Call for Papers: Military Families and Martial Politics

Dr Alice Cree and Dr Emma Huddlestone (was Long) are seeking papers for a special issue to be submitted to the journal Critical Military Studies titled ‘Military Families and Martial Politics’.

The aim of this special issue is to carve out crucial space for research on and with military ‘families’, broadly conceived, within the critical military studies agenda. We want to bring nuance and complexity to our understanding of the relationship between military power and intimacy, gender, family, community, love, the domestic, and beyond. 

We invite submissions from academics from any disciplinary background and national context whose research focuses on the critical analysis of military families’ complex positionality with sites of power. We are interested in, but are not limited to, novel insights which explore topics relating to:  

• The cultural, political and academic framings of military families by asking ‘what is a military family’? For example, critical engagements with the idea of the nuclear family and military community.

• Entanglements between love/intimacy and military power/military violence.

• Entanglements with and resistance to national/global martial politics.

• Unrecognised relationships with gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

• Unrecognised relationships with social justice and inequalities.

• Research in the context of historical or contemporary military activities and conflicts. Historical accounts should reflect on their relevance, and perhaps even endurance, in contemporary contexts. 

We are also interested in novel insights which critically engage with questions around voice, agency and impact in military families research, relating to: 

• Who counts as a critical subject in the context of research on military phenomena? 

• Novel methodological insights which centre military families’ voices in research.

• How military children may be engaged with as critical agents.

• Opportunities and/or barriers to achieving impact and/or engaging with military institutions (and others) when conducting critical research. 

We invite abstracts of 300 words and a short paragraph on the authors’ biographies to be sent to critmilspouse@gmail.com by the 15th February 2024. 

What to expect and dates to keep in mind:

• Deadline for submitting abstracts: 15th February 2024.

• Expect to hear editors’ response by the end of February 2024.

• Online workshop to facilitate discussion of accepted papers in March 2024. 

• Editors to submit Special Issue proposal to Critical Military Studies in April 2024.

• Future deadlines to be confirmed.