Dear all,

Please note that the deadline for submissions to *Camera Obscura*'s special
fortieth anniversary issue on collectivity is now December 31, 2014.

Best wishes,
Athena Tan


CAMERA OBSCURA: FEMINISM, CULTURE, AND MEDIA STUDIES

Call for Submissions:
Collectivity


For the fortieth anniversary of *Camera Obscura*, we invite submissions on
the theme of collectivity.

Collectives often emerge in periods of crisis in response to new social,
economic, and technological conditions. *Camera Obscura*’s feminist
editorial collective has functioned in this way since its beginnings in the
1970s, a time when many forms of cooperative action proliferated. In this
period, collectives formed around issues of gender, race, and politics,
with many organizing around forms of media production. In the last ten to
fifteen years, a growing constellation of collectives, many international,
has emerged, configuring artists and activists in new political and
cultural formations. These collectives are a response to developments like
the growing impact of digital media and mobile technologies, new paradigms
of relational aesthetics, new configurations of labor and precarity, and
the rise of neoliberal policy, which has worked to erode the public sphere
and shared resources in favor of the idea of individual responsibility. In
contrast, the theory and practice of collectivity emphasize participation,
consensus, and working toward common goals. However, as anyone who has been
part of a collective knows, these formations are never free of difficulty
and disagreement—difficulties that relate to issues of communication as
well as to the very dynamics of gender, sexuality, class, race, and
multinationalism that demand collective responses.


Topics might include, but are not limited to:

 Conceptualizing “collectivity,” “cooperation,” and “commons”

Historically specific investigations of past and still-functioning
collectives

The affective economies of collectivity

The analysis of films, videos, or other media objects produced through
collective action or participation

The cultural, discursive, and economic structures that underlie and produce
collectivity

Collectivity and forms of labor and media

The temporality of collectivity

Collectivity and utopianism

The relationship of technological change to collectivity

The relation of collectivity to identity, individuality, and subjectivity

Transnational forms of collectivity

Collaboration, microtopias, communities of practice, and the space of the
commons

Swarms, multitudes, and political uprising

Specific dynamics of gender, sexuality, race, and class in collective
formations


We welcome both essay-length submissions and shorter writings appropriate
to our “In Practice” section. Please visit
http://cameraobscura.dukejournals.org/ for our complete submission
guidelines. Submissions and queries should be sent to
[log in to unmask]
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml',[log in to unmask]);>. The
deadline for submissions is 31 December 2014.

--
Athena Tan
Managing Editor, CAMERA OBSCURA: FEMINISM, CULTURE, AND MEDIA STUDIES
Ph.D. Candidate, Film and Media Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

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