Pivot 2026 Call for Papers: "Adaptation"

Pivot invites submissions from scholars, writers, and artists for our 2025-26 issue on the theme of adaptation.

 

Adaptation is an intrinsic quality of life: the ability to change, to move from mode or form or place to another. As humans, we constantly adapt to our surroundings, altering ourselves to fit our environment or, often, to work against it. The current global climate has made adaptation a way of life: neocolonial war and genocide forcing people to flee their homelands, the rise of authoritarianism limiting personal freedoms, and the continually worsening state of our climate are just some of the things that have put us permanently in flux, asked to resituate ourselves against the ever-changing world around us. What is our role as individual subjects in such a volatile and unstable world? How do we (re-)position ourselves against a backdrop of violence, increasing social dysfunction, and other effects of late-stage capitalism? What are the stakes of adaptation, or of refusing to adapt in the face of change?

 

In a different sense, the past decade has seen adaptation flourish in media. In 2006, Linda Hutcheon wrote, “Adaptations are everywhere today” (2). Nearly twenty years later, adaptations of art and stories into new mediums have taken over the entertainment industry in everything from film to television to theatre and beyond. What does the prevalence of film and television adaptations tell us about our artistic values? How does prioritizing existing audiences over new and inventive ideas affect creativity? What is the role of the literary adaptation—or of literature itself—in a visual culture, and what is our role as participants in this culture?

 

Further questions to consider:

• How do post-colonial film/television/theatre adaptations of Western art comment on the conditions of colonialism? How does the post-colonial adaptation situate itself in the colonial context?
• How are our experiences of time and space affected by adaptation to different contexts? How do different cultures feel time and space shift under pressure to adapt?
• What is the role of adaptation on a personal level? How does a feeling subject adapt to new social, cultural, or geographical circumstances?

 

We are looking for both critical and artistic work that deals with adaptation in any of its various meanings. How you approach the topic of adaptation is up to you, but we prioritize works that offer new ideas or challenge our understanding of how we adapt—whether that be how we adapt the things around us, or how we adapt to them.

 

We accept scholarly articles, personal essays, short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and visual artwork, and we invite unique ways of expressing ideas on adaptation.

 

What we accept:

• Academic articles between 3000-4000 words
• Short fiction/creative non-fiction between 1000-4000 words
• Personal essays between 2000-3000 words
• Poetry up to 4 pages
• Visual art—including cover submissions

 

Please your submissions to us through our website, http://pivot.journals.yorku.ca/. We look forward to hearing from you!