CFP: Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India:Cinematic Representations and Nationalist / Fascist Agendas

Call for Proposals
 
Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India:
Cinematic Representations and Nationalist / Fascist Agendas             
 
Editors: Swapna Gopinath and Rutuja Deshmukh
 
Call for papers for a book approved for publication by Routledge, on Bollywood cinema, expected to fall within the interdisciplinary spaces of Cultural Studies, Film Studies and Postcolonial Studies.
The rise and rise of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism or political Hindu agenda that has engulfed India has also initiated the favorite pursuit of right wing of invoking the ‘glorious past’. This ‘glorious past is primarily being invoked by a surge of historical(s) in Bollywood. 

Indian Popular Cinema has evolved through various genres and has successfully and consistently borrowed plots from History to create classics like Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Meera (1979). As a technology, able to picture and embody the temporality of the past, cinema has become central to the mediation of collective memory through History. While past in representational terms has been figured in variations of Historical film- the costume drama, heritage picture or historical biopic from early cinema have come to surround the culture of the film.

Bollywood cinema as a popular cultural practice negotiates the socioeconomic and political discourses that define the social structures, the dialectical nature of this relationship creating a political dimension to the cultural processes at any given point in time. Contemporary India, at a critical juncture, opens up spaces for discussions and deliberations on the fast-paced social changes and a study of the politics of representations seems the need of the hour. Cinema responds in manifest ways and one genre, typically representative of the age of re-readings and re-writings of history, is the historical films. Historical films getting released in the last few years have been increasing in numbers and are often accompanied by controversies and debates on the veracity of these representations. Questions asked on the authenticity of these representations urge researchers to probe deeper into these works of art, as well as these questions being asked. The histories chosen, the protagonists selected, the narrative strategies employed, the target audience as well as the critics – all these multifarious aspects demand close reading and the proposed text seeks to explore them.     

The progression of cinema as a political tool and cultural medium is rooted in the wider society; cinema has reacted to and in turn shaped the changing political, social and economic conditions of the times. The projection of past in a popular medium depends on various perceptions of history that has been in circulation in the popular culture. Till date cinema has borrowed representations of historicity from both academic and non-academic association with history. 
Looking at History and its representation as a specific framework, we invite papers for proposed book chapters on Contemporary Cinema and Construction of History.
The book aims to blend academic papers and film screenings providing a platform to discuss cinematic historical interventions and transformations in India. Papers are expected to address but are not limited to:
 ​

• Construction of memory and identity 

• Precision of digital and tactile past 

• Aesthetic conception of propaganda

• Gender and depiction of historical moments

• Egomania and servitude in the depiction of historical battles 

• The politics of reception and production

•  The hero and the protagonist and the public imagination

• Imagining a past and its cinematic representation

The last date for submitting abstracts is March 15, 2020. Please mail your abstract of 500 words to historicalsbollywood@gmail.com

Suggested Reading List
Landy, Marcia (1986) Fascism in Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema 1930-1943, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kapur, Geeta (1987) ‘Mythic Material in Indian Cinema’, Journal of Arts and Ideas, vols 14-15, pp. 211-27
Laine, J. W. (2003) Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Jaffrelot, C. (1996) The Hindu Nationalists Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 
Hobsbawm, E. (1983) ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Sontag, S. (1981) Under the Sign of Saturn, US, Random House, Inc. New York. 
Benjamin, W. (1936) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Marxists.org, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

 Thank you,
Swapna Gopinath
Research fellow, Dept of Art and Art History
Uty of Rochester, NY

CFP: Feminist Politics and Activism in Reactionary Eras

CFP: Journal Articles

'Feminist Politics and Activism in Reactionary Eras'

The Dutch Journal of Feminist Studies seeks submissions for a special issue on feminist politics and activism for Spring 2018. In this issue, we want to consider the historical and contemporary effects of feminism as a global force. Is feminism past its time, or is it rising from the ashes as a unifying discourse amidst the rise of reactionary forces across the globe? Are feminisms infused within State governance, or marginal to it? What can we learn from the contemporary moment by looking to the political scenarios of previous decades?  We invite papers that provide different evaluations on the state of feminist movements cross nationally, including theoretical essays, empirical or archival research. Themes may include:

1.     The place of feminist movements amid the growth of right-wing movements – are feminist movements unifying forces across divides of race, class, caste, nationality or religion, or do they prioritize gender as the primary problem? Will they be rejuvenated, or transformed, by the fierce opposition they encounter?

2.     Feminism in the era of neoliberalism: can feminist movements thrive within neoliberal regimes? To what extent is neoliberalism contributing to the institutionalization and cooptation of feminism How do feminisms respond to the growing inequalities of class, region, race and indigeneity generated by neoliberal governance? What kinds of alternatives to neo-liberalism have feminist movements imagined?

3.     What is the relationship between global, national and local feminisms?  How do we map the connections and contradictions between global, national and local issues? To what extent have local feminist campaigns called upon global norms and engaged in transnational advocacy?

4.     What forms of women’s movements are excluded by using the term feminism? What are alternate discourses through which notions of gender equality are expressed, and what is their relationship to feminist politics?

5.     What is feminist movements’ relationships to the category women, and to the category gender? What are the contradictions in mobilizing around these two terms?

Papers should be 8000 to 9000 words in length, and are due by June 30 2017. 

Please direct inquiries to the Special Issue Editors, Srimati Basu (srimati.basu@uky.edu) and Akiko Takenaka (akiko.takenaka@uky.edu)

CFP: Theatre and Statelessness in Europe

CFP: special issue of Critical Stages on the theme of  “Theatre and Statelessness in Europe”

Editors: Azadeh Sharifi and S. E. Wilmer

Topic of Special Section:

With the number of refugees from the Middle East and Africa rising rapidly and demonstrations for and against refugees and immigrants taking place in many cities, migration has become a major issue in Europe. Despite the large number of deaths in sea crossings, the member states of the European Union have thus far failed to agree to share the responsibility for housing new immigrants and asylum seekers. While a few EU states have been welcoming them, most have been constructing new barriers to keep them out, such as Spain’s heightened security border fence in Melilla, Bulgaria’s 150 kilometre fence with Turkey, Hungary’s new 175 kilometre fence with Serbia, and Britain’s enhanced Channel Tunnel defenses.

In reaction to the crisis, Critical Stages is hosting a special section on “Theatre and Statelessness”. We are interested in publishing articles (of about 4500 words) about how theatre makers (such as Ariane Mnouchkine, Christoph Schlingensief, Elfriede Jelinek, Donal O’Kelly, David Edgar, etc.) and/or theatre institutions (such as the Ruhr Triennale, the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, the Maxim Gorki Theatre and the Theatertreffen in Berlin) have responded to this issue. 

Application procedure: 

Abstracts of approximately 250 words (and a brief biog) in Microsoft Word should be submitted to Dr. Azadeh Sharifi (azadeh_sharifi@web.de) and Prof. S E Wilmer (swilmer@tcd.ie)

Schedule:

• Deadline for abstracts: 15 December 2015
• Deadline for confirmation: 15 January 2016
• Deadline for first drafts: 15 May 2016
• Feedback: 15 June 2016
• Final drafts: 15 September 2016
• Publication: December 2016

Contact Info: 

Prf. Savas Patsalidis, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy

Aristotle University

Greece

Also: Editor-in-Chief of Critical Stages

Contact Email:  spats@enl.auth.gr
URL: http://savaspatsalidis.blogspot.gr 

CFP: Feminist Ghosts: The New Cultural Life of Feminism

CFP: Diffractions: Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture
Issue 6 | Feminist Ghosts: The New Cultural Life of Feminism

Deadline for articles: November 30

Over the last two decades, feminist scholarship has consistently drawn
attention to the “post-feminist sensibility” (Gill, 2007) overtaking
cultural imagination, wherein feminism is only alluded to “in order that in
can be understood as having passed away” (McRobbie, 2011). Deemed
responsible for disavowing feminist politics and for encouraging a
disidentification with feminist struggles on the part of (younger) women,
this postfeminist turn shifted attention to individual success, financial
satisfaction and heterosexual realization, ousting the plurality of feminist
subjectivities.

Recently, however, feminism seems to have reentered the sphere of public
awareness, both in political discourse and popular culture. As McRobbie put
it, “in endless conjuring up a demon that must be extinguished (in this
case feminism), that demon demonstrates something of its lingering
alfterlife and its ghostly power” (2011: 183). Phenomena such as Beyoncé’s
appropriation of Chimamanda Adichie’s talk “We Should All be Feminists”;
Emma Watson’s speech at the UN Women HeforShe campaign launch, in which she urged men to stand up for women’s rights; several Hollywood actresses coming forward to denounce the gender pay gap and other inequalities in the film business; Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller Lean In on the
work-family balance; the controversial success of Lena Dunham’s Girls on HBO, among many other instances, have not only contributed to a renewed visibility of feminism in social life, but also to bring forth the new contradictions and challenges (radical) feminism is facing today.

Within this framework, some authors propose to rethink postfeminism as one
word “for a productive irritation that helps keep feminist discourse alive
in contemporary popular culture” (Driscoll, 2015). Others, however, argue
that this reappearance of feminism in contemporary cultural life is
concomitant with “an amplification of control of women” (McRobbie, 2015),
in line with Catherine Rottberg’s diagnosis of a “rise of neoliberal
feminism” (2013), where classical feminist foundations, such as gender
equality and emancipation, are made compatible with neoliberal ideas of
competition, leadership, profit, and accomplishment, while other feminist
claims and geographies are marginalized and denied visibility. Moreover,
the very history of feminist thought is being rewritten along these lines,
and “hijacked” (to borrow Rottberg’s expression) by new interpretations
unaware of the plurality of feminist subjects and devoid of concerns with
social justice.

At a time when a new visibility of feminist imagination seems to be making
“old” struggles relevant again, but also to coexist or even to contribute
to new forms of capture and exclusion, how can cultural change be
envisioned and what kind of practices can bring it into existence?

This issue aims to reflect on the new cultural life of feminism through
topics that may include but are not restricted to the following:

• The representation of women and feminism in the media and the arts
• Feminism and popular culture
• Feminism, capitalism and neoliberalism
• Feminism and social media
• The history of feminist thought and the subject(s) of feminism
• Feminist knowledge politics
• Transnational feminisms and feminist geographies
• Intersectionality, collectivity and solidarity
• Feminism and sexuality (sex tourism; sexual trafficking; gendered
• violence)
• Feminist pedagogies
• Activism, political participation and performativity
• The body politic.

We look forward to receiving full articles of no more than 7000 words (not
including bibliography) by November 30, 2015 at the following address:
info.diffractions@gmail.com.

Diffractions welcomes articles written in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

Please follow the journal’s house style and submission guidelines at
http://www.diffractions.net/submission-guidelines

Diffractions also accepts book reviews that may not be related to the
issue’s topic. If you wish to write a book review, please contact us at
info.diffractions@gmail.com.

About Diffractions

DIFFRACTIONS is an online, peer reviewed and open access graduate journal
for the study of culture, published bi-annually under the editorial
direction of graduate students in the doctoral program in Culture Studies
at the Lisbon Consortium - Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

Find us online at www.diffractions.net

CFP The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music Studies

CALL FOR PROPOSALS – THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF HIP HOP MUSIC STUDIES

Edited by Justin D Burton and Jason Lee Oakes

Deadlines

Abstracts (400 words): 1 October 2015

Chapter Drafts (5k-7k words): 1 March 2016

Final Drafts: 1 June 2016

Goals

The overall goal of the Oxford Handbook series is to “advance an original conception of a given field through a definitive set of essays.” This entry in the Handbook series will aspire to be definitive not in terms of being exhaustive or solely authoritative, but rather, in terms of providing a snapshot of Hip Hop Studies in the mid teens of the 21st century, and in terms of “advancing an original conception” of the field. With this goal in mind, we seek to compile a collection of singular, challenging essays that pay respect to hip hop scholarship of the past by building on that scholarship and suggesting new, emergent trajectories for subsequent scholarship.

One of our key objectives for this volume is that it speak to and about the contemporary moment—musically, culturally, ideologically, and theoretically. Contributors should thus focus in large part on what hip hop music/culture, in its many iterations, means today—to whom and in what settings; through what expressive means, musical and otherwise; and under what circumstances and socio-cultural conditions. Note, however, this present-centeredness is not meant to exclude historiographic examinations, either of hip hop music or scholarship. To the contrary, we are interested in how and why multiple histories are conceived, canonized, and challenged; and how these histories flow into and inform contemporary expressions, as well as vice-versa, in often-unacknowledged ways. Inspired by the crate-digging DJs who first birthed hip hop music—the DJs who flipped vinyl records from product to source of musical creativity, all in service to the here-and-now demands of the dance floor—we invite writings that are likewise future-oriented, historically-informed, and grounded in the present, seeking out new resonances between these multiple fields.

Parameters

We encourage writers to address a wide array of hip hop music and sound—from mainstream to underground; from recorded to embodied; from commercially-oriented to culturally-oriented; from self-designated music to incidental soundscapes to outright noise; and finally, from the grey areas between the above categories to instances that explode these (and other) dichotomies altogether. Although the designated subject of this handbook is music, authors will be expected to link music and sound to other elements of hip hop culture, and also perhaps to musical practices and cultural dynamics extending beyond hip hop. When it comes to methodology, authors are encouraged to draw from multiple disciplines and schools of thought, as well as points of view that originate outside the academy. The view we take toward interdisciplinarity is that it should be found not only between the various articles in the Handbook but also within individual articles.

We hope the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music Studies will push the needle both on Hip Hop Studies and on how such work is presented and engaged—ideally, in a more fluid, dialogic form that draws inspiration from hip hop itself. This Handbook is conceived as a dynamic entity, one that will grow alongside its subject and will engage readers in mutual dialogue. To this end, we plan a significant online presence for the Handbook, including a designated landing page through Oxford University Press that will provide digital access to individual articles for purchase. The Oxford portal will allow for the posting of select articles before the printed Handbook goes to press; the posting of article-specific supplemental materials such as playlists, audio-visual materials, interview transcripts, and other information; and finally, the posting of articles falling outside the purview of the printed volume and articles approved after the designated deadline in anticipation of a second printed volume. For authors who are willing, we plan to make summaries and excerpts available to the general public for close reading and commentary—perhaps on a popular annotation-based website or other online public commons—in order to encourage reader engagement and to spur wider interest in the Handbook, linking it to rap and hip hop exegesis as a growing populist trend.

Submissions

Please send abstracts of 400 words or less along with a 50-word bio (feel free to also link to a personal website) to [hiphopmusichandbook at gmail dot com] with subject heading “Handbook Proposal” by 1 October 2015. We will send acceptance notifications no later than 1 November 2015. Chapters of 5k-7k words will be due 1 March 2016, and we will work with authors on revisions through the spring in order to amass the entire collection by 1 June 2016 and submit to OUP shortly after.

Contact Email: justindburton@gmail.com
URL: http://justindburton.com/hiphophandbook

CFP: Children's and young people's rights in the digital age

CFP: Children's and young people's rights in the digital age (Special issue of New Media and Society)

Children's and young people's rights in the digital age
Call for papers for a special issue of NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY

Editors: Sonia Livingstone and Amanda Third
Abstracts due (400-500 words): 15th September 2015

In 1989, Sir Tim Berners Lee released the code that would form the foundation of the World Wide Web, which now boasts an audience of three billion users worldwide. The same year, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the history of the UN. The trajectories thereby set in motion have recently become explicitly intertwined, with growing momentum behind calls for the recognition of the potential of online and networked media for promoting children's rights. At the same time, researchers, child rights' advocates and internet governance experts, among others, are concerned that children's rights are being newly infringed rather than enhanced in the digital age.

While the past quarter of a century has seen the emergence of a significant literature examining the broad issue of children's rights and, in parallel, a burgeoning field of research on children's new media and digital practices in a variety of national and international contexts, the question of children's rights in the digital age has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention, especially compared with the attention paid to adult rights online. Within popular discourse, children and young people are frequently configured as riding at the forefront of the 'digital revolution'. Nonetheless, as high level debates about global internet provision and governance extend their geographic, political and economic scope, the position of children and young people is barely acknowledged. Further, in the twists and turns of often heated policy debates, children's own experiences, voices and interests are vastly under-considered. This special issue thus seeks to contribute to the definition, empirical evidence base, and theorisation of the field internationally.

Not only are children's needs and experiences in the digital age often treated as merely a minority interest but they are also often seen as essentially problematic, as demanding exceptional treatment from adult society or causing unwarranted restrictions on adult freedoms. It is important to recognise the fundamental nature of the challenges - this is not just a matter of 'digital rights' but of all children's rights as they may be being transformed in a 'digital age'. Nor is it just a matter of the exceptional circumstances that apply to children, for addressing the rights of children and young people also has implications for adult rights in a digital age. How does a consideration of children compel a wider re-examination of the concepts both of the digital and of human rights?

If children's rights in the digital age have yet to receive attention in the global North, this is even more acute in the global South. The tipping point has already passed, with two thirds of the world's nearly three billion internet users living in developing countries, many of them children. At present, the evidence regarding their online activities is very patchy, too often drawing on anecdote, practitioners' observations and institutional reports or media accounts. There is thus an urgent need for a scholarly focus on the rights of children and young people within this larger picture of expanding connectivity in the global South. This is vital to foster debates about children's rights informed by dialogues among diverse epistemologies, experiences and normative frameworks.

This special issue seeks to unpack the ways digital media are impacting - both positively and negatively - children's rights today and, in doing so, to reflect on the ways that children's rights might provide a meaningful counterpoint from which to consider the role of 'the digital' in advancing human rights more broadly. Assembling contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field internationally, this special issue seeks to bring fully into view the ways in which children's rights - indeed rights generally - may be being reconfigured by the appropriation of digital networked technologies around the world. Submissions will critically examine the normative and socio-technological assumptions embedded in conceptual, policy and practitioner perspectives. To catalyse the debates, we now call for reflective papers of 6000-7000 words analysing key dilemmas or tensions shaping children's rights in the digital age, as well as shorter empirical or practitioner pieces (3000-4000 words each).

Papers on key dilemmas or tensions that respondents to the call might address include:

• The tension between universal or fundamental human rights and the specific rights demanded by the digital age

• The tensions between 'adult rights' and 'children's rights'

• The relationship between children's rights and their citizenship

• Collective rights versus individual rights 

• The tension between 'adult power' and 'children's rights'

• The tension between the universal ('the child', 'rights') and the specific (the lived experiences of children)

• Hierarchies of children's rights in the digital age

• Children's rights in the digital age in the global North and global South

• Empirical or practitioner pieces might address:

• Children's privacy rights and the role of peers and peer culture

• Youth participation rights in the mediated public sphere

• Historical shifts in children's communication rights

• Child protection in the global South: is the internet helping or hindering?

• From principles to practice: applying arguments about digital rights in particular domains

• Who is (or should be) ensuring children's rights online - parents, government, industry?

• Children's creative workarounds to gain health resources online

• Evaluating initiatives for e-learning and other digital educational programmes

• How are children's rights represented or abused in 'big data'

• Digital exclusion as a barrier to children's communication rights

• Rethinking possibilities for children's identity and expression in the network society

• Problems of reputation for networked youth

• Public policy /multi-stakeholder governance regarding children's rights in the digital age

• Children's information rights: what are the dilemmas?

• Education for all - newly possible in the network society?

• Grooming, hacking, cyberstalking, trolling and other crimes against children online

• Meanings/limits of "voice" in participatory research on children's rights in the digital age

• The intergenerational dimensions of children's rights

Please submit abstracts for either the 'dilemma' papers or 'empirical/practitioner papers' by 15th September 2015 to both editors - Sonia Livingstone (s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk<mailto:s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk>) and Amanda Third (A.Third@uws.edu.au<mailto:A.Third@uws.edu.au>).

The editors will invite full papers from selected submissions by early October, with full papers to be submitted for independent review by 1st February 2016. It is anticipated that the special issue will be published via Online First by late 2016.


Professor Sonia Livingstone, DPhil, FBPS, FRSA, OBE
Department of Media and Communications, LSE
S105, St Clements Building, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
Web: [http://www.sonialivingstone.net<http://www.sonialivingstone.net]www.sonialivingstone.net<http://www.sonialivingstone.net>
Blog: [http://www.parenting.digita<http://www.parenting.digita@Livingstone_S>l]www.parenting.digita<http://www.parenting.digita@Livingstone_S>l
Twitter: @Livingstone_S
EU Kids Online: [http://www.eukidsonline.net<http://www.eukidsonline.net]www.eukidsonline.net<http://www.eukidsonline.net>
TEDx talk: http://ow.ly/wwWiC
Open access papers: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/view/lseauthor/Livingstone,_Sonia.default.html
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard
Fellow and past President, International Communication Association
Books: Meanings of Audiences (2013), Digital Technologies in the Lives of Young People (2014)

CFP: Cultural Studies and Marxism Book Series

Call for Proposals: Cultural Studies and Marxism Book Series

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International   

Book Series Editor: Jaafar Aksikas

The Cultural Studies and Marxism book series is now seeking proposals for original books and edited volumes.  The series is a timely and valuable contribution to the larger field of contemporary cultural studies. The global capitalist crisis of the twenty-first century has prompted renewed interest in critical political economy and Marxist theory. At the same time, publishing institutions committed to a robust articulation between cultural studies, critical political economy, and Marxism are almost non-existent. The series is dedicated to addressing this situation by highlighting and making available important (and emergent) scholarship at the intersection of these three fields.

The aim of the series is to publish important theoretical as well as empirical and historical contributions as the basis for vigorous intellectual debate and exchange among cultural studies practitioners and scholars. We are convinced that a project of this kind can make an important contribution to the revitalization and renewal of the politically committed intellectual project of cultural studies. As such, the series also promises to be a vital component of the struggle to produce useful knowledge that enables us to change the social world we live in and make it better and more humane. 

The peer-reviewed series will publish original monographs and edited collections across the bounds of academic disciplinary agendas, and across the divisions and institutions of cultural studies. We are keen for the series to include as wide a range of voices, practices, formats, approaches, positions, and interests as possible, so while the ‘traditional’ scholarly monograph is welcomed, we would also encourage other formats, such as edited collections, treatises and manifestos. 

The series also seeks to be a space where connections amongst Cultural Studies practitioners across generations and locations are formed. Because the alliances built by Cultural Studies practitioners in the U.S. and the global north are deeply shaped by the global south/Third World perspectives, the series will also be open to contributions from scholars and practitioners in and outside of the U.S., including those who may offer a transnational perspective on practicing Cultural Studies.

Editorial Collective: 

• Walter Benn Michaels, University of Illinois, USA
• Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University, Canada
• Iain Chambers, The University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Italy
• Douglas Kellner, UCLA, USA
• Fredric Jameson, Duke University, USA
• Ranjani Mazumdar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India
• Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
• Toby Miller, University of California—Riverside, USA
• Mathias Nilges, St. Francis Xavier University, USA
• Adolph L. Reed, University of Pennsylvania
• Paul Smith, George Mason University, USA
• Carol Stabile, University of Oregon, USA 
• Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Canada
• Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Editorial Advisory Board:

• Wail Ismail A. Barry, Ain Shams University, Egypt
• Barbara Foley, Rutgers University, USA
• Ann Gunkel, Columbia College Chicago, USA
• Don Hedrick, Kansas State University, USA
• Darko Suvin, McGill University, Canada
• Tiziana Terranova, The University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Italy 

The series will be published by Rowman & Littlefield International.  More information on the series can be found on our website here: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/series/cultural-studies-and-marxism.

Authors and Editors interested in writing or editing future books in the series should contact series editor, Jaafar Aksikas at BOTH Jaksikas@colum.edu AND Jaksikas@gmail.com 

To submit a proposal, please download the proposal form here: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/working-with-authors/submitting-a-proposal and send it to the series editor Jaafar Aksikas at BOTH Jaksikas@colum.edu AND Jaksikas@gmail.com 

CFP: Rosa Luxemburg and the Contemporary: Imperialism, Neoliberalism, Revolution

Call For Papers
Rosa Luxemburg and the Contemporary: Imperialism, Neoliberalism, Revolution

This issue of New Formations will propose a rethinking of the legacy of revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg in the twenty-first century. In particular, essays included in the issue will draw on Luxemburg’s writings in order to address pressing issues of the contemporary world. At a time when neoliberal policies strengthen the smooth running of imperialist dispossession and continue to break the oppressed classes through new forms of precariat, debt, marginalisation, militarism and impoverishment, Luxemburg’s inheritance seems to acquire an unexpected poignancy. Luxemburg’s uncompromising commitment to socialism as only alternative to the violence of capitalism can inspire engaged movements fighting social justice in many contexts of the globe. In particular, the issue will focus on Luxemburg’s reflections on imperialism as the forcing of trade relations with non-capitalist surroundings as antidote to the ‘standstill of accumulation’ inherent to the unfolding of capitalism’s history.

Theories of imperialism through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have contended with Luxemburg’s proposition by emphasising its limitations, errors and blind-spots. Yet, do Luxemburg’s theories on imperialism retain any meaning or validity in a postcolonial era? Can Luxemburg’s legacy help redefine the struggle against contemporary forms of neoliberalism, imperialism and accumulation? Can a debate on Luxemburg shed light on the meaning of the postcolonial as historical category and its political and social implications? Can Luxemburg’s thought help to redefine the meaning of social engagement today? The twenty-first century seems to confirm Rosa Luxemburg’s prediction that capitalism would be incapable of becoming universal without damaging the environments, societies and forms of life that are necessary for its reproduction. Contemporary wars, ecological crises, social unrest and the violence of neoliberal economy testify to the paradox that Luxemburg examined in her work: the full domination of capitalism on the planet would correspond to a scenario verging on total destruction and hence the breakdown of capitalism itself. According to Rosa Luxemburg, this ‘barbaric’ aspect of capitalism requires the re-opening of history through active revolutionary intervention.

Confirmed contributors

• Stephen Morton
• Paul LeBlanc
• Peter Hudis
• Helen Scott 
• Rory Castle
• Filippo Menozzi
• Kanishka Chowdhury

We welcome contributions from all disciplines. Final essays will be expected to be 7,000-9,000 words in length. For more information about New Formations see http://www.newformations.co.uk

Deadline for abstracts 30 September 2015
Contributors will be told if their abstracts have been accepted by October 30th 2015
Deadline for full essays: May Day 2016

CFP: Mediated Intimacies: Relationships, Bodies and Technology

Mediated Intimacies: Relationships, Bodies and Technology

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies to be published March 2017 edited by Alison Winch, Feona Attwood, Jamie Hakim.
We are looking for 7000 word completed essays by 31st December 2015

In what ways does media convergence culture represent, intervene in, exploit and enable intimate relations? How is intimacy being reconfigured under neoliberalism?

On the one hand we are living in atomized and individualistic times where relationships are increasingly strategic and competitive. On the other the media has become, as Beverly Skeggs argues, intensely intimate. This special issue on mediated intimacies aims to explore how understandings of intimacy are (re)constructed and experienced, particularly in digital cultures. In addition, we are interested in the ways in which the apparently alienated entrepreneurial self is constructed through and by forging intimate connections and simultaneously how these networks are mined and monetized by corporate culture.

This special issue of Journal of Gender Studies is developed from a symposium held in July 2014 on Mediated Intimacies where the speakers explored, among other topics, girls’ online friendships, ‘expert’ sex advice in printed media, male seduction communities, and how pornography reconceptualises the very idea of intimacy itself.

Potential papers could explore the affective dimensions of intimate practices reflecting the pleasures and pains of life lived under neoliberalism, including how precarity and class impact on the ways in which intimacy is forged. Because digital culture is primarily corporate driven (Taylor 2014) we are interested in how user-generated media employs self-branding strategies. For example, in the refashioning of the body or gendered and sexual identities, or the ways in which intimacy can be a form of self-promotion.

Feminist and queer perspectives seek to expand the reach of what is constituted as belonging, love, connection and intimacy. Whereas recession culture has reestablished normative gender categories (Negra and Tasker 2014) contemporary digital cultures have the potential to challenge and rework gender and sexual identities (McGlotten 2013). This issue hopes to explore these productive tensions.

Potential papers could also explore how sexuality, sex, sexual knowledges and sexual pleasure function by looking, for example, at Do-It-Yourself porn, sexual subcultures and alternative sex practices. A final consideration underpinning this issue is how different intimacies intersect along axes of class, race, disability, age and geographical location.

Possible topics could include:

● adapting and resisting gendered and sexed identities
● forging new normative gendered identities
● mediatised kinship (families, parenthood and fertility)
● geolocation technology
● dating and hook up apps, sex dating and relationship cultures
● selfies
● role of experts (e.g. sex advisors and agony aunts), including their changing meaning in peer-driven contexts
● mediated romance
● fitness apps and body culture
● use of social networking sites, including instagram, Facebook, Twitter
● self-branding
● the mediation of friendship
● rebranding feminism
● pornography
● monetization of intimacy, including big data, content generation and PR/advertising

Please send 7000 word completed essays by 31st December 2015 through Scholar One Manuscripts: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjgs20/current.

Please direct enquiries to Alison Winch (a.winch@mdx.ac.uk), Feona Attwood (f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk) and Jamie Hakim (j.hakim@uea.ac.uk)

Publication schedule:

• 31 December 2015: Papers to peer reviewers

• March 2016: Comments to authors

• June 2016: Authors final revisions

• September 2016: Final acceptance

CFP: The Media and the Military

CFP: The Media and the Military

The Sage journal Media, Culture and Society (http://mcs.sagepub.com/) calls for proposed contributions to a planned themed issue with the working title ‘The Media and the Military’, co-edited by Katy Parry and John Corner. Military involvement in, and use of, media flows, including forms of social media, has developed significantly in the last decade. In relation to this, media strategies have developed too, with consequences both for military-political relations and military-civilian relations. New lines of visibility and emphasis have emerged alongside continuing strands of the invisible or marginalised.  An indication of the agenda of questions the issue proposes to address would include:

• How do unfolding narratives concerning the military sphere become interconnected with questions of foreign policy and what do these interconnections tell us about wider political debates on military-civil relations?
• How are ‘costs’ (diplomatic, economic and human, including forms of mental and physical injury) variously calculated in relation to the mediation of military activity?
• Do vernacular expressions of recent military experience (e.g. in social media, memoirs, forums) challenge or complement official accounts? How do they relate to the politics of ‘the war on terror’?
• How are national histories variously put to work or displaced in the mediation of contemporary military action?
• What evidence is available about the ways in which public perceptions of the military are constructed, about the tensions at work in that construction and about shifts in evaluation?

Proposals should be a maximum of 400 words and indicate not only the proposed topic but the kinds of approach, methods and forms of illustration/documentation/data to be employed. Proposals for shorter items (including discussion pieces) as well as for conventional length articles (max 8,000 words) are welcomed. The deadline for receipt is 20 September 2015. Proposals should be emailed to John Corner (J.R.Corner@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:J.R.Corner@leeds.ac.uk>) and Katy Parry (K.J.Parry@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:K.J.Parry@leeds.ac.uk>). Selection for invitations to submit first draft papers in the following year will follow within 6 weeks of the proposal deadline, along with details of the planned schedule.
 

CFP: Theme Issue: Surveillance and Performance

Call for Papers: Surveillance and Performance

Theme Issue of Surveillance & Society

edited by Rachel Hall, Torin Monahan, and Joshua Reeves

submission deadline: October 15, 2015 for publication May 2016.

This special issue calls for critical scholarship on the cultural convergence of surveillance and performance in what we call monitored performances. We define monitored performances as embodied human processes that are tracked or verified by surveillance technologies and/or trained human monitors (or some combination thereof). In monitored performances, the fact of having been monitored alters the performance—its meaning, power, form, or value—and/ or places the performer at risk of regulation from within or without. Monitored performances, therefore, are symptomatic of a larger shift toward forms of power that thrive on mobility, enterprise, personal initiative, morality, and health. Take, for example, the performance reviews characteristic of American corporate culture and high-tech industries in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In these professional arenas, workers and technologies “perform . . . or else”—that is, they get fired, defunded, canceled, or discontinued.[1]

This is perhaps best illustrated by the ways in which contemporary security cultures compel citizens to demonstrate their innocence via performances of transparency. Citizens in airports, for example, find themselves performing patriotic transparency for the privilege of mobility. Each time we enter an airport, we are reminded that, just like our bosses, teachers, administrators, and parents, the state asks us to perform—or else. We can also see this shift toward “monitored performances” in popular culture, where there has been a recent turn away from the performance of authentic self-transformation first described by Mark Andrejevic.[2] “Authenticity” has now become an effect of subjects performing self-sameness across different contexts, which requires verification by pervasive surveillance technologies. Reality television, therefore, provides a venue for characters to perform an authentic self, which among other things promotes a sense of naturalness that reinforces cultural norms of whiteness, heterosexuality, and gender roles.[3]

Thinking across security and popular cultures of surveillance, then, can illustrate how performances of transparency and authenticity—performances which must be verified by surveillance technologies and/or trained human monitors—reinforce exclusionary legal, moral, and aesthetic codes and values. Such performances are repeatedly carried out in the name of “reality”—through appeals to objectivity and neutrality in security cultures shaped by the turn to preemptive warfare, and via claims to authenticity and the therapeutic value of remaining “true to one’s self” in popular cultures cultivated by reality T.V. and social networking. These trends become even more troubling as biology and physiology have become the new proving ground for technologically verifiable performances of innocence, fitness, and health. Now that surveillance technologies developed for the security, health, and fitness industries are reaching into the depths of our bodies—measuring heart rates, pupil dilation, and hormonal levels—we are beginning to see new trends in self-scrutiny and self-performance based on the capacities of these technologies to render our bodies more transparent to ourselves, our peers, and the state.

As the power of performance breeds new cultures of monitoring, verification, and accountability, performance provides an innovative lens for reimagining the ways in which surveillance functions in the contemporary moment. For this special issue we are particularly interested in work that acknowledges the asymmetries of power operative across different contexts of surveillance and performance. While some persons and populations are presumed capable of performing well (or at least up to standard) under the pressure of human or technological monitoring, others are presumed incompetent and, consequently, thought to require performance management from without. Within networked social arenas, some individuals enjoy the privilege of self-fashioning while others enjoy hours of time spent gaming and engaging in other types of play that occurs within monitored spaces. Everyday performances of self-improvement or self-sameness serve to validate some subjects as capable of improvement and/or authenticity, while narrow performance standards may discriminate against persons with a wide range of abilities. Yet these developments also give rise to significant space for experiments in resistance and rebellion.

Possible research areas might include (but are not limited to):
· Performances of citizenship under state surveillance in contexts of war, prevention, and disaster
· Prepped citizenship as a post-disciplinary performance of self-monitoring
· New perspectives on reality television
· Media technologies used to measure and monitor health and fitness
· Performance monitoring in schools and the workplace
· Performances of identity in popular cultures of surveillance
· Surveillance as a privileged site of self-fashioning
· Surveillance and the performance of disability and accommodation
· Use of surveillance technologies to perform monitoring functions once performed by medical professionals
· Resisting surveillance and the performance of illegible, low-risk, or threatening identities

This is not intended to be an exclusive listing of possibilities for this issue. Other possibilities are encouraged and can be discussed in advance with the guest-editors: Rachel Hall, Torin Monahan, and Joshua Reeves.

Submission Information:

We welcome full academic papers, opinion pieces, review pieces, poetry, artistic, and audio-visual submissions. Submissions will undergo a peer-review and revision process prior to publication. Submissions should be original work, neither previously published nor under consideration for publication elsewhere. All references to previous work by contributors should be masked in the text (e.g., “Author, 2015”).

All papers must be submitted through the online submission system no later than October 15, 2015, for publication in May 2016.

Please submit the papers in a MSWord-compatible format. For further submission guidelines, please see: http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

For all inquiries regarding the issue, please contact the editors.
References:
[1] Jon McKenzie, Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. New York: Routledge, 2001.
[2] Mark Andrejevic. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. New York, NY: Bowman & Littlefield, 2004.
[3] Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Emily D. Ryalls. “The Hunger Games: Performing Not-performing to Authenticate Femininity and Whiteness.” Critical Studies in Media Communication (2014): 1-15.