*Call for Papers: The Digital Humanities*
*Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Special Issue*

This special issue seeks innovative research that explores the
intersections between digital humanities and the studies of Chinese media
cultures. While access to a large corpus of print materials related to
Chinese cinemas before 1949—whether existing or lost—has been greatly
facilitated by using digital databases, such as the Chinese Periodical
Full-Text Database (1911–1949), Shenbao Digital Archive, Hong Kong Baptist
University Chinese Newspapers Database, Hong Kong Old Newspapers Database,
and A History of Film Exhibition and Reception in Colonial Hong Kong
(1897–1925) Database, to name a few, these digital databases also avail
themselves of sites for critical awareness about our mediated past. From
the Semantic Annotation Tool to chinesefilmclassics.org, new tools, skills,
competencies, and formats of publication have gradually transformed the
field of Chinese cinemas and media studies by allowing multimodal scholars
to ask new research questions, introduce new disciplinary paradigms,
incubate new collaborative possibilities, and present their discoveries in
new ways.

The editor of this special issue welcomes contributions that consider what
digital humanities may bring to Chinese cinemas and media studies, and vice
versa. Research papers that define digital archives, databases, and tools
as objects of scholarly inquiries are also welcome. The questions to be
explored may include but are not limited to the following:

   - In what ways are data visualization, text mining, video annotation,
   and the other forms of computer-aided research methods useful for studying
   historical and contemporary Chinese cinemas and media cultures? What are
   the limitations of such approaches?
   - Do traditional and simplified Chinese characters pose unique
   challenges for searching key words in digital databases? Does searching
   English key words in Chinese-language databases bring to us surprising
   results?
   - How do the widely used Lantern searches, along with Arclight, enable
   Chinese cinemas and media scholars to discover trends in cross-cultural
   distribution, exhibition and reception of films and stars?
   - How do we combine seemingly conventional, yet effective research
   methods in the field of Chinese cinemas and media cultures—particularly,
   close film analysis and archival research—with the computational methods?
   - How do commercial, political, and ideological factors come into play
   when selecting what should be digitalized and deciding what can or cannot
   enter a given database?
   - What is the dark side of digital humanities, especially in the Chinese
   context?
   - How are Chinese film pedagogical practices in and outside China
   transformed by the availability of online resources?
   - Was there a time when Chinese cinemas and media scholars conducted
   what may be called digital humanities research before the term “digital
   humanities” (shuzi renwen) appeared in the Sinophone world in 2009?
   - How do digital humanities practices propel us to rethink notions of
   history, cinematic time, and the archive?

*Abstracts of 250–300 words*, along with brief biographical notes, are due
on *November 30, 2022*. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to
submit full manuscripts of 6,000–8,000 words by May 31, 2023, for
consideration to be included in a Journal of Chinese Cinemas special issue,
whose anticipated publication date will be late 2023 or early 2024.

Please send abstracts and/or inquiries to guest editor Panpan Yang at SOAS
University of London (email: [log in to unmask]).

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