CfA: Special Issue on popular music and feminisms (2027, Lectora: Journal of Women and Textuality, hrsg. v. Cande Sánchez-Olmos & Eduardo Viñuela), Deadline: 15.09.2026
Feminisms in a Musical Key: Women, Dissidences and New Masculinities in
Popular Music and Audiovisual Discourses
Editors: Cande Sánchez-Olmos and Eduardo Viñuela
Popular music is a key medium of communication with ideological, artistic and identitarian implications. This special issue aims to analysing popular music and its implications by deploying a feminist lens with the purpose of providing both theoretical and empirical knowledge on popular music and gender from a cultural perspective. To this end, it fosters transdisciplinary dialogues between the theoretical corpus of feminisms, gender studies and queer theory, and the fields of musicology and communication.
Popular music is a network in which artists, songwriters, record companies, media and consumers interact directly or indirectly. This special issue, however, aims to address the relevance of popular music in recent years as a device for feminist discourses. A clear example of this is the viral spread of Las Tesis’ 2019 performance "Un violador en tu camino" (A Rapist in Your Path), which evinced music’s power to unite women and dissidences on a global scale. A year later, Mexican Singer Vivir Quintana, together with the choir El Palomar, released "Canción sin miedo" (Song Without Fear), yet another emblematic hymn of the feminist struggle condemning gender violence and femicides. In Spain, Rozalén’s "La puerta violeta" (The Violet Door) has likewise become a catalyst for feminist activism. Best-selling stars such as Rosalía, Aitana and Lola Índigo, or artists such as Samantha Hudson and Rodrigo Cuevas, are composing and performing feminist songs that empower young women and non-binary people through music. These artistic representations of popular music have been given scant scholarly attention in the Spanish and Latin American contexts. Thus, we especially aim to expand studies on music and gender in the Spanish-speaking context.
We are interested in studying both the texts and artistic expressions produced within popular music as well as the discourses generated by the music and audiovisual industries. Article topics may approach, but are not limited to: the analysis of musical styles or artists as role models for identitarian articulation; the unequal representation of women and non-binary identities in music videos; whether songs act as vehicles reinforcing heteropatriarchal ideology or as devices for feminist enunciation in a participatory culture that empowers women and non-binary people in social media and media channels more broadly.
We welcome contributions that reflect on the following topics:
- Methodologies and analytical approaches for studying gender identities through popular music and audiovisual media
- Creativity: women and gender non-conforming identities as composers, producers, performers, instrumentalists, etc.
- Metanarratives and gender discourses in artists’ public projection through social media, biopics, documentaries, and other audiovisual media.
- Popular music repertoires in which articulations of gender can be identified.
- Ageism and infantilization in popular music.
- Feminist activism, artivism and popular music.
- Media phenomena related to artists’ gender identity and/or social debates on gender identity.
- Collectives and actions subverting gender discourses in popular music through participatory culture in social networks.
- Fan musical practices, subjectivities, transmedia culture and phenomena affecting women and gender dissidences in popular music.
Articles written in any of the languages accepted by Lectora –Catalan, English, Euskera, French, Galician, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish– should follow Lectora’s style guidelines and be submitted through its website before September 15, 2026.
Publication guidelines and the table of contents of former issues can be found at: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/lectora/information/author