[Air-L] Call For Papers: Media, Fans, and The Sacred: Neoreligiosity Seeks Institution

[kelly boudreau]

This might be of interest to some members on the list.
-Kelly


Call for paper proposals
*The deadline for submissions for this issue is August 1st, 2012*

Kinephanos’ fourth issue aims to explore the relationship between the
sacred, the mythological motifs in modern popular fictions, and fandom. Our
goal is to understand how the sacred, a pure human emotion, is disembodied
from the ‘official’ religious institutions – at least in the Western
countries – in order to be reinvested in secular cultural activities like
‘going to see a movie’ or ‘playing a video game’. Eliade wrote: “Movies, a
‘factory of dreams’, are highly inspired by countless mythological motifs,
such as the struggle between the Hero and the Monster, battles and
initiation ordeals, figures and exemplary patterns” (freely translated from
*Le sacré et le profane*, 174). These mythological stories, highly
symbolics, exist since ancient times. However, we would like to address the
following issue: how the immersive experience in a work of fiction, now
facilitated with various technological media forms (movies, videogames,
television shows, etc.), changes our own relationship with the emotion of
the sacred sparked in people’s life. We propose to identify this emotion
with the term “neoreligiosity”. An English scholar of fan culture, Matt
Hills, says in this regard: “Neoreligiosity implies that the proliferation
of discourses of ‘cult’ within media fandom cannot be read as the ‘return’
of religion in a supposedly secularised culture” (*Fan Culture*, 2002,
119). Indeed, putting side by side the experience of the fan with the
religious experience might seem appropriate. Due to a lack of words, needed
by fans to describe their own affective experience with their favorite
movies, the use of religious terminology seems logical, without calling
upon religious institutions structure. Hills quotes Cavicchi: “(…) fans are
aware of the parallels between religious devotion and their own devotion.
At the very least, the discourse of religious conversion may provide fans
with a model for describing the experience of becoming a fan” (2002, 118).
This issue of Kinephanos proposes to explore how the sacred, the
religiosity, and the neoreligiosity play out in modern popular fictions,
and with those who experience it : the fans.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to;

   - *Sacred and reappropriation (fans creations : fanfics, fanfilms, etc.);
   *
   - *Social network, sharing interests through Internet;*
   - *Reception, modern and contemporary myths (Star Wars, Matrix, Lord of
   the Rings, etc.);*
   - *Cinema and religion, displacement of the sacred;*
   - *Videogames, replayability as a tool of self-exploration (Mass Effect,
   Heavy Rain, morality system, etc.);*
   - *Revelation, epiphany, and the fan’s experience;*
   - *Cinema and videogames, mythological motifs between the lines;
   vestiges of the sacred;*
   - *Repetition viewing as a ritual, ‘cult fandoms’ and television shows
   (Star Trek, Doctor. Who, etc.);*
   - *Archetypal figures in the modern mythologies (Order and Chaos,
   Lovecrafts’s Great Old Ones, the hero’s journey (monomyth) in Hollywood
   movies, etc.).*

While Kinephanos privileges publication of thematic issues, *we strongly
encourage writers to submit articles exceeding the theme* which will be
published in each issue.

How to submit?

Abstracts of 1000 words including the title, the topic and the object(s)
that will be studied. Please include bibliographical references, your name,
email address and your primary field of study.

Send submissions (in French or English) by August 1st, 2012 to:

marc.joly at umontreal.ca and vincent.mauger at arv.ulaval.ca

Following our approbation sent to you by email (2-3 weeks later after
deadline), please send us your completed article by December 1st, 2012.

Editorial rules

Kinephanos is a peer-reviewed Web journal. Each article is evaluated by
double-blind peer review. Kinephanos does not retain exclusive rights of
published texts. However, material submitted must not have been previously
published elsewhere. Future versions of the texts published in other
periodicals must reference Kinephanos as its original source.

Production demands

All texts must be written in MLA style. 6,000 words maximum (excluding
references but including endnotes) with 1.5 spacing, Times New Roman fonts
12pt, footnotes must be inserted manually in the text as follow : … (1),
references must be within the text as follow (Jenkins 2000, 134), a
bibliography with all your references, and 5 keywords at the end of the
text.
For the editorial guidelines, refer to the section Editorial
Guidelines<http://www.kinephanos.ca/politique-editoriale/>
.

*Kinephanos accepts articles in French and in English
**
*

*****This issue edited by Marc Joly-Corcoran and Vincent Mauger*

Kinephanos is a bilingual web-based journal. Focusing on questions
involving cinema and popular media, Kinephanos encourages interdisciplinary
and transdisciplinary research. The journal’s primary interests are movies
and popular TV series, video games, emerging technologies and fan cultures.
The preferred approaches include cinema studies, communication theories,
religion sciences, philosophy, cultural studies and media studies.

*
*


-- 
Doctoral Candidate in Film Studies (ABD)
Université de Montréal
Montreal, QC

BA / MA Sociology
Concordia University
Montreal, QC

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