CALL FOR PAPERS: BETWEEN DISCOURSE AND EXPERIENCE: QUEER PEOPLE IN POLAND AND BEYOND
Call for Papers
BETWEEN DISCOURSE AND EXPERIENCE: QUEER PEOPLE IN POLAND AND BEYOND
Dear Colleagues,
We invite submissions of scholarly articles for Issue 1.2026 of Władza Sądzenia (Power of Judgment).
The thematic issue, “Between Discourse and Experience: Queer People in Poland and Beyond”, is guest-edited by Aleksandra Sobańska and Krystyna Dzwonkowska-Godula.
This issue is devoted to the analysis of contemporary, dynamically evolving and expanding ways of constructing, experiencing, and problematizing queerness in the Polish social context and beyond. The scope of reflection and debate is broad—from tensions between discourses, both dominant and those produced within queer communities, to the everyday experiences of LGBTQ+ people operating within specific power structures, axionormative systems, and institutional frameworks.
The aim of the issue is to create a space for reflection on queer communities in Poland and beyond as dynamic, internally differentiated, and historically changing fields of identities, practices, and social relations. We are interested both in biographical narratives and individual experiences, as well as in structural conditions—political, legal, institutional, and cultural—that shape life chances, agency, visibility, and resistance.
The issue seeks not only to diagnose the current situation of queer people in Poland and beyond but also to critically analyze the languages of description and the knowledge produced around queerness, with particular attention to their political consequences, mechanisms of exclusion, and emancipatory potential.
We encourage you to share your reflections, research findings, and scholarly work that may contribute to a deeper understanding of queerness in Polish contexts and beyond.
Proposed thematic areas include, but are not limited to:
· Public discourses on LGBTQ+ people and their role in shaping social attitudes and public policies.
· Discourses produced within queer communities and their significance for constructing individual and collective identities, community-building, practices of resistance, and social mobilization.
· Queer communities past and present: processes of identity formation and differentiation, the development of activism and self-organization, and the evolution of languages of description and self-description.
· LGBTQ+ people in relation to political and institutional opportunity structures—public policies, legislation, legal frameworks, and their consequences for everyday life and family spheres.
· Experiences of non-binary, intersex, aromantic, asexual, polyamorous people, and others represented by the less visible letters of the LGBTQ+ acronym.
· Intersectional analyses of LGBTQ+ lives, addressing diversity of experience as well as issues of inequality and social exclusion, including those related to age, ethnicity, religion, social class, and disability.
· Controversies surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and visibility, including the discourses and actions of opposing groups.
· Diversity of attitudes, experiences, and interests within queer communities—including internal tensions, conflicts, and negotiations.
Please submit articles of 40,000–60,000 characters by 30 April 2026 to the editorial office at wladzasadzenia@gmail.com
or via the OJS platform: https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/ws/about/submissions