*The Velvet Light Trap Issue 83 - Politics of Space and Place*
At the outset of *Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience*, Yi-Fu
Tuan observes, "Space and place are basic components of the lived world; we
take them for granted. When we think about them, however, they may assume
unexpected meanings and raise questions we have not thought to ask." Power
relations are often negotiated through space and embedded in place, and
these dynamics resonate through and within media. As such, media studies
stands to offer an important contribution to the critical study of space
and place, just as this important area of study may help us to reorient and
reimagine foundational premises and concerns within our field.
Studies of space and place, both real and represented, have developed
across multiple areas of inquiry within media studies, from theory to
history to criticism and analysis. The turn toward transnationalism within
the examination of national cinemas has reorganized ongoing investments in
understandings of nation, borders, and cultural identities. Scholarship at
the intersection of urban studies and media studies has analyzed media
texts alongside the history of architecture and of urban development.
Following foundational work on movie theaters and living rooms, recent work
in media studies has considered the video store, the arcade, and airplanes
as spaces of media consumption. Scholars have shown how public policy not
only shapes access to media but its very content -- fundamental concerns
for conceptions of local, regional, and national media as well as the
identities of its producers and consumers. This interdisciplinary and
innovative scholarship inspires the next issue of *The Velvet Light Trap*,
which seeks articles that offer generative case studies in media history,
theory, or analysis while also advancing the various avenues of spatial
inquiry in media studies.
We seek original scholarship of 6,000-7,500 words that engages with the
politics of space and place, either real or represented. What areas have
gone understudied in the current work in the field? What value may be found
in studying differences in the rural, the urban, the local, the regional,
the national -- and all other designations of place -- within media
narratives, production, distribution, and consumption? How might studies of
space decenter or revise established notions of authorship, genre,
textuality, and industry?
Possible areas of inquiry include but are not limited to:
· Mobility, migration, and borders
· Spaces and places of exhibition
· Architecture, cultural geography, or public policy in media studies
· Performance and space
· (Re)constructing place in film and television
· Space and/in genre
· Locative media and the technologies of space/place
· Local and/or regional media
· Identity, belonging, and place
· Questions of accessing media(ted) spaces
· Place and affect, memory, and nostalgia
· Spaces of media(ted) protests
*Submission Guidelines*
Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, formatted in Chicago
Style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate
one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any
identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous
review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations.
Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to [log in to unmask] by
January 15, 2018.
*About the Journal*
*TVLT* is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new
media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographical
approaches from the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort
that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation
in media history and criticism. While *TVLT* maintains its traditional
commitment to the study of American film, it also expands its scope to
television and other media, to adjacent institutions, and to other nations'
media. The journal encourages both approaches and objects of study that
have been neglected or excluded in past scholarship.
Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the
University of Texas at Austin coordinate issues in alternation, and each
issue is devoted to a particular theme. *TVLT*'s Editorial Advisory Board
includes such notable scholars as Charles Acland, Richard Allen, Hector
Amaya, Ben Aslinger, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Mark Betz, Michael Curtin, Kay
Dickinson, Lisa Dombrowski, Bambi Haggins, Daniel Herbert, Scott Higgins,
Mary Celeste Kearney, Lucas Hilderbrand, Roberta Pearson, Avi Santo, Jacob
Smith, Jonathan Sterne. *TVLT*'s graduate student editors are assisted by
their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan
Gray, Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Vance Kepley, Shanti Kumar, Charles
Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz, and Janet Staiger.
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