*CFP* "GENDER AND MEDIA ECOLOGY", SPECIAL ISSUE, EXPLORATIONS IN MEDIA ECOLOGY (INTELLECT)

We welcome research contributions that explore the intersections of gender and media ecology. Studying media as environments and environments as media, media ecology explores how human-made artefacts shape the way we think, feel, and act (Postman, 1970, 1995). Hence, the term “media” includes any technology from the printed book, telephone, television, and the Internet, to clothing, architecture, and vehicles. Such media can be understood as extensions of human faculties (McLuhan, 1964), which inherit certain “biases” and create certain “effects” for the human condition (Strate, 2017). This special issue seeks to advance the “meta-discipline” of media ecology (Nystrom, 1973) with attention to the gendered dimensions of such environments and extensions.

“We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us,” argues Culkin through a media ecological lens (1967: 52). Yet, who is “we” and “us”? Media ecological work has looked into some of the roles gender plays in the philosophies and expressions that go into and come out of various media (see for example Drucker & Gumpert, 1997; Meyrowitz, 1985; Mumford, 1961; Paglia, 1990; Pederson, 2011; Shlain, 1998). The scholarship, however, is limited. This is especially the case for contemporary and emerging concerns in, with, and through various media, from revenge porn to the #MeToo movement along with other manifestations of gender discrimination, subversion, and emancipation.

According to McLuhan, “the hybrid or the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born” (1964: 63). The analytical bridging of media ecology and gender studies can be such a revelatory meeting of two media. Here, we also include related research in feminist theory and feminist technoscience for producing fruitful frictions. What could the resulting subfields of “gendered-media ecology” and “feminist media ecology” contribute to our understanding of media as environments and environments as media?

New research into gender and media ecology is beginning to take form (see for example several recent panels on gender and media ecology at the 2019 National Communication Association Annual Convention and 2020 Media Ecology Association Annual Convention; see also Sharma & Singh, forthcoming). This special issue aims to establish a forum in which the gendered dimensions of media extensions and environments can be problematized.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Gender and media 
• Gendered environments and technologies 
• Gender and language 
• Gender as figure and/or ground 
• Gender biases and effects 
• Gender and the global village 
• Gender and formal cause 
• Gender and the “laws of media” 
• Gender and medium theory 
• Feminist technoscience and media ecology 
• Feminist readings of media ecology 
• Gender in the media ecology literature 
• Sexuality and media ecology 
• Intersectionality and media ecology

Read the full CfP here.

Abstracts (300 words) and a short biographical note should be submitted by August 20 to Julia M. Hildebrand (hildebjm@eckerd.edu) with the subject line “Gender and Media Ecology.”

Authors are not expected to pay for publication.

Important Dates:

Abstract submission (300 words): August 20, 2020

Manuscript submission: October 15, 2020

Notifications: November 30, 2020

Final manuscript submission: January 15, 2021

Target publication date: May, 2021

Guest Editors: Dr. Julia M. Hildebrand, Eckerd College, hildebjm@eckerd.edu, Dr. Julia C. Richmond, Rowan University, richmondj@rowan.edu