APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
Commentary & Criticism Section Call for Papers
Fifty Shades of Grey and “Mommy Porn”
Since its publication in 2011, the Fifty Shades of Grey erotic trilogy has not only topped best-seller lists around the world, but also sparked a range of reactions. From those who loved the series and the emotional connection between the two main characters to those who criticized it, the series has raised a number of debates such as how healthy or “normal” are BDSM relationships; to what extent is domestic violence glamourized; and to what extent does the series take into account feminism? Since its release and its viral popularity, a series of other competing publications have also since emerged, proof that this new wave of “mommy porn” has gone mainstream. This literature is juxtaposed with and through various dialogues about the state of feminism in contemporary culture, including Kaity Roiphe’s lead story in Newsweek of April, 2012 titled ‘The Fantasy Life of Working Women’.
In light of the recent plethora of erotic publishing, and the range of debates it has sparked, this issue of Commentary and Criticism invites short papers that respond and discuss various controversies raised by Fifty Shades of Grey or other erotic fiction, through a feminist media studies framework.
Essays of 1500-2000 words are due by Friday 1st February and should be emailed to Kumi Silva at [log in to unmask] and Kaitlynn Mendes at [log in to unmask] Please do not submit manuscripts through the Feminist Media Studies website.
Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1468-0777&linktype=44
BOOKS TO REVIEW
Potential contributors can write to the co-editors, Kaitlynn Mendes ([log in to unmask]) and Kumarini Silva ([log in to unmask]) to express preliminary interest in doing a review on one of the following books. Reviews should be around 800 words and deadlines will be negotiated with the editors.
Kim, Youna (2012) Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
To what extent do women have control over their lives? How do the media intersect with imagining different lives for women? This book is concerned with the changing lives of women; the troubling signs of female individualization as intersected with everyday media culture – a new arena of anxiety for women in contemporary Asia.
Iquani, Mehita (2012) Consumer Culture and the Media, Palgrave, Basingstoke
Consumer culture is synonymous with westernised societies. How did this particular ethic come to achieve so much success? This book argues that one reason is the seductive way in which it is promoted through the media. To demonstrate this, the book provides a detailed analysis of the case study of consumer magazine covers and argues that the ways magazines are displayed and sold in retail spaces, the literal glossiness of the texts, and the intertwined messages about sexiness, commodities and self-identity communicated by them combine to create a powerful and seductive advertisement for consumer culture. These strategies are not taken for granted, but questioned and put into the context of bigger scholarly debates about 'the public', 'power' and identity in neoliberal societies.
McLaughlin, Lisa and Carter, Cynthia (2012) Current Perspectives in Feminist Media Studies, Routledge, London.
Current Perspectives in Feminist Media Studies features contributions written by a diverse group of stellar feminist scholars from around the world. Each contributor has authored a brief, thought-provoking commentary on the current status and future directions of feminist media studies. Although contributors write about numerous, discrete subjects within the field of feminist media studies, their various ideas and concerns can be merged into six broad, overlapping subject areas that allow us to gain a strong sense of the expansive contours of current feminist communication scholarship and activism which the authors have identified as generally illustrative of the field. Specifically, authors encourage feminist media scholars to engage with issues of political economy, new ICTs and cybercultures as well as digital media policy, media and identity, sexuality and sexualisation, and postfeminism. They stress that feminist media scholars must broaden and deepen our theoretical frameworks and methodologies so as to provide a better sense of the conceptual complexities of feminist media studies and empirical realities of contemporary media forms, practices and audiences.
Al-Malki, Amal, Kaufer, David, Ishizaki, Suygury & Dreher, Kira (2012) Arab Women in Arab News: Old Stereotypes and New Media, Bloomsbury, USA
Arab Women in Arab News is a book that moves beyond the typical portrayal of victimized and silenced Arab women in the western press. It instead presents a more balanced portrayal of Arab women in Arab news, actively engaged in community and family, sometimes empowered, sometimes oppressed, and sometimes experiencing and confronting both conditions at once in their daily lives. The authors' findings paint a group portrait of Arab women in Arab news as more active than passive. The authors also present individualized portraits of Arab women found in Arab print, portraits that reveal in intimate detail their lives, triumphs, and struggles. The lives of these women in the news are presented to the reader in novelesque detail.
Tasha N. Dubriwny (2012) The Vulnerable Empowered Woman: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Women’s Health. Rutgers University Press, USA
The Vulnerable Empowered Woman assesses the state of women’s healthcare today by analyzing popular media representations—television, print newspapers, websites, advertisements, blogs, and memoirs—in order to understand the ways in which breast cancer, postpartum depression, and cervical cancer are discussed in American public life. From narratives about prophylactic mastectomies to young girls receiving a vaccine for sexually transmitted disease, the representations of women’s health today form a single restrictive identity: the vulnerable empowered woman. This identity defuses feminist notions of collective empowerment and social change by drawing from both postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies. The woman is vulnerable because of her very femininity and is empowered not to change the world, but to choose from among a limited set of medical treatments.
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