Men Matters Online Journal

The June 2023 Issue of Men Matters Online Journal puts a spin on the familiar notion of “man vs. machine”. The notion of a competitive, zero-sum game between humans and machines dates back to the First Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s – and it remains pertinent today, in the wake of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What brave new world awaits us as paradigm-shifting innovations in automation, machine learning, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) become ubiquitous?

The phrase “men and machinery” invites a more open-ended critical and creative inquiry into this interrelationship. While it is typically associated with science fiction and Marxist critiques of industrial capitalism, it is worth noting that premodern, precapitalist civilisation also depended heavily on simple machines: the lever, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the inclined plane, the wedge and the screw. These simple machines served as the elementary building blocks for subsequent developments like bicycles, printing presses, typewriters, and the innumerable compound machines that we often take for granted today. Many of these compound machines may seem ‘low-tech’ and downright unremarkable today, but they may have profoundly reshaped the gender dynamics of an earlier era. Case in point: the now oft-forgotten connection between bicycles and women’s rights.

How does the invention and widespread adoption of new machinery disrupt, transform, alter, or reinforce existing gender dynamics? (Between men and women, but also in the context of same-sex modes of socialisation). Why do some machines trigger a crisis in masculine identity, while others seem to be easily integrated into the project of masculine self-fashioning? (Boys and their toys, the aesthetic of geek chic, the notion of a midlife crisis car, etc.).

We invite poems, essays, short stories, novel extracts, plays and scholarly works that explore these questions from any historical, geographical, cultural, political, religious, and institutional context. The men-machinery interface you flesh out may be historical, contemporary, or speculative; the machinery being foregrounded may be simple or complex; the overarching narrative may be utopian, dystopian, or somewhere in between.

Submission period:

Jan 1st to April 31st 2023

Publication date: Late June 2023

Further submission guidelines can be found below.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Poetry:

Up to 5 poems. There is no minimum or maximum word limit but poems that run up to a maximum of 40 lines are preferred.

Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction:

A single work, maximum of 10,000 words.

Drama:

A complete or a stand-alone extract of a play. A single work, maximum of 9,000 words.

Scholarly and Literary Essays:

Author Guidelines for Scholarly and Literary Essays

When preparing your citations and formatting your reference entries, please adhere to the conventions established by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (2020). For more information about APA-7, please refer to https://apastyle.apa.org/blog.

Critical essays should not exceed 6,000 words (excluding footnotes and references). Please submit your manuscript as a Word Document. The text of your work should be in Garamond, 12 point size. Manuscripts should have 1.5 spacing on A4-sized paper with margins of 1.25” (right and left) and 1” (top and bottom).

Please use British spelling, except in cited texts or quotations.

The title page of your essay should include the following information:

1. The title of your essay (in bold)
2. A brief abstract (150 – 200 words)
3. Four to five keywords

Do use the Document Inspector to find and remove hidden data and personal information in your manuscript. Please include the following information in a separate Word Document:

1. Author name, institutional affiliation and email address
2. A brief biography in third person (maximum 100 words)

Reviews:

Do let us know which publication or film you wish to review and proceed if the Editors show interest in it. This does not guarantee publication. Maximum word limit is 1,000 words.

Please follow APA-7 conventions for any quotations or citations: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations

Interviews:

Do let us know about your planned interview and proceed if the Editors show interest in it. This does not guarantee publication. Maximum word limit is 3,000 words.

Language: English, original and translated works.

All submissions are subjected to a double-blind refereeing process by our reviewers.

How to submit your work:

Submit your work through email: menmattersonlinejournal@gmail.com In the email cover letter please indicate that this is an original and unpublished work that is being submitted.

Attach your individual submissions in separate attachments. Make sure there are no personal details in the files containing the submissions.

In a separate file provide a brief biography in third person (maximum 100 words)

File format: Word Document. The text of your work should be in Garamond (12 point size), with 1.5 spacing.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome. It is your responsibility to inform us in time when the work submitted here is accepted somewhere else.

Submission periods:

January 1st to April 30th for the June issue

July 1st to October 31st for the December issue

Our response period might be between two weeks to three months from the date we receive your work.

Contact Email: menmattersonlinejournal@gmail.com