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Call for Papers
Feminist Media Studies Special Issue:
Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference
Vol. 9, No. 4, December 2009
The guest editors seek submissions for “Transcultural Mediations and
Transnational Politics of Difference,” a special issue of Feminist Media
Studies slated for publication in fall 2009. At a time when feminism
readily becomes instrumentalized in the service of the military and
economic goals of the global war on terror and various commercial agendas,
it is crucial to forge polycentric transnational coalitions as alternatives
to the much-critiqued ideas of “global sisterhood” and “global feminism.”
However, such a search for alliances often forces women to grapple with
choices among incommensurable options: familial, national, and religious
commitments are often seen as obstacles to making transnational feminist
connections. We are interested in how such choices are negotiated and
articulated through the use of a range of media technologies. The
transnational reach of global television, Hollywood and Bollywood, MySpace
and YouTube allows for immediate connections, shared media experiences, and
unprecedented opportunities for theorizing and organizing across borders.
Still, the open-ended logic of such transnational media experiences also
makes them vulnerable to hijacking for the purposes of neoliberalist or
militarist nation-states and transnational corporations, in processes that
create or solidify borders among women of various ethnoracial and national
positions. To this end, we invite proposals focusing on transcultural
mediations that engage with incommensurable experiences and the politics of
authenticity on a transnational scale.
Women’s multiple engagements with global media to negotiate what appear to
be incommensurable identifications afford feminism new opportunities to
reconstitute itself as a crucial resource in critiquing transnational media
capitalism. This special issue will contribute to a sustained theorization
of the relationship between transnational feminism, incommensurabilities
that arise from new, mediated affinities, and the politics of authenticity
vis-ŕ-vis knowledge production. We are especially interested in examining
how feminists employ the tools of global media to work together across
borders in order to dismantle the category of authenticity, which reduces
migrant and transcultural identities to “native” points of cultural origin.
What are the models of media praxis generated by transnational feminisms?
Who can be a transnational feminist and what does it mean to claim such a
position? How can transcultural mediations be mobilized to work with,
rather than against, the challenges presented by encounters with
incommensurability?
In recent decades, an increasing number of media activists, artists, and
scholars from Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have
begun to reflect on women’s complex and often contradictory choices and
identifications in the face of widespread transnational political and
cultural changes, including the dissolution of the bipolar world system of
the Cold War and the accelerated globalization of the media. We seek
contributions that present cases where the incommensurability of women’s
choices and experiences has been acknowledged in media representations. We
are interested in projects that analyze convergences between the
globalization of the media and the transnationalization of feminism. We
invite work that addresses how women consume and employ a range of
audiovisual media to negotiate the challenges of transnational
incommensurability, whether these are instantiated by nationalistic or
religious loyalties, commercial cooptation, or powerful affective ties to
local identities. Besides studies that analyze feature films, documentaries
and television, we welcome artistic practices such as performance,
installation art, poster art, graffiti, radio, photography and accounts of
feminist online activism across borders and cultures.
Examples of potential topics and themes to address: Migration,
immigration, exile, refugeeism; Politics of difference; Pedagogical
practices; Sexualities across cultural divides; Conflicting religious
imperatives across borders and cultures; Cross-border media activism;
Global television format; Transnational feminist approaches to computer
games and virtual identities; World music vis-a-vis transcultural feminist
negotiations; Nation-states, NGOs and transnational feminist mediations;
Neoliberalism and consumerism; The war on terror.
The special issue editors are Anikó Imre (Assistant Professor of Critical
Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California),
Katarzyna Marciniak (Associate Professor of Transnational Studies, English
Department, Ohio University), and Áine O’Healy (Professor of Modern
Languages and Literatures, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles).
Please submit a 350-word abstract and abridged cv to [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], and [log in to unmask] by May 1, 2008.
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