[Air-l] 'wireless' special issue

[Gerard Goggin]

[apologies for x-posting]

call for papers
‘Wireless Cultures and Technologies’
special issue of 'Media International Australia'
(125, November 2007)
edited by Gerard Goggin (USyd) and Melissa Gregg (U Qld)

Wireless technologies and cultures could be said to encompass anything
from WiFi-enabled laptops and handheld devices to wireless broadband
protocols such as Bluetooth and Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) as
well as a range of cultural and community movements centering on
wireless networks. While these emerging technologies are of great
critical and particularly business interest worldwide, there has been
little cultural research and analysis accompanying their uptake in
Australasia. This lack of attention is notable given the intense
discussion of new wireless technologies in Europe and North America.

Following on from an ARC Cultural Research Network workshop, this
special issue of Media International Australia aims to generate debate
about the current and potential uses of wireless technology in
Australia. It seeks to map and assess the research and development
taking place in relation to wireless use to account for the Australasian
context within wider international trends. Among other things, it will
explore the benefits of established cultural research methods and
theories for understanding the rationales and desires behind technology
design and adoption.

Accordingly, we invite papers on topics such as (although certainly not
restricted to):

• wireless use in particular contexts—domestic space, neighbourhood
networks and workplace environments
• cultural and social shaping of wireless technologies
• theories of wirelessness
• characteristics of wireless cultures
• wireless provision, policy, and practice in Australia and internationally
• mobiles and wireless technologies
• cultural and community movements around wireless
• implications of wireless for media and contemporary culture.

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to both Gerard Goggin
(gerard.goggin at arts.usyd.edu.au) and Melissa Gregg (m.gregg at uq.edu.au)
by Monday 26 February 2007.

If selected, full papers will be due by 15
May 2007,and the issue published in November 2007.

About the journal:

Media International Australia (MIA) publishes new scholarly and applied
research on the media, telecommunications, and the cultural industries,
and the policy regimes within which they operate
(http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/mia/index.html).

MIA was founded by Professor Henry Mayer in 1976. It was published by
the Australian Film, Television and Radio School until 1997, when it
moved to the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy at Griffith
University. At that time, it was merged with the Centre's journal,
Culture and Policy. From 2004, it became a publication of the School of
EMSAH and the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, at The
University of Queensland. In 2005 the Henry Mayer Lecture was
established in memory of the journal's founder.

Broadly inclusive and inter-disciplinary, the journal welcomes the
writing of history, theory and analysis, commentary and debate. While
its primary focus is Australia, the journal also aims to provide an
international perspective.

About the special issue editors:

Melissa Gregg is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for
Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, where she is
studying the impact of new media technologies on work and home life. She
is author of 'Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices' (Palgrave, 2006) and
co-editor of 'Counter-Heroics and Counter-Professionalism in Cultural
Studies’ Continuum 20 (2) 2006. With Greg Seigworth, she is currently
editing 'The Affect Reader', while preparing a manuscript on online
cultural studies with Catherine Driscoll.

General editor of 'Media International Australia', Gerard Goggin is an
ARC Australian Research Fellow in the Department of Media and
Communication, the University of Sydney, currently working on a book on
global mobile media. He is author of 'Cell Phone Culture' (Routledge,
2006), and editor of 'Internationalising Internet Studies' (with Mark
McLelland, Routledge, 2007) and 'Virtual Nation: The Internet in
Australia' (UNSW Press, 2004).

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Dr Gerard Goggin
ARC Australian Research Fellow
Editor, 'Media International Australia'
Department of Media and Communications
The University of Sydney
e-mail: gerard.goggin at arts.usyd.edu.au
p: +61 2 9036 6424  f: 61 2 9351 5444
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/media/?page=staff&id=gerard.goggin