Call for Papers for Verge Issue 13.1 Open Issue

A PDF of this call is available here

For questions, contact verge@psu.edu.

Deadlines: June 1, 2025 (Convergence proposals)
September15, 2025 (Essay submissions)

This open issue invites essays related to the broader project of Verge: Studies in Global Asias,
which showcases Scholarship on “Asian” topics from across the humanities and humanistic
social sciences, while recognizing that the changing scope of “Asia” as a concept and
method is today an object of vital critical concern. Deeply transnational and transhistorical
in scope, Verge emphasizes thematic and conceptual links among the disciplines and
regional/area studies formations that address Asia in a variety of particularist (national,
subnational, individual) and generalist (national, regional, global) modes. Responding to
the ways in which large-scale social, cultural, and economic concepts like the world, the
globe, or the universal (not to mention East Asian cousins like tianxia or datong) are
reshaping the ways we think about the present, the past and the future, the journal
publishes scholarship that occupies and enlarges the proximities among disciplinary and
historical fields, from the ancient to the modern periods. The journal emphasizes
multidisciplinary engagement—a crossing and dialogue of the disciplines that does not
erase disciplinary differences, but uses them to make possible new conversations and new
models of critical thought.

Convergence Feature Proposals

One of Verge: Studies in Global Asias’ distinctive features is an opening section called
Convergence, where we curate a rotating series of rubrics that emphasize collaborative
intellectual engagement and exchange. Each issue features several of the following
rubrics: A&Q, a responsive dialogue, either in interview or roundtable format, inspired by a
set of questions; Codex, a collaborative discussion and assessment of books, films, or
exhibits; Translation, for texts, primary or secondary, not yet available in English; Field Trip,
reports from various subfields of the disciplines; Portfolio, commentaries on visual images;
and Interface, texts exploring the resources of the print-digital world. We welcome those
interested in these features to submit a Convergence proposal for the issue.

Proposals should be 1-2 pages in length and indicate what kind of feature is being
proposed; demonstrate an awareness of the formats utilized by the journal; include an
abstract and, if collaborative, a list of proposed contributors; and include a short (2 pg)cv.
The Convergence proposals deadline is June 1, 2025; however, we encourage those
interested in submitting a proposal to contact the editor, Tina Chen, about their ideas in
advance of this date. Please direct all inquiries and submissions to verge@psu.edu.

Essay Submissions

Essays(between 6,000-10,000words) and abstracts(125words)should be submitted
electronically through this submission form (https://forms.gle/oNFVDinq4TksibzU7) by
September15, 2025 and prepared according to the author-date + bibliography format of
the Chicago Manual of Style. See section 2.38 of the University of Minnesota Press style
guide orchapter15 of the Chicago Manual of Style Online for additional formatting
information.

Authors’ names should not appear on manuscripts; instead, please include a separate
document with the author’s name, address, institutional affiliations, and the title of the
article with your electronic submission. Authors should not refer to themselves in the first
person in the submitted text or notes if such references would identify them; any necessary
references to the author’s previous work, for example, should be in the third person.