[Air-l] cfp: media & cultural politics

[katharine sarikakis]

Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to announce a new journal that would be of interest to those
doing research in the cultural and socio-political dimensions of the
Internet. Below you will find some more information on the journal, some
indicative opening themes and a general call for papers. If you have an idea
for a paper or you would like more information on the journal, we look
forward to hearing from you. A founding editorial board is at the end of
this message.
(apologising for crosspostings)
Katharine Sarikakis

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international journal of
media & cultural politics

New for the start of 2005, MCP fills a large gap in the current social
sciences, media, communications and humanities range. The International
Journal of Media and Cultural Politics is committed to analyzing the
politics of communications and cultural processes. It addresses cultural
politics in their local, international and global dimensions, recognizing
equally the importance of issues defined by their specific cultural
geography and those which run across cultures and nations. The content focus
will be critical, in-depth analysis and engaged research of the
intersections of sociology, politics, cultural studies and media studies
with the aim of keeping academic analysis in dialogue with the practical
world of communications, culture and politics.

MCP aims to:

·	foster writing which seriously engages the politics of culture
·	focus on the nexus of communications, culture and politics
·	combine a sharp sense of topicality with quality peer-refereed academic
research
·	respond rapidly to developing events
·	make space for new and marginalized voices and issues, worldwide
·	balance metropolitan and regionalist interests
·	eschew partisanship and offer conflicting opinion
·	combine writing by academics with work by practitioners, activists and
artists
·	publish papers bridging the gap between theoretical & abstract knowledge
and cultural & social practice
·	foster debate and dialogue through opinion sections, web forums and
special events
·	address a wide readership in the social sciences, arts and humanities

Opening editions include:

Infantilizing culture: the collapse of media content? Could it really be
that 'elitist' cultural pessimists of the twentieth century (like Adorno and
Eliot) were embarrassingly accurate about the degradation inflicted on
culture by media producers? Should we evolve social policies to treat some
media output like cigarettes and junk food? Can local media systems resist?
What are the implications for future political engagement when media content
is at once youth-focused, consumerist, and escapist? Is it elitist and
prejudiced to ask questions like these about quality?

The death of the intellectual: can Beckham replace Sartre? Is the
intellectual a historical phenomenon like the troubadour or the
condottiere - or a vital cultural resource in the consumer world? What
associations exist between intellectual labour and the West's domination of
material resources and intellectual property? Will the West hear
intellectuals from the rest of the world? Is there an intellectual response
function to the newest 'Pax' Americana? Is there an intellectual common
ground for Islam, Christianity and secularism? Why are the British as
embarrassed by intellectuals as the French are by their talent for football?

'In here and out there' - the media, the centre and the regions How do the
media define 'provinces' and 'regions', the 'centre' and the 'periphery'?
How do the media drive the interests and values of some locations and
suppress those from elsewhere? Is metrocentrism a major form of parochialism
of developed media societies?  What is the collective geographical subject
of news producers, and who is defined through otherness? What are the
demographics of inclusion and exclusion, and how do geographical identities
relate to ethnicity, gender and class? How do national metrocentrisms map on
to international media coverage, not least of the new category, 'asylum
seeker'?

Getting past 'post-feminism': the spectacle of the female body is as never
before a standard component of the economies of tv, cinema, and the web,
with even pre-teens now the target of legal as well as criminal
image-producers across several media. What is the political meaning of these
developments? In what ways may we comprehend alternative responses to female
spectacle - for example, within some domains of Islam? Does the growth of
spectacle of the male body 'equalize' the politics of the image or does it
only make it easier to oppress women? Has the reach of techno-economic power
made progressive sexual politics irrelevant?

The media and the end of history - a view from several continents: if
political action is based on historical consciousness, how do the media
affect historical knowledge? Do they help to obliterate history? How much
resistance can there be to powerful media-borne versions of history? Does
the web liberate individuals from institutional oppression, or increase
Western/Anglophone ownership of history? Does computer technology exile
history by intensifying the present? Can communities reconstitute their own
histories through museums, social action and specialized media? If so, will
the result be history or heritage?

MCP is now inviting the submission of papers that address the general aims
of the journal or the proposed themes. Send your papers to
k.sarikakis at coventry.ac.uk or commentaries to cbyerly at dsdial.net


managing editor
Katharine Sarikakis Coventry University, UK

editors
Neil Blain University of Paisley, UK
Karen Ross Coventry University, UK

commentaries and reviews editors
Carolyn Byerly University of Maryland, USA
John Sullivan Muhlenberg College, USA
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen University of Cardiff, UK

Founding Editorial Advisory Board

Alina Bernstein, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Craig Calhoun, New York University, USA
Stella Chinyere Okunna, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria
Melanie Cishecki, MediaWatch Canada
Sean Cubitt, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Yvonne Galligan, Queens University Belfast, N Ireland
Christine Geraghty, University of Glasgow, UK
Oliver Grau, Humboldt Universitaet Berlin, Germany
Cees Hamelink, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lena Jayyusi, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Ros Jennings, University of Gloucester, UK
Richard Keeble, University of Lincoln, UK
Eileen Meehan, Louisiana State University, USA
Noé Mendelle, Edinburgh College of Art, UK
Vincent Mosco, Queen’s University, Canada
Marian Myers, Georgia State University, USA
Virginia Nightingale, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Chris Paterson, University of San Fransisco, USA
Caroline Pauwels, Free University Brussels, Belgium
Lizette Rabe, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Marc Raboy, University of Montreal, Canada
Leslie Regan Shade, Concordia University, Canada
David Rowe, University of Newcastle, Australia
Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK
Manjunath Pendakur, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA
Anne S Walker, International Women’s Tribune Centre
Gideon de Wet, RAU University, South Africa
Jan Worth, Northern Media School, UK

published by Intellect (www.intellectbooks.co.uk)