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November 2006, Week 1

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Subject:
From:
Jonathan Cohn <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 6 Nov 2006 11:14:21 -0800
Content-Type:
text/plain
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
UCLA’s film, television, and digital media e-journal, Mediascape, is  
now accepting submissions for the Features, Reviews, Columns and Meta  
sections of its next issue. This journal, a place for articles  
pertaining to visual culture, is peer-reviewed and published on an  
annual table. The deadline for the next issue is the 1st of January,  
2007.

Features:  Taking into account the increasingly blurry line between  
the many different components of the modern media landscape, the  
features section takes an inter-disciplinary and inter-media approach  
to scholarly discourse on the three main facets of contemporary  
visual culture: film, television and digital media. As such, the  
section seeks contributions from all areas within media studies, from  
film theory to moving image archiving, and welcomes contributions  
from other academic fields, such as history, literature, music,  
economics, political science, etc., as well as from media  
practitioners outside of academia altogether. The guiding principle  
uniting these contributions will be the perspectives, however  
disparate, that they offer on the mediascape that is common to all of  
us as media scholars, practitioners and consumers.

Submissions for the features section need not address the larger  
issues described above, so long as they offer a unique perspective on  
film, television, digital media, or any other aspect of moving image  
culture, preferably encompassing more than one. Though articles  
should be of a high level of scholarly rigor, the journal will not be  
read exclusively by media scholars. Writing should therefore be  
readable enough to be enjoyed by those outside of the field of media  
studies and indeed outside of the academy altogether.

To submit a feature article, please email a short bio and a copy of  
your manuscript in Word format to [log in to unmask] For the purposes  
of confidentiality during the double blind peer review, please  
include both your bio and your personal contact information in the  
accompanying email only, rather than in the word document.  Feature  
submissions should range from between 15 to 25 manuscript pages.  
Rarely, exceptions will be made with regard to length in either  
direction; however, it is strongly recommended that the author stay  
within the 15-25 page range.

Reviews:   Mainstream film, television and digital media reviewing  
tends to be constrained by an industry model that requires writers to  
gain access to the objects of their review through publicity agents,  
press kits and press screenings, leading to a homogeneity of  
perspectives, and limiting reviews to objects that are newly  
available for purchase –in effect reducing these reviews to simple  
announcements of the latest releases. This model also limits reviews  
to the film/TV/digital media text, which essentially gives industrial  
and business factors a free pass. For these reasons, Mediascape’s  
reviews section calls for reviews written outside of the industry  
model described above, and examining not only film, television and  
digital media texts, but also the institutions and apparatuses that  
shape the way we as consumers, fans, and academics make meaning of  
them, such as festivals, books, award shows, restorations, fan  
magazines, conferences, DVDs, press kits, movie theaters, peer-to- 
peer technologies, soundtracks, televisions, advertising, reviews,  
websites, retailers, or any combination of the above.

The reviews section also seeks to become a forum for the  
international exchange of ideas and perspectives, in order to break  
from the local or national centrism of conventional review  
journalism. However, there is no pretension of possessing a “global”  
viewpoint. Instead, contributors should bring to the forum their own  
cultural locatedness in hopes of contributing to a larger,  
international exchange of ideas. In pursuit of a more complete  
comprehension of global film circulation and reception, Mediascape’s  
review section is also interested in publishing foreign language  
reviews in English and vice versa.

Please direct reviews section questions, proposals, and submissions  
to [log in to unmask]
Reviews should be a minimum of 2,500 words, although exceptions may  
be granted. There is no maximum word limit, provided work is  
readable, structured, and visually appealing in the online format.

Columns: This issue’s columns section is seeking short papers  
(800-1500 words) on the dividing and converging nature of the  
hardware/software split.  This can be on anything from the  
relationship between Microsoft and Intel, to the solid state memory  
of the Rosetta Stone, to the DVR and the iTV, to the tower of Babel,  
to the emergence of cloudware.  All perspectives are welcome, as long  
as they are current, timeless, and exuberant.  Non-traditional New  
Media-esque "essays" are also welcome and will be greatly  
appreciated. Please submit columns and inquiries to  
([log in to unmask]) by January 1, 2007.

Meta:  Recent scholarship in media studies acknowledges a change in  
the objects of our study with the digital revolution: a convergence  
of media at both the formal and industrial organizational levels.  As  
films are more often screened on television sets—whether through  
cable television, VHS, DVD, or On Demand services—than exhibited in  
theaters, and as both films and television shows are increasingly  
viewed streaming through computer monitors or mobile accessories of  
varying sizes and capacities, how do the theoretical tools and terms  
of media studies apply or simply fail to apply to these new  
exhibition venues and the industrial strategies developed to cater to  
them?

While our contemporary object of study may have arguably converged,  
the theoretical bodies and borders within our discipline do not yet  
seem as porous.  Is it necessary to conceive of the study of digital  
media forms, despite technologically-specific concerns, as a  
trajectory continuing and morphing, rather than breaking, from the  
media scholarship that has come before it?  How do we integrate,  
rather than antagonize, the insights various schools of thought  
within cinema, television, and digital media studies individually  
bring to the media studies table?  Rather than reiterate the call for  
new terms and concepts specific to digital media, this edition of the  
meta section seeks to challenge scholars to rethink and refurbish  
important terms and concepts from “media studies past” to put today’s  
mediascape in perspective.  Hopefully this will challenge us to think  
beyond a model of scholarship built solely on notions of  
“progress” (‘that was then, this is now’), and perhaps inspire us to  
further converge theories to suit a converged object of study.

Please write a brief position paper (2000-3500 words) responding to  
the questions posed above and engaging in the following experiment:   
Re-appropriate one term or concept from media studies scholarship  
produced prior to 1990.  Determine how and if this term or concept is  
viable or useful when used to describe digital media.  Feel free to  
suggest how a rearticulation or retrofitting of the term or concept  
would be necessary.  Please submit Meta papers to Candace Moore  
([log in to unmask]) by January 1, 2007.

General Guidelines:

All submissions should follow MLA Style guidelines and should employ  
the parenthetical, in-text method of source citation and comply with  
the following formatting requirements:

1.)   No cover page, with title instead centered at the top of the  
first page of the article

2.)   Language of document set to English

3.)   Double spaced paragraphs in 12 point font

4.)   Margins: top – 1” left – 1” right 1” bottom 1.25” to  
accommodate footer

5.)   Endnotes rather than footnotes

6.)   Images correctly sized outside of word (sizing them in word  
slows web editing process) and then placed within the word document’s  
layout where they should appear at publication

Because of the peer review and editorial processes of the journal’s  
different sections, it may take as long as eight weeks for decisions  
on submissions to reach the writers.

General email inquiries can also be sent to [log in to unmask]


Thank you all!

Jonathan Cohn
[log in to unmask]






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