Building the Literature on Aging Partners Managing Chronic Illness Together

In this post, Xan and J announce an upcoming and rolling special issue of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine focused on managing illness in relationships over the life course, and invite scholars interested in health, aging, relationships of all times, caregiving, and chronic conditions to consider submitting works for this issue and emerging area of research in social, physical, and medical sciences. 

Hello readers!

Xan and J here with a teaser for our newest project. In our home communities of Orlando and Tampa, we’ve been spending some time recovering from Hurricane Irma and helping our fellow Floridians do the same, as well as supporting friends in Texas and Puerto Rico in their own recovery efforts. As things calm down more here in central Florida, we’re pleased to roll out our latest effort to amplify voices from lived experience in research.

Earlier this year, we pitched a special collection proposal to Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. We suggested a content collection focusing on “Aging Partners Managing Chronic Illness Together”. The collection would highlight opportunities for inquiry, evidence-based perspectives, case studies, and new primary research on collaborative illness management among older intimate partners.

Right now there is very little literature on this topic—most published research on caregiving in intimate relationships uses a “sick partner/well partner” model. But our own lived experiences as well as what we have both seen in our work suggested that many people are living a very different reality! We also found no literature whatsoever in conducting our own preliminary review on collaborative illness management that delves deeply into the experiences of marginalized older adults and relationships between people occupying varied genders, sexualities, and relationship types. We very much want to change that!

Our introductory editorial for the content collection at GGM will be up soon (we’ll share on the blog and social media sites when it is), meaning we are ready to accept original submissions from other scholars doing work on this important topic. Unlike traditional “special issues”, this content collection will remain open indefinitely for new submissions. We intend to use the Aging Partners Managing Chronic Illness Together collection as a springboard for both highlighting inspiring innovative research on older adult health that champions people’s unique lives, biographies, and needs.

If your research includes a focus on chronic disease management, older adults, and intimate relationships, we hope that we’ll be able to showcase some of your work in our special collection in the future!

Trans Peer Review: A Call for Submissions from Transgender Academics

Kale Edmiston, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry. He is a transgender person and neuroscientist whose research focuses on visual system function in anxiety, as well as transgender healthcare.

What would a transgender peer review look like?  Where does knowledge about transgender people originate and how is it cited? This blog series will ask questions about what it means to publish on trans identities and trans bodies. For this series, transgender scholars will address these questions by providing critical, collegial review of the recent transgender literature in their discipline.  We are especially interested in pieces that address unexamined ciscentrism in the peer-reviewed literature, as well as pieces that offer alternative research questions, hypotheses, or interpretations that center transgender ways of knowing.

How does cisgender identity bias scholars? How would scholarship that engages with trans topics look if it were produced and funded by transgender scholars?  It likely would include fewer rehashes of Trans 101. It might emphasize the ways that racism, classism, ableism, ageism, mononormativity, and heteronormativity impact trans people. Such a literature would certainly be less concerned with why we exist or how best to categorize and describe us. Historically and continuing in the present day, much of the transgender literature wonders, “How can we correctly identify transgender people?” Transgender scholars may prioritize different questions. However, many transgender academics are often more junior due to legacies of exclusion from higher education, and struggle to build collaborations and access resources controlled by more established cisgender scholars and researchers.

We invite trans-identified scholars to contribute to a public peer-review series of the recent cross-disciplinary transgender literature.  This is an interdisciplinary project, and we invite submissions from trans-identified scholars in humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines who engage with transgender topics as a part of their scholarship.

If you’re interested in participating in the series, please direct any questions or submission ideas to wewritewhereithurts@gmail.com or edmistonk@upmc.edu.

Voices of Queer Kinship Series: An Introduction and Call for Contributions

How do we arrange our social, romantic, political, and sexual lives? What types of relationships and spaces facilitate the sharing and affirmation of Queer existence and experiences? Where do we find and how do we create our own families or networks of choice as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, polyamorous, non-binary, same-gender-loving, asexual, pansexual, kink, gender fluid, agender, or otherwise Queer people and groups? What are the multiple forms and appearances of Queer kinship in our world today? How do such arrangements reveal and potentially ease life within cisnormative, mononormative, and heteronormative contexts? How do variations in race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, body size and type, nationality, and other social factors influence such relationships and the forms they take in our lives? What does the term Queer Kinship mean to you, and how might it speak to the broader social world and ongoing pursuits for social justice?

These are some of the questions we hope to consider, discuss, and debate in a new series of essays amplifying “Voices of Queer Kinship.” In this series, we seek narratives exploring and illustrating various forms of Queer love, family, relationships, and the meanings of these experiences for the individual writers and more broadly. To this end, our own little Write Where It Hurts family will be posting essays on our experiences building, cultivating, and experiencing Queer Kinship. While we envision this series playing out over the next few months, there is no deadline for submission as we believe such stories have a place on the blog at all times. As such, we invite all interested parties to submit posts – essays, narratives, poetry, stories, or other forms are all welcome – exploring the meaning and experience of Queer Kinship in their lives.

In our case, the idea for this series emerged as our own founder and editor Xan and previous contributor Simone Kolysh discussed the importance of safe spaces, families of choice, and sources of affirmation in their own lives. In a month where Pride events are taking place across the country even as our communities continue to face violent and political attacks from multiple sources, they talked about the importance of our stories, our voices, and the varied ways Queer people organize intimate, social, and political lives. In a year where many have benefitted greatly from the legalization of same-sex marriage last June while others who do not wish to marry have seen their options for relational and familial recognition begin to disappear, they talked about the importance of illustrating and discussing the diversity and variation within and between Queer relationships, families, and networks. Ultimately, they decided – with the affirmation of the rest of the Write Where It Hurts family – that we should use this platform to amplify such complexities and create room for these voices.

In this spirit, we seek stories and voices of Queer Kinship in all its forms and types for inclusion in the series. Specifically, we welcome posts discussing topics including but not limited to, for example:

Lesbian and gay marital and other relationship experiences prior to and post same sex marriage legalization

            Bisexual and otherwise sexually fluid relationships prior to and post same sex marriage legalization

            Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay experiences of committed relationships beyond or instead of marital and family based forms prior to and post same sex marriage legalization

            Transgender and Non-binary relationship experiences with people of various sexualities

            Intersex relationship and family experiences with people of various sexualities

            LGBTI experiences with families of origin, chosen families, reproduction, raising children, navigating child-related legal codes and policies, and navigating interactions with other parents

            Polyamrous relationships of varied types and forms in relation to romantic experience, sexual experience, familial experience, or other day to day activities

            BDSM and other Kink based relationships of varied types and forms as well as relational and familial experiences navigating casual or other forms of BDSM or other Kink play

            Heteroqueer people in long term relationships with and openly supportive of LGBTI people, navigating polyamory, or engaged in other non-traditional sexual, gender, and / or romantic experiences

            Mixed orientation relationships prior to and post same-sex legalization

            Asexual relational and familial experiences with others of varied sexual and romantic identities

            Experiences of affirmation and / or marginalization in explicitly LGBT, BDSM, Poly, and other Queer spaces and groups

            Transgender experiences with long term partners in relation to transition, healthcare and bathroom access, and family formation

            Non-binary experiences with long term partners in relation to family, friends, workplaces, dress norms, and other aspects of daily life

            Experiences navigating the assumptions and reactions of others while engaged in Queer Kinship and / or as sexual, gender, romantic, relationship, or otherwise Queer

            Experiences of childfree people navigating assumptions of parenthood and reproduction in Queer and other spaces and groups

Although the list above provides a starting point of some of the topics of interest in this series, we also welcome essays or other types of posts on Queer Kinship itself and relations with broader society as Queer people, couples, trios, unions, families, and groups. We further welcome examples of the ways Queer Kinship – personally experienced or observed – has touched your research, teaching, activism, or creative endeavors. Further, as usual, we will accept both named and anonymous submissions for this series.  The next two weeks will feature regular posts on the site, and then, beginning on July 20th, we will begin posting pieces in the series – starting with submissions we already have from our earlier Facebook announcement – and continue doing so in between posts on other topics for the foreseeable future. As usual, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions you may have or ideas for this or other series on the blog. To contribute, simply gather your thoughts and contact or send submissions to wewritewhereithurts@gmail.com.

Xan, J, & Lain

Call for Submissions

Write Where It Hurts – an online forum for scholars doing deeply personal teaching, research and / or activism within and beyond the academy – invites guest blog posts (500 – 1500 words generally) regarding navigating the emotional, political and inequitable aspects of scholarly practice and experience. As part of our ongoing efforts to shine a light on the personal elements of academic and applied experience as well as provide a space for voices from a variety of backgrounds and groups, we seek those wishing to share their experiences, educate others, and encourage debate around such issues. We thus encourage contributions from people from various backgrounds, disciplines, perspectives, and careers. We further welcome and encourage anonymous posts by scholars seeking to draw attention to important issues while lacking the institutional, financial or other forms of security often necessary to speak out in one’s own name. Submissions should be emailed to wewritewhereithurts@gmail.com. Please briefly describe your own biography, your decision to be anonymous or named in your post, and how your post fits into the focus of the blog. You can gain more information at our contributor page or by emailing us directly at the aforementioned address.

Suggested Contributions

 

Personal narratives concerning the following:

Conducting research in an area that is personally salient

Managing negative and / or positive emotions that arise in the course of research

Teaching subjects that resonate with lived experience and / or trauma

Engaging in activism within the context of the academy

Engaging in activism via the use of personal experience

Conducting research in marginalized or controversial areas of study

 

Experiences navigating the following:

Gender and sexual nonconformity in the academy and beyond

Racial marginalization and / or empowerment in the academy and beyond

Neuro-atypical experiences in scholarship and advocacy

Experiences with chronic mental and / or physical health conditions

Navigating intersections of race, class, sex, gender, sexualities, relationships, religion,

age and / or nationality in the academy or activist settings

Navigating familial, personal, work, and / or romantic life balances and trade offs

 

Graduate student experiences with:

Publishing and job market concerns

Navigating PHD programs and academic structures

Interacting with other scholars at conferences or in other settings

Participating in campus efforts at reform or change

Building online and other public profiles

Balancing the needs of a graduate program with aspects of personal, political, and occupational

experience

 

Advice concerning the following:

Completing PHD programs (i.e., comprehensive exams, thesis and dissertation, networking, etc.)

The Job Market (i.e., academic and applied)

Challenges in the classroom

Challenges to research endeavors

Challenges to activism endeavors

Department and conference politics

 

Personal experiences and advice regarding the following:

Dating in academia

Parenthood / Pregnancy in academia

Nonreligion / Religion in academia

Race, class, gender, and / or sexual marginalization in academia

Discrimination in academia

Me-search and / or Imposter Syndrome and / or Insecurity in academia