Current Call for Submissions
Diagnosis, Self-Diagnosis, and Identity (6.2)
Deadline: March 15, 2025
Over the years, we have read a wide range of pieces that reference but never fully explore the concept of diagnosis. For a long time, diagnosis led to social marginalization or even institutionalization; however, the upcoming issue reclaims the label, Autism, as a key part of identity and community. We hope to hear and share experiences around autistic diagnosis.
Labels can lead to broader understanding of the potential of being in a restrictive, neuro-typical society. Labels can also lead to accessing key support from governments and institutions. And yet, often the process of diagnosis is rooted in an ableist model of understanding autism.
We seek pieces that explore these contradictions. Art, poems, scholarly essays, original research, theoretical considerations, and personal narratives are encouraged. Consider the following ideas:
- “Coming out” as autistic
- Experiences of self-diagnosis
- The conflict and contradictions of relying on the DSM-V
- The removal of Aspeger’s as a diagnosis from the DSM-V
- The limitations of diagnosis
- Overlapping, conflicting diagnosis
Please submit via http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ought.
Connections and Community (7.1)
Deadline: September 15, 2025
The last few issues of Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture have led to many wonderful pieces that story and research individual autistic experiences. However, at a time of much instability and political contention, along with exciting changes in our own editorial team, we want to create space to (re) connect as a community. The Fall 2025 issue (7.1) will explore how we forge links across community, family, town, country, or world.
This issue will share and celebrate how we are better together—or consider how we could be better. Connection can be experienced in many different modalities and communities, through physical community, spiritual exchange, a response to an artist’s final product, connections between atypical selves, or allyships between neurotypical and atypical individuals.
We seek pieces that explore connections, including artwork, poetry, scholarly essays, original research, theoretical considerations, and personal narratives. These pieces may share lived experiences, present academic research, or imagine future possibilities. We encourage a wide variety of submissions. Please consider the following ideas:
- Narrative connection through storytelling
- Connection as a means of community repair
- Creative descriptions of communal spaces that connect us
- Unusual or atypical means of connection
- Forms and modes of artistic connection
- Neurotypical to neurodivergent connections
- Inclusive politics that connects all beings
Please submit via http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ought.