[Air-L] CFP: Women and the Gendering of Talk, Gossip, & Communication Practices Across Media

[Meryl Krieger]

Hi all:

This is a cfp I just got that could be really interesting for many people on
this list. Note that the deadline for abstracts is coming up: November 15,
2009. The book proposal has been accepted for publication.


full name / name of organization:

Sarah Burcon & Melissa Ames

contact email:

sburcon at gmail.com & mames at eiu.edu

cfp categories:

African-American

American

Bibliography and history of the book

Classical studies

Cultural studies and historical approaches

Eighteenth century

Ethnicity and national identity

Film and television

Gender studies and sexuality

Humanities computing and the internet

Journals and collections of essays

Medieval

Popular culture

Postcolonial

Renaissance

Rhetoric and composition

Romantic

Theory

Travel writing

Twentieth century and beyond

Victorian

We are seeking proposals for an anthology focused on gendered communication
practices.  (Articles need not be completed at this time to submit.)

This collection, accepted for publication by McFarland press, aims to update
existing theories of orality in the light of technological advancements
which have altered communication practices on a large scale. Although these
shifts in communication practices affect both genders, this book looks
specifically at how the last century of technological inventions have
specifically affected women’s means of communication. Women have long been
stereotypically associated with the oral realm. We aim to reexamine the
so-called essentialist notion of women’s relation to oral culture by
attending to their shifting practices at the onset of the 21st century.
Moreover we seek to understand how women learn gendered talk/communication,
how they have (historically) utilized this in everyday practices, and how
these practices now, when combined with current technological apparatuses,
allow gendered spaces to be co-opted by women to an extent that gendered
“talk” might, in fact, be eliminated and/or replaced by non-gendered
communication practices and androgynous “talk.”

This text will be organized into three sections representing three key
arguments about women and oral culture that have yet to be brought into
conversation with one another. Section one will deal primarily with
performative spaces where women learn and act out gendered ways of
communication. Section two will delve into literary spaces, revising
theories of oral literacy and residual literacy by analyzing texts where
print culture and oral culture meet to further the needs of women’s
communities. And section three will focus solely on technological spaces
where “talk” itself is transformed in the digital era and narrative forms
are forever altered.

For this contributed volume, the editors seek previously unpublished essays
from a wide array of disciplines and theoretical approaches. Writing may
explore, but need not be limited to, the following topics:

• How performative spaces (literal locations and mediated zones) construct
“gendered” communication practices
• How chick flicks and (feminist) television teach women how to interact
with one another
• How “feminine performances” revolve around exaggerated (and sometimes
emotional) moments of talk, tell alls, gossip, gab.
• How certain locations lend themselves more to idle chit chat than others
(waiting rooms and lobbies) and how men and women fill “down” time with
conversation differently within these situational spaces
• How the chat of motherhood differs from other social conversation (for
example, the difference between talking in front of [and about] the K-I-D-S)
• How women adapt speech to fulfill the needs of different environments and
the effect this has on their interpersonal communication practices
• How literary (print) spaces utilize orality in the discourse(s) of
“feminine” communities
• What the historical practice of female letter writing reveals about
women’s communication
• How and when the act of diary and journal writing became a “girl” thing to
do (how diaries are marketed today versus the famous canonized diaries and
travel journals of the past)
• How technological spaces transform “talk,” genre, and narrative form in
the 21st century
• How text messaging and emoticons have changed female communication
patterns and friendships
• How men and women’s communication has altered differently due to their
active text messaging or instant messaging practices in an era of waning
face-to-face communication
• How contemporary media practices, and technology, change long-standing
communication practices and “print” genres, such as memoir, in terms of
gendered production, authorial intent, and social reception
• How the autobiography genre morphed into blogging and became, initially, a
masculine practice focused more on the reporting of opinions (often
politically-based ones) rather than personal happenings (as associated with
female autobiography)
• How social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, have un-gendered and
transformed the genre of autobiography
• The Internet provides a multitude of forums for a new type of “talk”
emerging on screen rather than in person
• How, with coded and/or ambiguous user names like AR711 and SoxFan,
chatrooms and fan sites provide spaces where gender cues are erased and how
this erasure may help to bring about a form of technological talk that is
androgynous and free of the usual gender clues usually found in written
formats that would often tie the speaker to his or her gender
• Other topics related to gender and communication are welcome as well

Deadline for Abstract (500 word maximum): November 15th, 2009

Please send abstract and a brief biographical statement to Sarah Burcon &
Melissa Ames at: *sburcon at gmail.com* <sburcon at gmail.com> and
*mames at eiu.edu*<mames at eiu.edu>.
The subject line should read: Submission for Women and the Gendering of
Communication.

-- 
J. Meryl Krieger
Ph.D., Folklore & Ethnomusicology
Associate Instructor, Indiana University
Adjunct Instructor, Ivy Tech Community College