[Air-L] CFP: CyberOrient - Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media

[Vit Sisler]

Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media

Call for Papers
CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East
Editor-in-Chief: Daniel Martin Varisco
Guest Editor: Mona Abdel-Fadil
Submission deadline: 10 January 2016 (Full Papers)

Aim

A multitude of media formats are produced primarily for entertainment.
Yet, much of such popular cultural production promotes particular
worldviews, gender dynamics, political stances, consumerism patterns,
and lifestyles. As Lila Abu-Lughod’s iconic study, Dramas of
Nationhood, on Egyptian TV-Serials demonstrates, media producers may
at times have strong ideological messages, which they wish to convey
to their audiences through their media output. However, audience
responses may not always match the intentions and anticipations of the
authors. The worldviews and subjectivities of the individual media
users, and the modes in which the engage with the medium, are equally
important to analyze, in order to understand the complex responses of
media audiences.

In this special issue of CyberOrient, we aim to bring together
scholarly work on a range of Middle Eastern and Muslim cultural media
products. The goal is to examine how gender roles are constructed,
transmitted, and negotiated, and at times put forward as part of
lifestyle or ideological choices. Simultaneously, we are interested in
how such products are received, imagined, and consumed in the every
day lives of audiences. This special issue focuses both on media and
cultural production in the Middle East as well as products intended
for consumption by Muslim and Middle Eastern diaspora. Examples of
media products include TV-series, films, talk shows, music, games,
comics, webpages, YouTube videos, blogs and vlogs. Guiding questions
for the contributions include: To what extent are cultural media
products embedded with an ideological agenda or a blueprint for
‘ideal’ gender relations? How do audiences respond to media products’
prescriptions on gender and/or lifestyle? In what ways does consumer
culture play into the media products? We welcome submissions from
across disciplines and methodological approaches that are empirically
and theoretically grounded.

About CyberOrient

CyberOrient (http://www.cyberorient.net/) is a peer-reviewed journal
published by the American Anthropological Association, in
collaboration with the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in
Prague. The aim of the journal is to provide research and theoretical
considerations on the representation of Islam and the Middle East, the
very areas that used to be styled as an “Orient”, in cyberspace, as
well as the impact of the internet and new media in Muslim and Middle
Eastern contexts.

Submission

Articles should be submitted directly to Mona Abdel-Fadil
(mona.abdel-fadil at media.uio.no) and Vit Sisler
(vit.sisler at ff.cuni.cz). Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000
words (including references), and follow the AAA style in referencing
and citations. Upon acceptance, articles will be published online with
free access in summer 2016.

More information can be found here:
http://www.cyberorient.net/detail.do?articleId=3682


-- 
Vit Sisler, Ph.D.

Charles University in Prague
Faculty of Arts
Institute of Information Science and Librarianship
New Media Studies

http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/sisler/