Media Dialogues
Submission deadline: August 1, 2017
In The Dialogic Imagination, Mikhail Bakhtin posits that media are dialogic—that is, constantly in conversation with one another, relating to each other and altering each other. In contrast to dialectic paradigms, the dialogic doesn’t seek a closed resolution, but rather encourages communication as an ongoing process. For the 82nd issue of The Velvet Light Trap, the editorial board seeks submissions focusing on media dialogues—studies of how entities in media industries and cultures interact, how they are positioned, how they communicate, what they learn from each other, and what new issues their dialogues may introduce to the wider environment. Often it is the case that a study will hone in on a singular figure, concept, technology or industry. While this approach is certainly valuable in the focus and detail it can yield, it may overlook or overshadow the connections, histories, and circumstances which influenced that singular case. An excessive focus on individual actors, singular narratives, and institutional boundaries (whether these are industrial, national, or vernacular) may obfuscate the myriad continuities, hybridities and networks of collaborative meaning-making that shape media cultures. In short, we seek papers exploring and investigating processes rather than results. We invite submissions that primarily consider the links between media entities—conversations that are just as essential to the work as the individual players are. We may find this dialogues on a large or minute scale across a wide array of media fields. As such, we conceive of the dialogic within film and media studies broadly, and invite submissions from a range of potential approaches, topics, and areas of emphasis. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:
Textual dialogues: historically significant dialogue exchanges within a text; between characters in a narrative; aesthetics of the voice; between sound and image; interactive structures within the text; between text and audience; etc.
Production dialogues: between and amongst above- and below-the-line workers; between producers and directors; between producers and studios; between performers and producers; between technologies and practitioners; etc.
Industrial dialogues: between exhibitors and distributors; between different media industries, as in global or cross-media productions or adaptations; state-of-the-industry analyses, and analyses of state-of-the-industry conversations; between production cultures and economic contexts; etc.
Intellectual dialogues: correspondence (real or imagined) between theorists; interventions or explorations in the space between disparate literatures; intellectual histories of terminology; debates in media historiographies; etc.
Public dialogues: between media makers and audiences; between different publics about media objects, technologies, industries, business models, or ethics; reconsiderations of public media systems and infrastructures; between social networking site owners and users; etc.
Dialogues at intersections of identity: conversations at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, regionalism and nationalities; etc.
Submissions should be 6,000–7,500 words (approximately 20–25 pages double-spaced), formatted in Chicago style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. The journal’s Editorial Board will referee all submissions. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com. All submissions are due August 1, 2017.
About the Journal
The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media studies. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas-Austin coordinate issues in alternation. Our Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Charles Acland, Richard Allen, Ben Aslinger, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Mark Betz, Corey Creekmur, Michael Curtin, Kay Dickinson, Bambi Haggins, Scott Higgins, Mary Celeste Kearney, Jon Kraszewski, Lucas Hilderbrand Roberta Pearson, Nicholas Sammond, Jacob Smith, Jonathan Sterne, Cristina Venegas. VLT's graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Michele Hilmes, Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Vance Kepley, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz, and Janet Staiger.
Call for Papers
The Velvet Light Trap Issue #78: “Considering Kids’ Media”
The Payne Fund studies of the 1920s and 1930s attempted to discover—with questionable scientific rigor—whether attending the movies was emotionally and physically harmful to children. Was it the case that disturbing scenes and sensory reactions to light and sound caused children to become nervous, agitated, and upset? Although the Payne studies were controversial and inconclusive, they reflected a general concern about the effect of films on children’s well-being that would influence media regulation and discourse for years to come. Many popular and academic conversations about kids and media are still dominated by the belief that children are vulnerable, developing bodies in need of constant oversight. David Buckingham famously defined these discourses as pedagogical and protectionist, and argued that they can limit the study of kids’ media. Like Buckingham, we see potential pitfalls with the pedagogical and protectionist approaches, including regressive views of audiences; arbitrary boundaries between adult and child cultures; and a neglect of formal analysis and historical inquiry. Significant work has been done in a number of disciplines that seeks to address these challenges and concerns, but there is more to add to the film and media studies conversation that recognizes the complexity of children’s media and the cultures surrounding them.
For this issue, The Velvet Light Trap seeks historical and contemporary studies of kids’ media: that is, media aimed exclusively at kids, media produced with kids in mind as part of the larger audience, or media made by kids themselves. Submissions should add to the study of kids’ media as a creative, social, and cultural phenomenon by moving beyond the protectionist and pedagogical binary. We welcome topics that reflect the agency of young people, acknowledge the complexity of these media texts, and expand film and media histories. We will consider papers that concern people under the age of 18—teens, tweens, “young adults,” infants, and everyone in between—and topics with a national, regional, or international scope. The following subjects offer some topic areas, though submissions are not limited to the following:
- Issues of gender, race, and the queering of childhood
- Children as producers of content, online and in film or TV narratives
- New research methodologies: issues when studying kids or using kids as co-researchers
- Merchandising, toy culture, franchising, and paratexts of kids’ media
- Traditional kids’ media forms and genres—fairy tales, animation, fantasy, etc.—and their boundaries and hybridity
- Child stars and the stars of children’s shows or films
- Sites of kid fandom and kids’ fan culture
- Age and age differentiation within the realm of kids’ media
- Texts with crossover appeal to multiple age demographics
- Industrial studies of kid-focused networks, studios, websites, etc.
- Children’s film festivals and other sites of exhibition
- Historiographic inquiries into the conditions affecting children’s media: technological change, taste cultures, distribution and exhibition practices, external censorship, self-regulation, etc.
- Institutional and educational media
Submission Guidelines:
Submissions should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words, formatted in Chicago style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. The entire essay, including block quotations and notes, should be double-spaced. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Photocopies of illustrations are sufficient for initial review, but authors should be prepared to supply camera-ready photographs on request. Illustrations will be sized by the publisher. Permissions are the responsibility of the author. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com. Submissions are due August 15, 2015.
About the Journal:
The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media studies. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas-Austin coordinate issues in alternation. Our Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Charles Acland, Richard Allen, Ben Aslinger, Harry Benshoff, Mark Betz, Michael Curtin, Corey Creekmur, Kaye Dickinson, Bambi Haggins, Lucas Hilderbrand, Scott Higgins, Mary Celeste Kearney, Jon Kraszewski, Nicholas Sammond, Jacob Smith, Beretta Smith-Shomade, Jonathan Sterne, Cristina Venegas, and Michael Williams. For more information, please visit the journal’s website at http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/journals/the-velvet-light-trap.
The Velvet Light Trap, a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media studies, has a Call for Papers: The theme is “Case Studies in Technological Change.” August 17 is the deadline, and submissions may be sent to thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com.
CFP: VLT #76 - Case Studies in Technological Change
To paraphrase Robert Allen and Douglas Gomery in Film History: Theory and Practice, media depends on machines. Technology contextualizes industrial and stylistic change, reveals and obscures sites of cultural negotiation and meaning, and enables new modes of media production, circulation, and reception. The significance of technology to media studies has only become more acute with the proliferation of digital technologies, which have changed the methods and tools of our scholarship—to say nothing of the object of that study.
Too often, however, scholarship relegates technology to the background, rendering it less an object of study in and of itself than a cause of, or context for, broader situations. While useful and often necessary, this tendency can have unintended consequences. It risks the assumption that technological changes automatically engender concomitant changes in our “real” object of study, when representations and practices that endure despite technological change offer equally important insight. Similarly, focusing on broader trends may steer us away from failed efforts at technological change, where entrenched structures of cultural or industrial design are exposed and tested, while treating technology as the agent of change can ignore the roles of cultural and industrial demands in technological advancement or stasis.
This issue of The Velvet Light Trap specifically seeks case studies of historical and contemporary technological change that privilege technology itself as the object of study. We wish to focus the issue’s attention on specific technological changes in context rather than theories that explore how technology in broad terms is changing media and culture. We especially welcome studies that reexamine accepted histories of technological change, reveal little-known changes worthy of attention, or show important continuities despite technological change.
For those interested, please send anonymous electronic submissions between 8,000 and 10,000 words, formatted in Chicago style, along with a one-page abstract by August 1, 2014. To submit a manuscript and/or any questions, please email thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com.
In related news, the coeditors of The Velvet Light Trap in the Radio-Television-Film department at the University of Texas at Austin will host the 2014 Flow Conference (September 11–13). Conference participants will examine topics connected to the current state of TV and media through roundtable discussions and new plenary sessions devoted to three specific themes: “Television: Looking Back,” Television Restoration: Pragmatic Realities and Implications for Media History,” and “TV Or Not TV: The Future of the Television Industry.” Information on registration, the program schedule, and more details can be found on the conference site.
Follow The Velvet Light Trap on Twitter @VelvetLightTrap.
Follow the Flow Conference on Twitter @Flow_2014.
