*Call for Papers - The Velvet Light Trap Issue #87: Sports and/as Media
Studies*

Historically, media studies scholars have shied away from sports-related
media texts due to a variety of perceived challenges: the sheer volume of
texts (there’s always something on), their inaccessibility (the texts are
ephemeral and controlled by corporate archives), the ambivalence of sports
cultures (at once masculine and mainstream), and more. Additionally, other
fields have long dominated sports scholarship, with communication studies
and sociology shaping the academic discourse and asserting their own
approaches. To mitigate these challenges, media studies scholars have
applied alternative approaches to understanding sports media, such as
critical-cultural analyses that account for sports media constructions of
difference via gender, sex, and race—and athletes’ abilities to contest
those differences. There have also been deft examinations of the media
industries’ economic and ideological dependence on sports;
historiographical accounts that mine a wealth of underexplored repositories
and sources; and audience studies that foreground the reception and
consumption of the sports genre.

While these studies placed sports media squarely in the foreground, others
have used sports as a case study to illuminate broader trends in media
studies. For example, scholars have recently revealed the key role sports
broadcasts played in the innovation and diffusion of color television,
while others have considered the pivotal role broadcasting, licensing, and
franchising rights played in the conglomeration and consolidation of cable
networks and providers. Others have addressed gaps in audience and fan
studies by engaging with under-studied sports fan cultures.

*Velvet Light Trap* #87 seeks to deepen media studies understandings of
sports. Given our current era of destabilization (of texts, genres,
technologies, industries, distribution models, franchises, policies, etc.),
sports undoubtedly remains a stimulus of—and, at times, barrier to—change
in the media industries. As such, we invite a variety of media scholars—not
just those who specialize in sports media—to reconsider and engage with
sports in new and dynamic ways, asking, for example: How have production,
distribution, exhibition, and reception of sports media changed over the
last century and how are those changes reflected in the wider media
ecology? What is the afterlife of sports media and how have those practices
impacted scholarship, pedagogy, and future production practices? Where do
radio and podcasting fit into the history of sports broadcasting? How are
new media technologies (streaming platforms, video games, etc.) responding
to, reacting against, or complementing linear sports channels and networks?

We welcome submissions that push the boundaries of current sports media
literature and/or use sports media as key case studies, exploring any of
the following themes:

   - National broadcasting and industrial histories
   - Early film histories and the continuing theatrical exhibition of
   sporting events
   - Sports as a key media market sector
   - Identification and identity politics (race, gender, sexuality, class,
   ability, nationality)
   - Place and space [localism with franchises and coverage;
   (trans)nationalism with Olympics]
   - Changing role of agents and agencies
   - Franchising, ownership, and management
   - Publicity, promotion, and marketing
   - Activism and community engagement
   - Ephemerality and textual analysis
   - Distribution, exhibition, and transnational flow of sports media
   - Archival perspectives, footage libraries, and audiovisual asset
   management
   - Regulation (copyright, retransmission rights, horizontal integration)
   - Labor, compensation, and ecological concerns
   - Production techniques
   - Genre analysis (non-fiction, narrative, & documentary)
   - Pedagogical applications
   - Video games (licensed games and eSports)

*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]*
<[log in to unmask]> by January 31.

*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 Hector Amaya, Ben Aslinger, Caetlin
Benson-Allott, Aymar Jean Christian, Lisa Dombrowski, Raquel Gates, Dan
Herbert, Dolores Inés Casillas, Deborah Jaramillo, Meenasarani Murugan,
Safiya Noble, Debra Ramsay, Bob Rehak, Bonnie Ruberg, Neil Verma, and Avi
Santo. TVLT's graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty
advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Lea Jacobs, Derek
Johnson, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz, and Janet
Staiger (emeritus).

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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu