Call for Articles. Issue n. 9 (2026): Against War. Conflict Resolution, Peace, and Nonviolence

The Editors of the Close Encounters in War Journal announce that the call for articles for Issue n. 9 (2026) is now open.

Issue n. 9 of the CEIWJ aims to investigate the interdependence of war and peace from the perspective of close encounters. The editors invite the submission of articles investigating the idea of peace, broadly understood, to include the absence of war but also being against war from a vast spectrum of theoretical and critical perspectives in the fields of Cultural History, Memory Studies, Modern Languages, Oral History, Philosophy of Language, Postcolonial Studies, Psychology, Religion, Social Sciences, Ethics, Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media Studies, Gender Studies, History of Art, History of Ideas, Curriculum Studies, Linguistics, and Trauma Studies.

The editors encourage the blending of different approaches. Contributions from established scholars, early-career researchers, doctoral students, and practitioners will be considered. Case studies that include different geographic areas and non-Western contexts are warmly welcome.

The editors of the CEIWJ invite the submission of abstracts of 250 words in English by 1 March 2026 to ceiwj@nutorevelli.org. The authors invited to submit their works will be required to send articles of 8,000-10,000 words (endnotes included, bibliographical references not included in word count), in English by 20 May 2026. All articles will undergo a process of double-blind peer review. We will notify you of the results of the review in September 2026. Final versions of revised articles will be submitted in autumn 2026. All manuscripts must adhere to the Journal’s style-sheet available at  https://closeencountersinwar.org/instruction-for-authors-submissions/.

Download the Call for Articles in PDF

“Boots”. A short story by DC Diamondopolous

Common Creatives CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The same sun scorched downtown Los Angeles that had seared the Iraq desert. Army Private First Class Samantha Cummings stood at attention holding a stack of boxes, her  unwashed black hair slicked back in a ponytail and knotted military style. She stared out from Roberts Shoe Store onto Broadway, transfixed by a homeless man with hair and scraggly beard the color of ripe tomatoes. She’d only seen that hair color once before, on Staff Sergeant Daniel O’Conner.

      The man pushed his life in a shopping cart crammed with rags and stuffed trash bags. He glanced at Sam through the storefront window, his bloated face layered with dirt. His eyes had the meander of drink in them.

      Sam hoped hers didn’t. Since her return from Bagdad a year ago, her craving for alcohol sneaked up on her like an insurgent. Bathing took effort. She ate to exist. Friends disappeared. Her life started to look like the crusted bottom of her shot glass.

      The morning hangover began its retreat to the back of her head.

      The homeless man vanished down Broadway. She carried the boxes to the storeroom.

      In 2012, Sam passed as an everywoman: white, black, brown, Asian. She was a coffee colored Frappuccino. Frap. That’s what the soldiers nicknamed her. Her mother conceived her while on ecstasy during the days of big hair and shoulder pads. On Sam’s eighteenth birthday, she enlisted in the Army. She wanted a job and an education. But most of all she wanted to be part of a family…

Read the short story as a PDF