CFP: NEW GENRE STUDIES (ANTHOLOGY) Eds.: Jonathan Cohn, Jennifer Moorman, Samantha Noelle Sheppard Abstracts/Proposals (300 words) due August 1st Chapters (no longer than 6000 words) due Feb 1st Send abstracts to [log in to unmask] Whether watching a film, binging a series, playing a game, surfing the web, or scrolling through social networks, genre profoundly shapes the expectations, pleasures, and disappointments of media spectatorship. Yet, genre has not been a central concern of media studies writ large since the 1990s and the early scholarship of the likes of Rick Altman, Thomas Cripps, Carol Clover, Jane Feuer, Vivian Sobchack, and Linda Williams. In some areas of media studies (most notably video games and new media), serious discussions of genre are almost non-existent. Where it is present, it is--with some important exceptions--typically Eurocentric. Media and genre are often opposed to one another as two discrete forms of categorization and the field has largely sided with media as the more helpful, productive, and critical of the two. In fetishizing media, our field has overlooked the possibility that often when we say ‘media’, we really mean ‘genre.’ How many arguments over whether or not TV as a medium turns you into a ‘couch potato,’ the Internet makes you active, or VR makes you empathetic could be settled if framed as an effect of particular genres instead? Genre may now be a more helpful heuristic for the questions many of us currently ask. The way we engage with a piece may have far more to do with its genre than medium. The way we consider and judge a piece’s depictions of our cultural, economic, and political reality are also shaped first and foremost by genre. While discourses around media are typically interested in defining clear distinctions between media, genre is valued for being a far looser form of categorization that privileges connections, overlaps, and hybridity. Genre is also transmedial and can readily help to show the connections between media. These are just a few of the avenues that a more fulsome discussion of genre could lead us down. Starting from these provocations, we seek to revitalize discussions of genre in media studies by providing a showcase for some of the most exciting new work in the area. In this anthology, we ask the question of whether organizing our field around media was a mistake. Would we have been able to better confront and consider the many central debates and dead ends of media studies over the last three decades if we had started by centering on genre rather than media, or at least setting them up as equals? What other potential difficulties and problems may have arisen instead? New media has had its moment; now it’s time to consider what new genres can do. We are especially seeking papers on the following or similar topics: - New genres across media - Genres of the Global South - Genres of the dispossessed - The culture, politics, and/or economics of genrification - Forgotten and misunderstood genres - Genre as embodiment and/or interactivity - Genres, historicity, and historiography -- Jennifer Moorman, PhD Assistant Professor Communication & Media Studies Fordham University she/her/hers [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> *Fordham College at Rose Hill is situated on Wappinger and Munsee Lenape land. To learn more about whose land you occupy and what you can do to support decolonization efforts, consult the Native Land Map <https://native-land.ca/> and the resources provided by the Manna-hatta Fund <https://mannahattafund.org/>. * ---- Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex podcast: http://screenlex.org