*CFP* "ESTUDIOS DE FANS EN IBEROAMÉRICA", Nº38 (2022-2), REVISTA CONTRATEXTO

Estudios de fans en Latinoamérica

Revista Contratexto

Sección Dosier

Fecha límite: 15 de mayo de 2022

El número 38 de Contratexto se centrará en los estudios del fenómeno fan en Iberoamérica.

Editoras invitadas: María José Establés (Universidad de Nebrija, España), María del Mar Guerrero Pico (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, España), Johanna Montauban Bryce (Universidad de Lima, Perú). Se recibirán artículos originales o ensayos que aborden de modo preferente alguno(s) de lossiguientes ejes temáticos:

● Media fandom (series de televisión, cine, videojuegos, novelas, cómics y manga…)
● Otros objetos de fandom: música, deportes…
● Fandoms del ámbito hispanohablante y de la lusofonía (telenovelas, influencers, youtubers…)

*CFP* "DESIGNING FOR PLAY AS A CULTURAL PARTICIPATION CHILDHOOD. SEEKING NEW GROUNDS", SPECIAL ISSUE, REVISTA CONJUNCTIONS: TRANSDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CULTURAL PARTICIPATION

This special issue of Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation invites contributions that explore children's play as cultural participation and production empirically and theoretically, especially in how we can design for cultural participation and production.

The recognition of the importance of play in childhood is deeply rooted in the Nordic research on child culture. For years the Nordic studies of children have been defending children's right to unguided play, driven by the participants as a fundamental condition for participatory cultural practice in childhood. At the same time, the conditions for children's play have changed fundamentally, and as a result of this, the conditions for children having the possibilities to explore their capacity as cultural producers have also changed. We have seen a decline in children’s traditional and self-governed participatory play culture. The unguarded play has become scarce, replaced by monitored places and transparent architecture in day-care, kindergarten, schools, and homes. This creates new challenges for contemporary play research and practices if we still want to promote play as cultural participation and production.

The question is how we can design for play, driven by the participants. Design for play in that sense demands high awareness of how we think and define play in theory as well as in everyday practice, addressing the possibilities for participation as productive play culture.

*CFP* "MIGRATIONS / MEDIATIONS. PROMOTING TRANSCULTURAL DIALOGUE THROUGH MEDIA, ARTS AND CULTURE", SPECIAL ISSUE, COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI JOURNAL

Migration has been a phenomenon throughout human history. However, as a result of economic hardship, conflict and globalization, the number of people now living outside their country of birth is higher than ever. It has also become a key focul point for the media. Even though irregular immigration constitutes only a minor part of the total immigrant population in the EU, it is the one most spectacularized by the media. This over-mediatization of the phenomenon leads to a consistent discrepancy between the perception and the reality of the issue, and this distance has favored the shift of migration issues from ‘low politics’ to ‘high politics’, fueling an emergency management and a securitarian approach.

We live in a deeply mediatized world. Media have an important role in influencing political attitudes and in framing public debates towards migration and asylum. In the last decade, the representation strategies and discursive practices enacted by a wide range of state and non-state actors have been presenting irregular migrants crossing borders as an ‘emergency’ to be managed in terms of a wider social, cultural and political ‘crisis’. These media representations have outstripped the reality of the crisis. As a consequence, the public anxiety about migration and asylum-seeking in Europe, is increasingly shaped by the political rhetoric of Europe as being besieged by people fleeing conflict or seeking a better life. Institutional and political actors have stoked public anxieties and security concerns, endorsing emergency narratives, aggressive policing and militarized border control, which in turn has generated a fertile breeding ground for xenophobic, populist reactions.

*CFP* "GLOBAL DIGITAL MEDIA FROM INTERSECTIONAL, QUEERFEMINIST AND POSTAND DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES", SPECIAL ISSUE, GLOBAL MEDIA JOURNAL-GERMAN EDITION

This special issue aims at strengthening critical perspectives in Global Media Studies as well as international communication in order to expand and challenge the hegemonic canon of media studies. These include marginalized positions such as post- and neocolonial, intersectional and queer perspectives. Such perspectives can draw attention to blind spots in communication studies, question global norms and standards, and productively use ambiguities in analyses of media and communication processes. In this way, critical approaches to media and communication can engage with current complexities of media societies and offer important perspectives with regards to global dynamics, caused by the rapid changes and dynamics in our global communication infrastructures and reveal their production of and inscription in socio-economic, cultural, and political power relations. This includes the analysis of international regulatory systems and dynamics of global communication infrastructures, especially with regard to their changes through digital media.

Epistemological and methodological reflections will also be considered in this special issue: with a global perspective, the researchers' own privileges and positioning as well as processes of inclusion and exclusion in existing knowledge production can be analysed. Furthermore, the description and analysis of socio-technological systems require inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to describe and assess current developments and understand reproductions of sexist, racist and classist power relations. The global pandemic does not only pinpoint our dependence on digital infrastructures but also sheds light on increasing inequalities.

*CFP* "THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL SEMIOTICS OF COMICS AND CARTOONS", VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2, PUNCTUM-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS

We are pleased to announce the publication of the Volume 6, Issue 2 (2020) of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, the online, open-access journal of the Hellenic Semiotic Society. This issue is devoted to "Semiotics of Political Communication", edited by Gregory Paschalidis. The articles, as well as the whole of the issue, can be accessed/downloaded at the journal’s website. We also bring you the new the new call for papers for the Volume 7, Issue 2 of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, devoted to ''The Social, Political and Ideological Semiotics of Comics and Cartoons'', edited by Stephan Packard and Lukas R.A. Wilde.

What more can semiotics do for comics? As early as the 1960s and through to the first decades of the 21st century, comics studies have attracted a large and perhaps disproportionate amount of attention from analytical semiotic approaches that foreground description and theory building: Their combination of pictures and text offering a challenge to any attempt towards a systematic theory of signs, and their experimental treatment of their semiotic inventory as well as the genres, imageries, and conventions of other media and art forms inviting descriptive scrutiny as well as playful engagement. Scott McCloud’s famous Understanding Comics (1993), both praised and criticized for its essentially semiotic approach, provided the foundation for the rise of sequential comics studies. Even the relatively more practice-based earlier work of Will Eisner (Comics & Sequential Art, 1985), on which McCloud built his own, focuses on a description of formal semiotic and semantic relationships. 

*CFP* "CENTERING WOMEN ON POST-2010 CHINESE TV" AND "GLOBAL TV IMAGES OF FEMALE MASCULINITY", SPECIAL ISSUE, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE &

Since the beginning of China’s self-modernizing process and the birth of Chinese feminist movements in the first decade of 20th century, women’s bodies and desires have frequently been marshalled in service of male-dominated nationalistic and (post-)socialist discourses of China and Chineseness. The ideological-political mobilization of female gender, sexuality, and subjectivity has considerably transformed and complicated contemporary Chinese televisual representations of women. In the 21st century, Chinese cyberspace, along with its flourishing creative and media industries, has witnessed an unexpected “boom in women-oriented literature and culture” (Sun & Yang, 2019, p. 28). Notably, the rise of local media and literature produced by and/or for women, along with flows of feminist and LGBTQ movements within and beyond China in the new millennium, first nurtured the cyber literature genre of “matriarchal fiction.” Such fiction is often “set in a society ruled by women … [and] describes a woman’s ascent to power in the public arena, or her success at establishing and heading a happy domicile including one or more male sexual partners” (Feng, 2013, p. 85). This matriarchal narrative maneuver later led to the widely popular “big heroine dramas” of Chinese TV in the past decade, the narratives of which focus on the life trajectories, professional obstacles, familial relationships, and romantic lives of female protagonists living in either the contemporary era or a temporally and spatially remote world (Sun & Yang, 2019, pp. 26-28). At the same time, a growing number of reality shows, talk TV shows, dating programs, and lifestyle shows in the post-2010 years have addressed themes related to women’s sociocultural roles in both professional and private milieus, such as parenting skills, same-sex friendships and homosociality, and marital-familial issues in contemporary China characterized by cosmopolitanism, post-feminism, digitization, (post-)globalization, and deterritorialization.

*CFP* "DETECTING EUROPE IN CONTEMPORARY CRIME NARRATIVES: PRINT FICTION, FILM, AND TELEVISION", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

“Detecting Europe in Contemporary Crime Narratives: Print Fiction, Film, and Television”

21-23 June 2021

Link Campus University

Via del Casale di San Pio V 44 – Rome (IT)

 

Among the different expressions of popular culture, no other genre more than crime – meant as a composite made up of many different variants or subgenres -- has proved able to travel and expand its reach into international markets and with audiences. Nor has any other genre been more adept at laying bare the conflicts and contradictions – social, political and historical – that characterise contemporary European societies. The Detecting Europe conference offers an open forum to explore and discuss how narratives of crime and investigation, as well as their production and reception, have helped define the major industrial, commercial, thematic and stylistic trends of European popular culture since 1989, fostering both the transnational circulation of its products and the appearance of new transcultural representations in line with the emergence of new social identities. We welcome proposals that interrogate the notion of Europeanness as a critical category, and its viability for the study of contemporary popular culture, both in print and screen media. We wish to explore both the scope and limits of the interrelated notions of transnational identity and cosmopolitanism when applied to the works of European crime fiction, including print fiction, film, and TV.

*CFP* "A MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY OF INDIA", CHAPTER BOOK

The intertwining of Communication and Media Studies, and the discipline of Anthropology is not new, in the Indian context. Arjun Appadurai’s (1990) considered takes on global communication flows and mediascapes, Purnima Mankekar’s (1999) landmark work on screen cultures, and the steady engagement of anthropologists like Binod C. Agrawal (1985) in Communication and Media Studies, are some instances of efforts at bringing the two subject areas to influence each other. 

 

The growing number of ethnographies in Communication and Media Studies showcase the influence of Anthropology’s methodological and epistemological offerings to study various media-related phenomena. Research on media and cultures is underway in various departments of Cultural Studies and Film Studies, in the country and outside. Similarly, the popularity of digital ethnography, anthropology of popular culture and development, are areas that have caught Anthropology's fancy. Visual Anthropology has emerged as a distinct field within Anthropology, while departments of Sociology carry out ethnographic work on aspects of Communication and Media Studies. 

*CFP* "RELIGION, MOBILITIES AND BELONGING IN CONTEMPORARY ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE AND FILM/TV SERIES PRODUCTION", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL OF ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE, CULTURE AND MEDIA

Religion has re-emerged as a public force, a marker of ethnic identities and one of the main ways of identifying the ‘difference’ of migrants, diasporic subjects and transnationals in contemporary multicultural societies. As Craig Calhoun has pointed out, we live in a “postsecular” world, where the term “postsecular” registers the awareness that religious belief is not something to be overcome, but rather a force to be continually contended with (2011). Processes of dislocation and resettlement have resulted in a resignification of religious practices and religious identity. Religious identities are recognized as open to revision, a process that involves different generations negotiating their interpretations of sacred scriptures, rituals, communal claims and norm-setting institutions.

Meanwhile, the globalization of politics and the new technologies of international media transmission cannot but affect religious identities and identifications through the creation of transcultural bonds and alliances, the production of dominant perceptions, and the popularizing stereotypes. Not surprisingly, there is a growing awareness that, as William Connolly has insisted, rather than demarcating the line between irrational religion and secular reason, contemporary multicultural societies should expand their thinking about the kind of pluralism which has come to mark 21st century experience (2005). From the culture wars that succeeded the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to the waves of displaced peoples from the Global South that have challenged conceptions of citizenship, and the recent global success of TV series that engage with the theme of religion, what creative expression and sociopolitical fact remind us is that religion maintains a significant role in 21st century societies.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, FAN STUDIES NETWORK NORTH AMERICA VIRTUAL CONFERENCE 2020

Fan Studies Network North America Virtual Conference 2020

October 13-17, 2020

For this year, we have decided to host the virtual-only Fan Studies Network North America over five days in October to encourage participation and access, and to limit Zoom mental overload. The conference will combine synchronous and asynchronous conversations. Rather than traditional papers, we will have virtual workshops, salons, and posters.

Please submit proposals using the submission form.

Workshops can be led by 2-4 attendees and will focus on the development of practical knowledge, sharing of experience, and hands-on practice.

Salons can be led by 1-2 attendees and will be discussions focused on a range of topics. Initial proposals for possible salon topics from leaders are due by July 25th, followed by open call for participants once topics have been chosen (200 word response due August 25th). 

*CFP* "NARRATIVES OF DISPLACEMENT", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

"Narratives of Displacement" International Conference

6 November 2020 - Palma, Spain

organised by

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

The British and Comparative Cultural Studies Research Group (BRICCS), Unversity of the Balearic Islands, Spain

in collaboration with

Research Project RTI2018-097186-B-I00 and RED2018-102678-T (MCI/AEI/ERDF, EU)

The conference seeks to explore the narratives of displacement and to demonstrate the validity of a cross-disciplinary approach which brings together the historical, cultural, social and literary expertise in the handling of text. The conference will particularly focus on time and space representations and on treatment of the theme of cultural ambivalence and identity conflict. The subject of displacement will be regarded as both a migration, voluntary or forced, and a sense of being socially or culturally “out of place”.

*CFP* "MEDIA USE AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT: CROSS-CULTURAL APPROACHES", SPECIAL SECTION, THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

We cordially invite empirical research articles on media use and political engagement taking up a cross-culturally comparative design!

Democracies around the world are struggling with the global decline of civic and political engagement, especially among younger generations (Bessant, Farthing, & Watts, 2016; Smith & Thompson, 2015). Recent  data from World Value Surveys and the Eurobarometer have yielded  alarming results (Whiteley, 2012), showing that young people in most  Western countries are increasingly dissatisfied with and disinterested  in liberal democracy (Foa & Mounk, 2017; Sloam, 2016). At the same  time, this overall decline is paralleled by an increase of new forms  of engagement such as lifestyle politics, Internet activism, and  political consumerism (Dalton, 2004; 2006; Theocharis & van Deth, 2018).

These developments have contributed to a new understanding of citizenship, one in which citizens are increasingly engaging through informal, creative, participatory, and digitally networked activities, thus moving political engagement into the domain of entertainment and personalized communication (Park, Kee, & Valenzuela, 2009). 

*CFP* "PROPS - STAGING OBJECTS ON THE 'STAGE OF ART'", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

International Conference:

Props – Staging Objects on the ‘Stage of Art’

Joanna Olchawa and Julia Saviello

(Institute of Art History, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)

9th and 10th October 2020

Not every object used on a stage is a prop. In his acclaimed study ‘The Stage Life of Props’ of 2003 Andrew Sofer includes under this term only independent, physical and inanimate objects that are visibly manipulated by an actress or actor over the course of a performance. In this stricter definition of the concept of props the moment of movement plays a central role: objects themselves are not equipped with the potential to move, but they become props as soon as they are integrated into intentional and meaningful representative actions. This definition not only highlights the specific nature of props, but also and above all the way in which props are handled by human actors, which is in turn determined by the connotations and specific construction (functional or otherwise) of each object.

*CFP* “GLOBAL SCREEN WORLDS: AN INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP”, SOAS UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 2021

Comparative film studies…must necessarily proceed by way of a collaboration between intellectuals from different geo-historical formations. The precondition for such a collaboration is that the participants should be prepared to consider their own intellectual formations and thought-habits as symptomatic constellations shaped by the very same dynamics that animate historicity itself. Paul Willemen, For a comparative film studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6.1 (2005): 99

We need to forge ‘off-centered’ networks of individual scholars, academic programs and institutions, and venues for publication internationally.  The final goal is not to create a globally unified discursive space of film studies, but to forge new networks and channels of communication.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, A future of comparative film studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 14.1 (2013): 54-61

In September 2021, a three-day, fully-funded workshop will be held at SOAS University of London as part of the ERC-funded project Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies. This workshop will form part of the Global Screen Worlds strand of the project which inspired by Willemen’s and Yoshimoto’s words above – calls for comparative, interdisciplinary and “off-centered” approaches to Film and Screen Studies. The workshop and the Open Access edited volume that will result from it are, accordingly, designed to inspire and facilitate collaborative dialogue, research, and authorship among Film and Screen scholars from different parts of the world, but especially from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and those working on indigenous cinemas.

*CFP* "WORLDMAKING AROUND THE WORLD: RETHINKING THE INTERSECTIONS OF POPULAR MEDIA, TRANSLATION AND LGBTQ+ ACTIVISM ACROSS CULTURES", CONFERENCE

Worldmaking around the world: rethinking the intersections of popular media, translation and LGBTQ+ activism across cultures

Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, University of Exeter

17-18 April 2020

Keynote Speakers: Jack Halberstam, Columbia University; Ryan Powell, Indiana University

This conference aims to rethink the ways in which popular media, in the forms of film and TV, offer material for LGBTQ+ worldmaking through translation. Popular media have long been understood as a site that is negotiated by readers and viewers (Fiske 1989) and have been considered ‘Goods to Think with’ (Martin 2017). Popular media therefore offer space for developing queer readings and for thinking queerness within texts that may themselves not be queer. Queer readings of popular cultural texts have read back into them gay, lesbian, bi and trans characters that have been previously overlooked or minimised (e.g. White 1999). In addition, there has been a massive growth in LGBT+ representation on TV and in the cinema in the Anglophone world since the 1990s (Mennel 2012: 113-116; Schoonover and Galt 2016: 18). TV shows like Will and Grace, Queer as Folk (in both its British and American versions) and The L-Word featured out-gay and lesbian characters and were part of the development of a wider queer visibility in popular culture, although queer characters had been present in earlier TV and film, though seldom in central roles (e.g. the gay best friend).

*CFP* “WHAT’S QUEER IN ITALIAN FILM HISTORY? LOOKING FOR NON-NORMATIVE REPRESENTATIONS FROM THE SILENT ERA TO THE 1960S", SPECIAL ISSUE, IMMAGINE JOURNAL

From the early 1990s onward, the theoretical reflection on gender identities and non-binary sexuali-ties (Butler 1990; Sedgwick 1990; Koyama 2003) has increasingly challenged the assumption of hegemonic paradigms of heteronormativity as totalizing categories of gender identities and sexuali-ties. In the last few years, critiques of heteronormativity have moved forward from the analysis of contemporary cultural products to the proposal of new paths of historical inquiry, which are gaining currency under the label of “queer historicism” (McCabe 2005). 

In this context, Italian cinema historiography—which only recently has been able to incor-porate the perspectives of feminist film studies (Cardone 2009; Pravadelli 2012; Hipkins 2016; Dall’Asta 2008)—has remained so far reluctant to apply transfeminist (Koyama 2001) and queer ap-proaches to the representation of gender and sexuality. And yet, destabilizing forms of gender repre-sentation and non-normative modes of reception can be found through the history of Italian cinema since its origins. From Fregoli and the farcical performances of comedians like André Deed (Cret-inetti), Raymond Frau (Kri Kri) and Gigetta Morano, to a unique film of its kind like Filibus (1915), the use of crossdressing to display unconventional gender roles was more than familiar to Italian film audiences.

*CFP* “SINO-KOREAN SCREEN RELATIONS”, UCLAN SYMPOSIUM 2020

Sino-Korean Screen Relations 

16-17 de Enero de 2020

UCLan, UK

We invite papers on the topic of Sino-Korean Screen Relations for a symposium on 16-17th January 2020. The symposium will bring together scholars of Film, TV and Screen Media Studies to explore diverse and intricate relations between Sinophone and Korean-language screen media. It will take place at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, which is located with easy transport links to the scenic Lake District and the vibrant urban and cultural centres of Manchester and Liverpool. Accommodation, lunch and refreshments will be provided for presenters, and some travel assistance will be offered to post-grad researchers. We particularly welcome papers from scholars from across the Sinophone and Koran-language cultural centres and diasporas.  Selected papers will be offered publication opportunities in an edited collection on the symposium theme. 

Sino-Korean screen relations is a significant and under-studied research area. It includes relations between the two largest and most influential contemporary screen media spheres in the East Asian region. However, the emphasis on relations gestures beyond the concept of distinct Sinophone and Korean-language spheres of cultural (re)production, and beyond dominant national ideologies and nation-based media historiography. Instead, it re-conceptualises Sino-Korean screen media as intricately interlinked through diverse yet disjunctive webs of historical and contemporary relationships.

*CFP* "ENCUENTROS ESTADOUNIDENSES-MEXICANOS EN EL CINE NORTEAMERICANO CONTEMPORÁNEO", IMEX REVISTA

Los artículos examinarán el impacto de la era de Trump en imágenes de mexicanos y chicanos en los cines estadounidense y mexicano contemporáneos.

La inmigración mexicana y la vida de mexicanos y chicanos en los Estados Unidos fueron temas clave en la campaña electoral de Donald Trump y siguen siendo temas tratados con mucha polémica en los medios de comunicación estadounidenses. La campaña electoral se recuerda en particular por su retórica esencialista y xenofóbica que acentuaba al Otro como inferior y peligroso (Valverde 2016). Como minoría más grande en los Estados Unidos (Díaz de León 2011), hispanos, y especialmente mexicanos, siguen siendo el objeto de críticas masivas de Trump, el cual empezó su campaña presidencial en 2016 con una condena de México por “traer drogas, crimen y violadores” a los Estados Unidos (Greenwood 2018). En contraste con el discurso político populista, que suele basarse en representaciones esencialistas de etnias y culturas, el cine de muestra muchas veces una tendencia a la exploración crítica de las ideas monoculturales y racistas, lo cual puede facilitar el intercambio cultural y se basa frecuente mente en conceptos transculturales. En este contexto, el cine en los Estados Unidos y en México mantiene un enfoque sobre la migración mexicana y la vida de mexicanos y chicanos en los Estados Unidos de múltiples perspectivas y, además, alcanza un gran público (Rings 2016: 127). 

*CFP* “MEDIA ETHICS AND THE CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT”, SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL OF ARAB & MUSLIM MEDIA RESEARCH

The Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research (JAMMR) is an international academic refereed journal published by Intellect in the UK and specializes in the study of Arab and Middle Eastern media and society. Principal Editor: Noureddine Miladi. 

The speedy developments in online media, satellite TV and social media platforms have brought up significant ethical challenges around the world. The unprecedented widespread use of social networks as tools for communication and reporting news have also raised serious issues relating to the boundaries between free speech and social responsibility. Media coverage of crises, war and conflicts is a case in point.

This special issue of JAMMR aims at enriching the debate on media ethics especially in relation the digital environment. It also aims to address media ethics from a global perspective and discuss how we can understand journalism practice in its cultural contexts. Are there ways to develop a common understanding of global ethics and how they should be perceived and implemented?

*CFP* “ANTRHOPOLOGY OF MEDIA”, CHAPTER BOOK

We invite you to submit book proposals for the Media Anthropology book series published by Berghahn Books. Pioneering a dedicated series for media anthropology, the collection has brought out several influential books that are widely read and referenced.

The series aims to curate some of the finest works in the exciting field of media anthropology, and invites new contributions that strongly resonate with these objectives: The ubiquity of media across the globe has led to an explosion of interest in the ways people around the world use media as part of their everyday lives. 

This series addresses the need for works that describe and theorize multiple, emerging, and sometimes interconnected, media practices in the contemporary world. Interdisciplinary and inclusive, this series offers a forum for ethnographic methodologies, studies of media practices that especially go beyond Eurocentric accounts, explorations of transnational connectivity, mediated forms of political subjectivities and political action, and studies that link culture and practices across fields of media production, consumption and circulation.