cfp: Gender, Race, and Representation in Magazines and New Media (Cornell, 10/13)

Gender, Race, and Representation in Magazines and New Media

An interdisciplinary conference to be held October 25th-27th, 2013 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, co-sponsored by Cornell University (Africana Studies) and Syracuse University (Women’s and Gender Studies)

Conference website: http://cornellmagazinesconference.wordpress.com/

In June of 2012, scholars and magazine professionals from all over the world, and from a wide array of disciplines met at the “Women in Magazine’s” conference at Kingston University in London. “Gender, Race, and Representation in Magazines and New Media” seeks to continue the discussions of the “Women in Magazines” conference and extend them to a closer consideration of race in magazines, as well as the impact of new media and technology on magazines and raced and gendered representations. This conference hopes to broaden the scope of what is traditionally considered a magazine from the bound paper journal, to virtual magazines published digitally.

Magazines have long played a key role in the everyday lives of people of all classes, races, and genders and are a fertile space for the expression of social and political philosophies. The forms such publications have taken are staggeringly diverse—mass market publications, Xeroxed fanzines, cheap weeklies for the working class, so-called “smart set,” guides for the home economist, specialized trade publications, political mouthpieces and popular tabloids—magazines have served an astonishing array of audiences and purposes. In short, magazines are a particularly rich and potent sight for research as they so often serve as important outlets for identity formation, defining what it means to be a part of a certain community, class, or even generation through both image and text.

Now, with the increased availability of magazines to scholars through digitization initiatives, as well as the explosion of blogs, tumbler sites, and online magazines that at times enhance print versions of magazines, and at other times replace them entirely, the time is ripe for examining the role, meaning and place of magazines as sites to be mined for representations of gender and race.

Keynote Speakers include:

Kimberly Foster, founder and editor of “For Harriet” http://www.forharriet.com/

Ellen Garvey, professor in English and Women and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University. http://web.njcu.edu/faculty/egarvey/Content/default.asp

We seek papers covering any geographical region or time period and any kind of magazine/new media platform (blog, Tumblr, Pinterest, digital magazines) on topics including, but not limited to:

·         Methods and Methodology—Various approaches to using magazines as source material

·         Design and magazines, magazines and visual culture

·         Themes and conversations within magazines and new media (e.g. class, aspirations,   celebrity culture, relationships, entertainment and gossip, politics and citizenship, beauty and fashion, the home, work and career)

·         Representations of disease, health and wellness:

·         The magazine industry (e.g. editors, journalists, designers, photographers, illustrators)

·         Historical perspectives on changing technology

·         The ways that new media is changing magazine studies

·         The ways that different business models affect the politics and representation in magazines and new media?

Submission Guidelines:

At this time we are requesting abstracts that are no longer than 400 words; due by May 1, 2013 and should be submitted electronically as an attachment to cornellmagazinesconference@gmail.com.

Individual and panel proposals will be accepted. Presenters will be notified by June 1, 2013 whether their submissions have been accepted.

Abstracts will be selected based on best fit with the themes of the conference outlined in the CFP.

CFP: Magazine Panel at MSA

With the completion of the Brooker and Thacker ‘Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines’, the breadth and depth of modern periodical studies has been radically expanded. But how might we go further? How do we define a ‘modernist magazine’? What might periodicals that operated in the cultural mainstream, with a wider audience, broader content, and higher circulation, have to offer to modernist studies? Can casting a wider net aid study of the periodical marketplace?

CFP: MLA Magazine Panel 2

Vulnerable Times in the Archive: Forgotten Modernist Literary Magazines

Exciting Show Coming Up on American Little Magazines of the 1890s (NYC)

In a few weeks what looks like a great show will open at the Grolier Club.

CFP: MLA Magazine Panel

Periodicals as Tastemakers (Proposed Session for MLA 2014, Chicago)

This session seeks papers which explore the role of periodicals as tastemakers. We especially seek papers which offer new approaches to the study of periodicals, and welcome papers from a variety of fields and disciplines, especially those that look at examples of American or European periodicals as tastemakers from the 19th or 20th century.

Please send your 250 word proposal and cv to Dr. Edward Whitley and
Dr. Melissa Renn at edw204@lehigh.edu and melissa_renn@harvard.edu by February 15, 2013.

MLA Roundtable on Theorizing Periodical Studies

I’m thrilled to be chairing a roundtable discussion at MLA this year.  Organized by Matthew Phillpotts, the panel takes on the problem of theory and periodical studies.  It gathers together some of the top figures in periodical studies and is a must for anyone with an interest in periodicals, Victorian and modern print culture, or digital humanities.  Magazine Modernisms is also providing access to each of the position papers on this site in five posts following this one.

MLA Roundtable Paper 1: Towards a Theory of Periodical Studies

Ann Ardis’s paper.

Towards a Theory of Periodical Studies