CFP: Peitho: Feminist Rhetorical Approaches to Visual Culture

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Peitho Feminist Rhetorical Approaches to Visual Culture Public Call

This open invitation calls for authors to submit 500-750 word abstracts or full article submissions for Peitho’s Fall 2025 Cluster Conversation “Feminist Approaches to Visual Culture.”

The draw of visual culture continues to expand as social media platforms and new media forms volley for our attention alongside more traditional artistic avenues. Feminized spaces that focus on the visual–including beauty, home decor, wellness, and much more–warrant further rhetorical study if we are to better understand how feminist rhetorics function within the realms of visual culture. This cluster conversation calls for feminist rhetorical approaches to visual culture, asking: How can we apply existing feminist methodological approaches to the rhetorics of visual culture? How can we design new mindful and ethical approaches to visual culture that account for the nuance of digital mediums? What forms of visual culture would benefit from a feminist rhetorical approach, and why? In this sense, we are interested in rhetorical provocations on visual and verbal signs and meaning making; the disembodied image; the embodied artifact; the invisible, the unseen, the unseeable, and the overlooked; and the material and tactile.

If we, as feminist rhetoricians, claim feminine visual culture as significant to the field, perhaps we can avoid further erasure of feminine rhetorics that the patriarchy deems trite and vain. Simultaneously, we call for innovative and insightful scholarship that addresses these concerns to establish a place for this work in the field at large. This new ground offers an opportunity from which to develop research and methodologies that focus explicitly on implications of identity—including race, gender, sexuality, culture, class, generation—and their intersections in visual culture. Thus, we invite submissions that explore: visual culture and feminist approaches to social media, such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube; discuss the function of feminist rhetorics in popular culture forms like television, film, and music; and offer new perspectives on the rhetorical nuances of feminized media, including beauty tutorials and wellness influencers. Importantly, feminism and visual culture share several features that include a reliance on subjectivity, a recognition of privilege, and an aim to bring down disciplinary limitations (Jones 1). With this in mind, we invite manuscripts that address the (inter)disciplinary implications of the inclusion of such considerations in the fields of rhetoric, composition, and communication. Possible lines of inquiry might include:

  • Feminist methodological considerations for visual culture research related to:
    • Social media (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc.)
    • AI-generated images and their use
    • Television and film criticism
    • Beauty and fashion
    • Appearance and personal styling
    • Art and architecture
    • Curation and aesthetics
  • Challenges, testimonies, and ethical considerations of studying visual culture
  • Visual culture in various archival spaces
  • Pedagogical approaches to teaching feminine visual culture
  • The intersections of visual culture, race, and community
  • AI’s current or potential impacts on visual culture
  • Social justice-oriented visual movements
  • Visual culture as it represents and/or relates to embodiment
  • The relationship between affective rhetoric and visual culture
  • Visual culture as feminist praxis

We are especially seeking contributions that point to the generative potential of visual culture. While critique is important, this cluster conversation will focus on the ways the people are engaging with feminine visual culture that extend, complicate, and affirm values in feminist rhetorics.

Texts will be accepted in line with reviewer guidelines for Peitho, including evidence of feminist and rhetorical scholarly foundation, readiness for publication, and commitment to feminist practices and methods. Our target timelines is:

  • 300- 500 word proposal or complete contributions (3,000- 4,000 words, or appropriate length for genre): Friday, March 14th, 2025
  • Notification of Acceptance: Monday, April 14th, 2025
  • Full articles due: Monday, July 14th, 2025
  • Feedback returned: Friday, August 8th, 2025
  • Revisions due: Friday, August 22nd, 2025
  • Peer Feedback due: Friday, September 26th, 2025
  • Final drafts due: Friday, October 24th, 2025
  • Plan to be published: Fall 2025 issue (December 2025)

We welcome various genres associated favorably with the special issue’s theme, such as scholarly articles, reports, policies, position statements, essays, organizing/advocacy toolkits, etc. Multimodal works are desired and welcomed. Please submit queries and abstracts to: Rachel E. Molko, Hannah Taylor, and Alexis Sabryn Walston at peithofvc with the subject line [Last Name, First Name] Abstract. Queries are welcomed.

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