[Forwarded from the Cultural Studies List ... John.]
From: Gerard Greenway [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2000 4:14 AM
To: CULTSTUD-L: A listserv devoted to Cultural Studies
Subject: [cultstud-l] CfP: Journal of Mundane Behaviour
Dear friends of Journal of Mundane Behavior:
This is just a reminder notice about our upcoming special issue,
Media/Mundania, to be published in February 2001. We originally posted the
deadline for submissions as Nov 1/2000, but have extended it to December
15/2000. The entire CFP is listed below; please pass it along to any
interested parties.
Also, our October issue (JMB 1.3) is coming up soon - it'll be released on
Oct 25/2000 at 2pm PDT (10pm GMT). The table of contents will be sent out
soon.
Many thanks, as ever, for your continued interest in JMB.
Scott Schaffer
Managing Editor
Journal of Mundane Behavior
http://www.mundanebehavior.org/
Call for Papers:
Special Issue of Journal of Mundane Behavior:
Media/Mundania (JMB 2.1, February 2001)
Most scholarly treatments of the media as well as public discussions about
the media tend to focus on the unusual and exotic aspects of our visual
and aural entertainment experiences. The human desensitization depicted in
action-adventure movies; the mayhem imaged in heavy metal, gothic, and rap
music; the gore produced in increasingly vivid video games; the spurious
realism of certain television shows and even news programs all these
aspects of our mediated experience are criticized for their possible impacts
on children and adults, are analyzed for their portrayals of contemporary
culture, and are scrutinized for data to justify or delegitimate
governmental control over the media.
At Journal of Mundane Behavior, we, the editors, see another aspect to the
media, one that is rarely noted - the relationship between the media and our
everyday lives, "mundania". If media present narratives by which we
understand our world, then we gain a better understanding of ourselves by
understanding the ways in which the media and the ordinary interact. We
presume that the mundane serves as the basis for the creation of media
contents, provides the groundwork by which the products of media are
understood and appreciated, and that, in turn, the mundane is crucially
shaped by these media products.
Some media products do take the mundane into account, though not without the
extra-ordinary context: Programs like The Real World, Survivor, and Big
Brother do, to some extent, show us the routine lives of people placed in
unrealistic and surrealistic circumstances. Films such as Dinner with Andri
and A Simple Plan highlight the ordinary aspect of the characters lives.
But these media products are noteworthy more for their explicit employment
of the ordinary to magnify a sense of drama and intrigue than to expose the
essence and function of mundania itself.
We are also concerned with the production of the media the process by
which these films, TV shows, newspapers, and musical creations are made is
itself essentially a mundane one: musicians, films and TV shows require
countless meetings, numerous rewrites and takes to "get it right" and rely
upon continuity specialists to make sure that the "ordinary" aspects of the
scene do not get in the way of the drama presented; and journalists often
have to go through drudgery in order to get "the big scoop."
Practitioners, in other words, also represent for us an integral aspect of
the relationship between the media and mundania.
The February 2001 (JMB 2.1) Journal of Mundane Behavior will be an extended
special issue devoted to the exploration of the reciprocal relationships
between the media and the mundane world. We invite papers from scholars,
members of the informed public, and professionals who work in the various
realms of the media (TV, film, news, music, and the "new media" of the
Internet).
Possible topics (though the issue is by no means limited to these) include:
How the various products of the media are used by consumers in their
everyday lives in the definition and experience of the "fascinating" (or
"media-worthy") in their lives, in popular consciousness of media as a
constitutive feature of ordinary life, in learning how to play particular
roles in society (i.e., member of family, age group or profession) through
the media, and in the use of media to comprehend meaning in our everyday
lives;
How the products of the media utilize aspects of "ordinary life" as the
basis for the presentation of their content how programming and
commercials on TV and commercial films, song lyrics, radio, websites, etc.,
employ aspects of everyday life, how these media products impact viewer,
movie-goer, listener, consumer, voter, or websurfer behavior;
How everyday interactions go into the production of the media the
professional lives, experiences and relationships of producers, directors,
actors, musicians, technicians, journalists, TV personalities; the political
and social aspects of how some media products are chosen for creation, and
the impact of these decisional processes on the consuming audience;
How it is that the mundane foundations of media in everyday life have been
relatively neglected as a central topic of discourse;
Textual analyses of aspects of the media and their reflexive relationships
to the construction of our everyday lives;
Other topics regarding the relationship of the media and mundania.
Media/Mundania will be released in late February 2001 as JMB 2.1. Papers are
due to the Issue Editor, Myron Orleans ([log in to unmask]), by December
15/2000. Submission guidelines and other information are available on the
JMB web site (http://www.mundanebehavior.org/). Papers should be sent to Dr.
Orleans as an attachment to an e-mail, or in 3 1/2" floppy disk format. Due
to the electronic nature of Journal of Mundane Behavior, articles sent
solely in hard copy paper format cannot be accepted.
Address queries, comments, and paper proposals to: Myron Orleans, Professor
of Sociology, California State University-Fullerton, and Co-Editor, JMB.
(E-mail preferred: [log in to unmask])
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