically safer and aesthetically exquisite, the handloom motifs and design assign unique heritage to the handloom industry.

The present volume, therefore, intends to identify and restore the tangled threads of Indian handloom saree culture in order to look at the invisible interstices between human labour and imagination. The volume intends to archive untold stories and unchronicled histories/herstories of Indian handloom culture and its ongoing intercultural, intra-cultural and trans-cultural projects.

Thematic Areas

Saree as an indigenous cultural marker

Handloom weavers’ struggle for survival

Saree as an integral part of Indian material culture

Saree and the diaspora

Saree as a gendered artifact

Saree and Bollywood

Saree as a personal/power statement

Submission should be approximately 2000-2500 words. Audio-video interviews are also welcome. Please do provide a brief bio at the end of your piece. Since the magazine is geared toward both academic and non-academic readers, the citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea, etc. The issue is planned for online publication on 1 April, 2023. Last date for submission: 28 February, 2023.

Please email your submissions to Dr. Anindita Chatterjee: bluehighways071@gmail.com

Issue 69: August 2023: The Other Mothers: Imagining Motherhood Differently [Last date for submission: 30 June, 2023; Date of publication: 1 August, 2023]

Guest-Editor: Dr. Paromita Sengupta, Director of Studies, GILL, Griffith College Limerick, Ireland.

Concept Note: The conventional concept of ‘motherhood’, constructed by and steeped in the key traits of patriarchal ideology, fabricates it as ‘natural’, ‘innocuous’ and ‘universal’. Numerous feminist theorists studying motherhood have harped on this fact, and it has been the take off point for seminal motherhood studies. As a lived experience, however, motherhood is implicated in issues of gender, race, class and caste; often, the father’s role to both the child(ren) and mother, determines the true value/ place that ‘a motherhood’ and the baby get in society.

This issue of Café Dissensus seeks articles that look at motherhood and mothering differently – questioning it, stretching it, turning it on its head. Can we redefine ‘mother’ as a verb and not as a noun? Can we mother beyond limits of birthing, beyond gender divisions and beyond DNA? Articles that speak of personal experiences of ‘different’ and ‘difficult’ motherhood, abortion, adoptive and ‘step’ mothers, interviews with ‘other mothers’, transgender mothers, experiences of women who choose not to birth/mother, surrogacy, discussion of representations of motherhood on screen – are welcome. What we seek are not dry academic essays but experiential write-ups enriched by intimate personal engagements and negotiations with mothers and motherhood.

The proposed issue welcomes submissions on the following themes (though not limited to them):

• Experiencing a different/ difficult Motherhood
• Postpartum depression
• Single Mothers
• Abortion
• Adoptive mothers
• Transgender Mothers/ Motherhood
• Surrogacy
• Not a mother
• Step-mother
• Mother as witch
• Mother figures in mythology
• Representation of motherhood in film
• Mother-child relationships
• Mothering Differently
• Motherhood beyond gender binaries
• Motherhood and obsession/ madness

Submission should be approximately 2000-2500 words. Audio-video interviews are also welcome. Please do provide a brief bio at the end of your piece. Since the magazine is geared toward both academic and non-academic readers, the citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea, etc. The issue is planned for online publication on 1 August, 2023. Last date for submission: 30 June, 2023.

Please email your submissions to Dr. Paromita Sengupta (Email: paromitaseng@gmail.com) with the subject line – ‘Submissions – The Other Mothers’.

Issue 70: October 2023: Othello in Bengal [Last date for submission: 30 August, 2023; Date of publication: 1 October, 2023]

Guest-Editor: Abhishek Chowdhury, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Chakdaha College, Nadia, West Bengal, India.

Concept Note: In colonial Bengal, Shakespeare was accepted as a symbol of “Englishness”, including English religion, discipline, language and education. Despite being a dramatization of male jealousy, doomed love and victimization of devoted female, Othello fails to be a universal tale about a man coming to terms with the supposed betrayal and adultery of those closest to him. It is, perhaps, the only tragedy of Shakespeare where the protagonist’s character and behaviour are always traced to his racial identity. The reason is Shakespeare’s arbitrary attempt to make Othello stand on the complicated crux of contemporary beliefs about black-skinned people and Muslims. Resultantly, reading or producing the play in a society like that of Bengal where racial discrimination and apartheid are practised is to lend a new powerful meaning to the play. Significantly enough, Othello opened Shakespeare’s account in Calcutta. This earliest record of a Shakespeare performance in Calcutta coincided with the publication of The Bengal Gazette in 1780. Since then, playwrights, translators, thespians of Bengal find the play intriguing. In a postcolonial space like Bengal, translation, adaptation, and performance of Othello open up space for heterogeneous significances. This issue would like to trace how Shakespeare’s play has been adapted, translated, performed and criticised in Bengal since pre-Independence period. The focal point of the study is to unfold the adaptation and appropriation of Othello in print media and visual media in Bengal.

The proposed issue welcomes submissions on the following themes (though not limited to them):

Academic/ literary translations

Production oriented translations

Bengali translations/adaptations/abridgements

English translations/adaptations/abridgements

Performing the play in Bengal

Criticisms of the play in Bengal

Submissions should be approximately 2000-2500 words. Please do provide a brief bio at the end of your piece. Since the magazine is geared toward both academic and non-academic readers, the citations within the body of the articles must be minimal, in the form of the name of an author or an idea, etc. The issue is planned for online publication on 1 October, 2023 . Last date for submission: 30 August, 2023.

Please email your submissions to Abhishek Chowdhury (Email: chowdhuryabhishek50@yahoo.in) with the subject line ‘Othello in Bengal’ for consideration.