*CFP* CALL FOR SHORT ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS, "NEW MEDIA REVIEWS" AND "TRANSLATIONS" SECTIONS, VISUAL STUDIES JOURNAL

A New Media Review is a short essay (2000 - 5000 words) or an interview (3000 - 6000 words) that focuses on some aspect of the visual in social and political life, which the author believes deserves more attention than it has generally received. These reviews should explore what is going on in the world of new media, whether on or off the web. These can include television serials; fiction or non-fiction films; exhibitions of fine and popular arts; installations; graphic novels of one kind or another; books that explore various aspects of applied visual reasoning and communication; new technologies of visual representation, and so on: anything for which an author can make a compelling case that it communicates information that an informed public should take seriously.

An NMR provides an opportunity to directly address a general audience; to develop an accessible personal voice, and to explore issues in contemporary society and culture, as well as explore aspects of our pasts that may have been ignored or neglected. It is also an opportunity to describe – and analyse – emerging trends bubbling up in our contemporary world.

Examples of New Media Reviews that have been previously published in Visual Studies include Elizabeth Chaplin’s essay on ‘Bruno Latour’s Paris Invisible/Invisible Paris’ (2007); Karen McCormick’s ‘Revisiting The Wire’ (2015); and Jon Wagner’s reviews of Michael Apted's UPfilmmaking project (2007) and 2016 – to name but a few. You can also find the latest NMR published here.

If you have a proposal in mind, please feel free to contact John Grady at jgrady@wheatonma.edu, with a one-page proposal including a description of the materials to be considered; an argument for their social and cultural significance; and why they might, or should, appeal, and be of value to, an educated citizenry.

 

Translation

While Visual Studies aims to set the standard for visually-oriented scholarly research around the globe, there is a need to expand the journal’s content beyond the Anglophone world. The journal also aims to be an inclusive platform for the circulation of visually engaged research. By translating foreign essays that deeply marked the field in non-English-speaking countries we aim to further expand the spaces of knowledge conveyed within the journal, by making important non-Anglophone publications available to its readers. We are looking for untranslated essays published in a language other than English and from a wide range of disciplines, that could relevantly reflect the scope of Visual Studies and feed the debates in which the journal is involved. These articles should be pathbreaking or paradigm-shifting; they should be well reasoned and have a strong takeaway that could illuminate the journal’s aims, whether their primary focus is empirical or theoretical, historical or present day, examining the visual in general or images in particular. They should be significant contributions that make other readers think ‘why haven’t I encountered this piece before?’.

You can find the first translation published in Visual Studies here.

If you have a proposal in mind, please feel free to contact Julie Patarin-Jossec at patarinjossec.julie@gmail.com, with a one-page proposal following these submission guidelines.