CFP: Mediascape (e-journal @ UCLA) (1 Jan.)

UCLA's film, television, and digital media e-journal, Mediascape, is
now accepting submissions for the Features, Reviews, Columns and Meta
sections of its next issue. This journal, a place for articles
pertaining to visual culture, is peer-reviewed and published on an
annual table. The deadline for the next issue is the 1st of January,
2007.

Features: Taking into account the increasingly blurry line between the
many different components of the modern media landscape, the features
section takes an inter-disciplinary and inter-media approach to
scholarly discourse on the three main facets of contemporary visual
culture: film, television and digital media. As such, the section seeks
contributions from all areas within media studies, from film theory to
moving image archiving, and welcomes contributions from other academic
fields, such as history, literature, music, economics, political
science, etc., as well as from media practitioners outside of academia
altogether. The guiding principle uniting these contributions will be
the perspectives, however disparate, that they offer on the mediascape
that is common to all of us as media scholars, practitioners and
consumers.

Submissions for the features section need not address the larger issues
described above, so long as they offer a unique perspective on film,
television, digital media, or any other aspect of moving image culture,
preferably encompassing more than one. Though articles should be of a
high level of scholarly rigor, the journal will not be read exclusively
by media scholars. Writing should therefore be readable enough to be
enjoyed by those outside of the field of media studies and indeed
outside of the academy altogether.

To submit a feature article, please email a short bio and a copy of
your manuscript in Word format to erinhill@ucla.edu. For the purposes
of confidentiality during the double blind peer review, please include
both your bio and your personal contact information in the accompanying
email only, rather than in the word document. Feature submissions
should range from between 15 to 25 manuscript pages. Rarely, exceptions
will be made with regard to length in either direction; however, it is
strongly recommended that the author stay within the 15-25 page range.

Reviews: Mainstream film, television and digital media reviewing
tends to be constrained by an industry model that requires writers to
gain access to the objects of their review through publicity agents,
press kits and press screenings, leading to a homogeneity of
perspectives, and limiting reviews to objects that are newly available
for purchase--in effect reducing these reviews to simple announcements
of the latest releases. This model also limits reviews to the
film/TV/digital media text, which essentially gives industrial and
business factors a free pass. For these reasons, Mediascape's reviews
section calls for reviews written outside of the industry model
described above, and examining not only film, television and digital
media texts, but also the institutions and apparatuses that shape the
way we as consumers, fans, and academics make meaning of them, such as
festivals, books, award shows, restorations, fan magazines,
conferences, DVDs, press kits, movie theaters, peer-to-peer
technologies, soundtracks, televisions, advertising, reviews, websites,
retailers, or any combination of the above.

The reviews section also seeks to become a forum for the international
exchange of ideas and perspectives, in order to break from the local or
national centrism of conventional review journalism. However, there is
no pretension of possessing a "global" viewpoint. Instead, contributors
should bring to the forum their own cultural locatedness in hopes of
contributing to a larger, international exchange of ideas. In pursuit
of a more complete comprehension of global film circulation and
reception, Mediascape's review section is also interested in publishing
foreign language reviews in English and vice versa. Please direct
reviews section questions, proposals, and submissions to
brianhu@ucla.edu.

Reviews should be a minimum of 2,500 words, although exceptions may be
granted. There is no maximum word limit, provided work is readable,
structured, and visually appealing in the online format.

Columns: This issue's columns section is seeking for short papers
(800-1500 words) on the dividing and converging nature of the
hardware/software split. This can be on anything from the relationship
between Microsoft and Intel, to the solid state memory of the Rosetta
Stone, to the DVR and the iTV, to the tower of Babel, to the emergence
of cloudware. All perspectives welcome, as long as they are current,
timeless, and exuberant. Non-traditional New Media-esque "essays" are
also welcome and will be greatly appreciated. Please submit columns and
inquiries to (beatnikd@ucla.edu) by January 1, 2007.

Meta: Recent scholarship in media studies acknowledges a change in the
objects of our study with the digital revolution: a convergence of
media at both the formal and industrial organizational levels. As
films are more often screened on television sets--whether through cable
television, VHS, DVD, or On Demand services--than exhibited in theaters,
and as both films and television shows are increasingly viewed
streaming through computer monitors or mobile accessories of varying
sizes and capacities, how do the theoretical tools and terms of media
studies apply or simply fail to apply to these new exhibition venues
and the industrial strategies developed to cater to them?

While our contemporary object of study may have arguably converged, the
theoretical bodies and borders within our discipline do not yet seem as
porous. Is it necessary to conceive of the study of digital media
forms, despite technologically-specific concerns, as a trajectory
continuing and morphing, rather than breaking, from the media
scholarship that has come before it? How do we integrate, rather than
antagonize, the insights various schools of thought within cinema,
television, and digital media studies individually bring to the media
studies table? Rather than reiterate the call for new terms and
concepts specific to digital media, this edition of the meta section
seeks to challenge scholars to rethink and refurbish important terms
and concepts from "media studies past" to put today's mediascape in
perspective. Hopefully this will challenge us to think beyond a model
of scholarship built solely on notions of "progress" ("that was then,
this is now"), and perhaps inspire us to further converge theories to
suit a converged object of study.

Please write a brief position paper (2000-3500 words) responding to the
questions posed above and engaging in the following experiment:
Re-appropriate one term or concept from media studies scholarship
produced prior to 1990. Determine how and if this term or concept is
viable or useful when used to describe digital media. Feel free to
suggest how a rearticulation or retrofitting of the term or concept
would be necessary. Please submit Meta papers to Candace Moore
(candacem@ucla.edu) by January 1, 2007.

General Guidelines:
All submissions should follow MLA Style guidelines and should employ
the parenthetical, in-text method of source citation and comply with
the following formatting requirements:
1.) No cover page, with title instead centered at the top of the first
page of the article
2.) Language of document set to English
3.) Double spaced paragraphs in 12 point font
4.) Margins: top 1" left 1" right 1" bottom 1.25" to accommodate footer
5.) Endnotes rather than footnotes
6.) Images correctly sized outside of word (sizing them in word slows
web editing process) and then placed within the word document's layout
where they should appear at publication

Because of the peer review and editorial processes of the journal's
different sections, it may take as long as eight weeks for decisions on
submissions to reach the writers.

General email inquiries can also be sent to erinhill@ucla.edu.