Tag: outside the profession

Call for Participation: Visual Culture Papers at the 2026 American Studies Association Conference

Call for Participation:
Visual Culture Papers at the 2026 American Studies Association October 22-25, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois

The Visual Culture Caucus (http://www.theasa.net/caucus_visual/) of the American Studies Association (ASA) promotes the participation of visual culture scholars at the ASA annual meeting. Within the theme “Improvisation” we are looking for papers and panels that investigate or interrogate visual culture in its many forms. We link potential panelists with shared interests in visual culture topics to encourage the formation of strong visual culture-related panels. We aim to host three proposed sessions, with one of these explicitly about the politics of racial representation. If you, your colleagues, or graduate students are considering proposals for the conference, please email us your panel idea or paper abstract and we will work to connect you with similar panelists and papers. We are also happy to offer suggestions on complete panel proposals. Topics might include a variety of visual practices outside of the art world as well as those that seek to transform what is possible within the privileged space of the gallery, creative films, filmmaking, and television; the Internet and social media; methods of studying visual culture; and the instruction of visual culture across various disciplines and cultural contexts.

Please read about each of the submission options below and, if interested, send the materials requested to both co-chairs of the Visual Culture Caucus, Rebecca Kumar (rebecca.kumar@spelman.edu) and Carmen Merport Quiñones (cmerport@oberlin.edu) by February 15, 2026. Please put either “ASA proposal for scholarly paper/panel” or “ASA proposal politics of racial representation roundtable ” in the subject line. If you are particularly interested in helping locate other potential participants in a panel, please reach out as soon as possible.

The VCC will provide its decision on sponsored panels and roundtable participants by February 25. Panelists will then be responsible for following all posted instructions and for submitting their own panels or papers in proper ASA format to the ASA by the ASA deadline (March 1). For more ASA instructions on proposal submission, see: https://www.theasa.net/node/5681

Visual Culture Caucus Panel Sessions:

The “Improvisation” theme of this year’s conference asks us to consider “the ruins of what has been broken” while still “dar[ing] to imagine what might be built next.” It focuses on collaboration, experimentation, and creativity in light of the intersecting catastrophes of the present, on the urgent need for transformation. We hope to form two panels:

1. The Visual Culture Caucus invites proposals for conference papers/panels, especially from emerging scholars, that address this wide-ranging conference theme through analysis of visual practices that reflect past, present, and even future forms of creative interventions responding to injustice and social crisis. Please submit a paper abstract (maximum of 500 words per abstract), a 350-word (or less) biographical statement, and an abbreviated CV.

Some possible themes include, but are not limited to: 

-Resistant and/or reparative mass cultural representation
-Speculative and futurist practice in the margins
-Social change through social media
-Alternative and community print and broadcasting media
-Collaboration and collective artistry
-Visuality and vision in sacred spaces
-Visual representations of activists and activism
-Creative approaches to counter-surveillance
 

2. The VCC also invites proposals for conference papers/panels, especially from emerging scholars, that address the conference theme with an eye toward film and television. Not only are we seeking work delineating the contours of the current visual order but we also welcome submissions on the material conditions/limitations/possibilities of visual cultural production. 

3. Visual Culture Caucus – Politics of Racial Representation Roundtable: The VCC welcomes brief proposals (including individual submissions) for participation in a roundtable on visual culture centered on the politics of racial representation, broadly speaking. Topics might include classroom methods, exhibitions, film festivals, televisual culture, museum culture, social media, news media, and AI. We particularly welcome work that thinks about how visual culture is documenting and contesting our political moment. We also welcome alternative format presentations, i.e. show-and-tell or visual play. The session will feature short presentations by participants followed by a moderated discussion. Please submit a proposal or paper abstract (max 500 words), a 350-word (or less) biographical statement, and an abbreviated CV.

Contact Information

Carmen Merport Quiñones

Contact Email

cmerport@oberlin.edu

URL

https://www.theasa.net/communities/caucuses/visual-culture-caucus

CFP: Bedroom Journalists? Zines and Early Player Cultures

Bedroom Journalists? Zines and Early Player Cultures.

edited by Arno Görgen and Aurelia Brandenburg

In the 1980s and 1990s, for many computer game enthusiasts, the dream of a job in the games industry often began in their bedrooms: some created their first games on the C64 or Atari, while others wanted to write about games and literally put together their own gaming magazines. However, not much is known about these so-called zines.

Compared to other areas of the history of games and gaming, there has been relatively little research on the histories of print publications as part of cultural histories of gaming cultures in general. There are exceptions to this rule, however, although these exceptions tend to focus on the history of commercial gaming magazines and their contents. The most notable example for this is Graeme Kirkpatrick’s book (2015) who investigated the emergence of UK gaming magazines, but especially for magazines in English, there also have been other studies such as Fisher (2015), Summers and Miller (2007, 2014), Cote (2018) or Schmidt et al. (2020) that used gaming magazines as a vehicle to analyse representations of gender and in a similar vein, scholars such as Condis and Morrissette (2023) or Laabs (2023) have also been investigating the famously sexist print ads these magazines used to publish especially in the 1990s and 2000s. Meanwhile, approaches that either focus on the production side of these magazines or try to investigate the fringes of the professional fields these magazines established, are far rarer. Graeme Kirkpatrick touches upon this issue due to his timeframe starting in the early 1980s and others, such as Trammel (2023) tend to brush them as well when incorporating sources such as newsletters into their research. There also are some highly localized studies such as Metzmacher’s (2017) dissertation on early German computer magazines that regards these magazines as actors in early networks of computer hobbyists and thus, in part also early gaming enthusiasts.

This special issue aims at this gap by deliberately focusing on the DIY aspect both of early professional gaming magazines same as publications that can be regarded as zines in a more traditional sense such as fanzines, club newsletters, and more. By taking up the term “bedroom coders” (Swalwell 2021, 70) – a diminutive term for hobbyist game developers in the 1980s – and translating it into “bedroom journalists,” we also would like to point out that this early gaming culture in particular was characterized by a complex lay DIY culture that, with the possibilities of the first home personal computers at hand allowed not only for developing games at home, but also to write about games and (more or less) successfully distribute the publications.

We seek to bring together scholars interested in the role of DIY fanzines in early player cultures. This includes perspectives from media history, sociology, anthropology, media studies, art and design history, and/or media aesthetics. We also particularly welcome interdisciplinary perspectives that combine methods from cultural history, fan studies, game studies, and archival research. We invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions and themes:

  • Historical significance: What role did fanzines play in the emergence of player communities and player cultures before the mainstreaming of digital networks? How are DIY cultures in games journalism and games development interwoven?
  • Material and aesthetic practices: How were fanzines produced, circulated, and preserved, and what can their materiality tell us about grassroots cultural production of games journalism?
  • Knowledge sharing and expertise: How did fanzines serve as platforms for community events, technical advice, or critical debate, and how did they shape perceptions of expertise within player cultures?
  • Identity and community formation: In what ways did fanzines contribute to the construction of collective identities and player communities, whether through gendered perspectives, subcultural affiliations, interactions with their readers, or political engagement?
  • Comparative and cross-cultural approaches: How did fanzine practices vary across regions, platforms, or gaming genres, and what can these differences reveal about the global diversity of early player cultures?
  • Preservation and memory: What challenges and opportunities exist for archiving and studying these fragile artifacts today?

Abstracts and Deadline

For all contributions, please submit an abstract (300-500 words) with a title and a short biography (100-150 words) for each author until 01.06.2026 to arno.goergen@hkb.bfh.ch or aurelia.brandenburg@hkb.bfh.ch.

Timeline

  • Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15.06.2026
  • Full text submission by authors to the guest editors: 15.12.2026
  • Publication: Summer 2027

Submission Details

Full articles should be 5.000-10.000 words in length and will be peer-reviewed. We also encourage other contributions such as interviews or research reports that may not fit the typical format of a research article if they fit the scope of the Special Issue. For further information on possible formats and their different editorial processes, see gamevironments’ submission guidelines.

All submitted manuscripts also need to conform to the journal’s stylesheet, which can be found here.

References

Condis, Megan, and Jess Morrissette. ‘Dudes, Boobs, and GameCubes: Video Game Advertising Enters Adolescence’. Media, Culture & Society 45, no. 6 (2023): 1285–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231159533.

Cote, Amanda C. ‘Writing “Gamers”: The Gendered Construction of Gamer Identity in Nintendo Power (1994–1999)’. Games and Culture 13, no. 5 (2018): 479–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015624742.

Fisher, Howard D. ‘Sexy, Dangerous—and Ignored: An In-Depth Review of the Representation of Women in Select Video Game Magazines’. Games and Culture 10, no. 6 (2015): 551–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014566234.

Kirkpatrick, Graeme. The Formation of Gaming Culture: UK Gaming Magazines, 1981-1995. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305107.

Laabs, Laura. ‘»Nintendo What Nintendon’t«: Sexualisierte Konsolenwerbung, die Maskulinität des Gamers und #Gamergate’. In Politiken des (digitalen) Spiels: transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Arno Görgen and Tobias Unterhuber, vol. 4. Game Studies. Transcript Verlag, 2023. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467909-005.

Metzmacher, Marina. Das Papier der digitalen Welt. Computerzeitschriften als „Akteure“ im Netzwerk von (jugendlichen) Nutzern, Hardware und Software 1980-1995. RWTH Aachen University, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18154/RWTH-2017-09791.

Miller, Monica K., and Alicia Summers. ‘Gender Differences in Video Game Characters’ Roles, Appearances, and Attire as Portrayed in Video Game Magazines’. Sex Roles 57, nos 9–10 (2007): 733–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9307-0.

Schmidt, Thomas, Isabella Engl, Juliane Herzog, and Lisa Judisch. Towards an Analysis of Gender in Video Game Culture: Exploring Gender Specific Vocabulary in Video Game Magazines. Universität Regensburg, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5283/EPUB.49297.

Summers, Alicia, and Monica K. Miller. ‘From Damsels in Distress to Sexy Superheroes: How the Portrayal of Sexism in Video Game Magazines Has Changed in the Last Twenty Years’. Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 6 (2014): 1028–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.882371.

Swalwell, Melanie. Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality. Game Histories. The MIT Press, 2021.

Trammell, Aaron. The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race, and Geek Culture. New York University Press, 2023.

Contact Email

arno.goergen@hkb.bfh.ch

URL

https://journals.suub.uni-bremen.de/index.php/gamevironments/openquests

CFP: “Sound Recordings” – Journal Sources. Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies

We are pleased to announce a call for papers (in French, English, and Portuguese) for a special issue on the theme: “Sound recordings,” coordinated by Charlotte Grabli (CNRS, Centre d’histoire sociale des mondes contemporains) and Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (CNRS, Institut des mondes africains), to be published in the journal Sources. Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies

This issue of Sources ambitions to bring together multiple disciplinary perspectives on one or more sound sources produced in Africa. Whether issued from old collections or produced today, audio materials are attracting growing interest in African studies, particularly thanks to the promotion by institutions, researchers, activists and artists of forgotten or difficult-to-access sound and audiovisual collections. Recorded since the late 19th century, these sound objects are extremely diverse: linguistic material, songs and music, field recordings, radio archives, commercial records, film soundtracks, recordings of trials, political speeches, sermons, cassette letters, digital voicemails, etc. Their circulation has increased with the possibilities for duplication offered by cassette technology, and even more so with the digital revolution. Audio recording is also often one of the tools available to social science researchers, and sound objects have become part of the range of objects collected during fieldwork. However, the specificities of the sonic nature of these materials are rarely questioned. Particularly in the case of African and diasporic contexts, it is important to develop methods of listening and analysing that can grasp the multidimensional nature of recordings, the power relations and forms of agency that mark the processes of production, circulation and archiving.

The call is available in English: https://journals.openedition.org/sources/4217

In French: https://journals.openedition.org/sources/4206 

In Portuguese: http://journals.openedition.org/sources/4229 

Proposals should be sent before February 10, 2026 to the following addresses: charlotte.grabli@cnrs.fr, mbodj@cnrs.fr, sources@services.cnrs.fr 

Please feel free to share this call for papers in your newsletters, on your websites, and on social media.

Contact Information

Charlotte Grabli, CNRS, Centre d’histoire sociale des mondes contemporains
charlotte.grabli@cnrs.fr

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, CNRS, Institut des mondes africains
mbodj@cnrs.fr

Contact Email
sources@services.cnrs.fr

URL

https://journals.openedition.org/sources/4217

CFP: Text, Space, Memory: Italians Rewriting the Global and U.S. Souths

CfP for the panel ‘Text, Space, Memory: Italians Rewriting the Global and U.S. Souths’ at the Biennial Conference of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature ‘Building Spaces of Freedom’ (March 28-31, 2026 – Fisk University, Nashville, TN)

This panel investigates how Italian transnational communities, across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have produced, negotiated and monumentalized cultural identity through literary texts, material practices and spatial imaginaries. Bringing together approaches from Italian studies, ethnic studies, literary analysis, spatial theory and material culture, the panel considers how Italian migrants in the Global and U.S. Souths used both texts and objects to articulate belonging, negotiate racial hierarchies and inscribe themselves into local landscapes.

We invite papers that explore how identity is shaped, contested, and remembered through:

1. Literature, Journalism, and Migrant Voices

  • narrative and poetic representations of Italian migration and settlement;
  • ethnic print cultures (e.g., community newspapers, serialized fiction, civic writing, public rhetoric);
  • writers, editors, grassroots intellectuals and cultural mediators who shaped local identities

2. Spatiality, Modernity and the Italian Imagination

  • spatial representations of modernity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature or visual culture;
  • literary constructions of southern geographies (Mediterranean, Latin American and U.S. Souths);
  • the role of space in negotiating whiteness, marginality, or social mobility.

3. Material Culture, Craft, and Memorial Practices

  • Italian American memorialization practices (monuments, plaques, markers, commemorative objects);
  • Italian craft, artistic labor, and material expertise in the creation of southern monuments:
  • intersections between artisanal traditions, racial identity, and cultural memory.

4. Archives, Public History and Digital Humanities

  • community archives, material or textual;
  • digital approaches to migrant storytelling, spatial mapping or narrative circulation;
  • public-facing practices that connect literature, objects and community memory.

We welcome contributions from literary studies, Italian studies, ethnic studies, art history, spatial humanities, history and digital humanities. Papers addressing understudied archives, multilingual sources, or intersectional methodologies are especially encouraged.

Please submit a 250–300 word abstract and a brief bio (50–75 words) to the panel organizers, Matteo Brera (University of Padova / Seton Hall University) and Alessia Martini (Sewanee – The University of the South) at matteo.brera@unipd.it and almartin@sewanee.edu by December 12, 2025.

Contact Information

Dr Matteo Brera
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Research Fellow
Università degli Studi di Padova / Seton Hall University
✉️ matteo.brera@unipd.it | matteo.brera@shu.edu
📞 +1 (934) 500-3088
🌐 http://www.msca-dashow.com

Contact Email

matteo.brera@unipd.it

URL

https://www.msca-dashow.com/news/sssl2026

CFP: “An International Workshop on Films and Ethnography”

An International Workshop on  Films and Ethnography

January 7-10, 2026

Films and ethnography go back a long way. Ethnographers of the past to the visual anthropologists of the present have turned to film and video as both research tools and presentation medium. They have used the camera to capture fieldwork, deployed cinematic techniques to convey ethnographic insights, and made films and documentaries to challenge the mainstream textual dominance in the dissemination of their research in form of journal articles and monographs. Similarly, many feature films adopt ethnographic traits. This includes immersive attention to everyday life, long observational takes, reflexive narration, or even hybridity between fiction and documentary. Such films become sites for contemplating the human condition much like ethnographic research. 

The coming together of film and ethnography throws up a number of theoretical and epistemological challenges as well and the relationship between the two, although productive, is not without some tension. Issues of representation (who speaks, whose voice is heard, or who holds the camera), authorship and power, aesthetic values versus analytic rigor, the ethnographic gaze on “the Other” and the cinematic gaze on ethnography, the question of objectivity vs subjectivity, the boundary between documentary and fiction, the sensory turn and the limits of textuality are only some examples of this rich and overdetermined relationship. Neither ethnography nor filmmaking can claim neutrality and therefore ‘film in and as ethnography’ and ‘ethnography in and as films’ are also shot through by the dialectics of subjectivities of the researcher-filmmaker. In other words, the point of intersection of film and ethnography is also the site of production of subjectivities which can have radical (or its opposite) consequences politically and culturally. 

This workshop invites contributions from postgraduate students, doctoral scholars, and early career researchers who either want to include films as a method in their research or are already doing it to share their proposals and experiences. We also invite filmmakers who have framed their filmmaking ethnographically to share their work at the workshop. We aim to open a space for reflection on the potentials and tensions of the “ethnographic gaze” in film, as well as the capacity of film to interrogate, complicate or even invert that gaze. Some of the indicative but not exhaustive sub‑themes of the workshop are listed below: 

  1. Ethnographic sensibility in feature film.
  2. Ethnographers as filmmakers. 
  3. Documentary vs textual dissemination of ethnographic research. 
  4. Sensory ethnography and the audiovisual turn.
  5. Film, ethnography, and Disability Studies.
  6. Ethics, reflexivity and collaboration.
  7. Film as critique of ethnographic knowledge.
  8. Ethnography as critique of cinema.
  9. Decolonial, Indigenous and diasporic contexts.
  10. New media, digital, VR and film‑ethnographic futures.
  11. Epistemological and theoretical reflections.
  12. Questions of method. 

This workshop will also have two Masterclass by documentary filmmakers and a space for screening films based on ethnographic research of the participants. 

Confirmed Speakers:

Rashmi Devi Sawhney, Associate Program Head of Film and New Media; Associate Arts Professor of Film and New Media, New York University Abu Dhabi

Sreemoyee Singh, Documentary Filmmaker (And, Towards Happy Alleys 2023)

Submission Guidelines:

  1. Abstract of around 500-1000 words (with title and keywords) for original and unpublished papers, research proposals, work-in-progress (articles, essays, etc.). These will be workshopped with experts at the event to make it publishable. Please include a short bio-note of around 200 words.
  2. For documentary based on ethnographic research, a synopsis of around 500-1000 words. Please include a short bio-note of around 200 words.

Note: Selected papers will be published in Peter Lang’s CUECS Series on Interdisciplinary Humanities in the 21st Century 

Please send your abstract/synopsis to csc@christuniversity.in

Important Dates and Registration Fee:

Registration fee: INR 3000 (for Indian and non-OECD countries’ participants)/USD 70 (for OECD countries’ participants)

Last date to submit abstract/synopsis: December 10, 2025

Intimation of Selection: December 15, 2025

Payment of Registration Fee: December 20, 2025

Submission of draft (3000-5000 words): January 05, 2026

Conveners:

Mithilesh Kumar, Assistant Professor, CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

V. Nishant, Assistant Professor, CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

Kailash Koushik, Assistant Professor, CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

Prachi Pinglay, Professor of Practice, CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

Contact Information

csc@christuniversity.in 

Contact Email

csc@christuniversity.in

CFP: Ozarks Studies Association Meeting

The Ozarks Studies Association (OSA) invites presentations, papers, and posters for its fifth annual meeting in Springfield, Missouri on April 3, 2026. Presentations from across the disciplines on broad array of issues related to any aspect of Ozarks life throughout Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas are invited. 

We invite proposals 

  • of complete panels (with or without a chair) or individual papers
  • by scholars, archivists, museum staff, independent scholars, and graduate students
  • in the fields of anthropology, archelogy, biology, environmental studies, engineering, geography, geology, history, literature, museum design, pedagogy, preservation, urban studies, zoology, etc.

To be considered, submit

  • an abstract 
  • a two-page CV
  • label it as paper or poster

To Dr. Jared Phillips at jmp006@uark.edu. 

All materials must be received by January 16th, 2026. Notifications will be made by February 6th, 2026. 

If you would be willing to chair a panel, submit a two-page CV Dr. Jared Phillips by March 6th, 2026.

All inquiries should be sent to Dr. Jared Phillips at jmp006@uark.edu. 

Contact Information

Jared Phillips

President, Ozarks Studies Association

Department of History

University of Arkansas

Contact Email

jmp006@uark.edu

URL

https://www.ozarks-studies-assoc.com/about-6

CFP: Istanbul: Cultural Pasts – Urban Futures

Full call and more information here. Abstracts due Dec. 15, 2025.

Definitions of heritages, cultural pasts and urban futures are intrinsically linked. They cross disciplines, geographies and times. They can be complex, contradictory and often contested. As a result, when we think about heritage we must think holistically. UNESCO is explicit about this. Heritage is related to place and the traditions of its peoples. The future of a city is connected to the history on which it was built. Questions of contemporary culture are always aligned with their past, and their future. In this context, heritage, culture and place are all entwined.

To understand this interconnection requires historical knowledge, social context and an awareness of art and design, whether that be related to a community narrative or a global movement. It needs to be viewed through artworks, buildings, cities and objects, both ‘universal’ examples of architecture and sculpture, and more understated design vernaculars and local crafts. It needs to be seen as something ‘intangible’ – a sense of place and identity or the meaning ascribed to a city, neighborhood or local artwork. In short, it needs to be examined across disciplinary boundaries and scales.

Seeking to engage with the varied ways in which we understand heritage, cultural pasts and urban futures then, this conference asks how we interpret these themes locally, regionally and internationally. It does so while seeing the host city, Istanbul, as a place that typifies the varied questions at play.

Historically seen as the meeting point of Europe and Asia, Istanbul was an imperial capital for the Byzantine, Roman and Ottoman Empires. One of the most visited cities in the world, it was European Capital of Culture in 2010. With the centre of the city classified a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right, it boasts iconic examples of both art and architecture, the Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar being just two of the most famous examples. Home to cutting edge design, digital art, modern architecture and music, it is seen as a centre of contemporary culture.

Located in this iconic setting, the Cultural Pasts – Urban Futures conference is expressly international and welcomes perspectives from across a range of fields: the humanities and the social sciences; architecture, urban planning and landscapes; heritage studies and design, and more. As such, it is open to local, regional and international discussions of art historical research, building renovation projects, digital art and heritage, anthropological study and socio-cultural critiques – past, present and future….

Reflecting the interests of Işık University and AMPS, presentations will be loosely organized around several strands, including but not limited to:

Architecture & Design – papers on the diversity of research in the fields of architectural, landscape, urban planning and design theory | Digital Heritage – questions and cases studies of technologies and medias such as film, laser scanning, VR and data mapping in the heritage sector | Socio-Cultural Studies – critiques of the socio-cultural issues that comes into play when thinking about culture, place and heritage | Art History – discussions on art historical projects, theories and practices internationally | Historical Conservation– considerations on sites of heritage, whether from the fields of archaeology, museology & conservation, or social questions of heritage led gentrification or regeneration | Art & Design – examinations of how contemporary artists, architects, and designers engage with context and heritage.

CFP: Librarians to Write About Digital Tools for IT (Information Today) Magazine

Information Today (IT) magazine (https://www.infotoday.com/it/) is seeking feature article writers for its Insights on Content: Making Sense of the Digital Maze section. If you’re a library worker who engages with digital tools and/or e-resources and you have knowledge you’d like to share, please reach out to editor in chief Brandi Scardilli (bscardilli@infotoday.com) with your topic idea(s). You can propose one article or multiple. Articles will appear in the quarterly issues of 2026, and they should be a maximum of 800 words. IT pays $200 per article.

—

Brandi Scardilli
she/her | Muck Rack
Editor in Chief, Computers in Libraries
Editor in Chief, Information Today
Editor in Chief, ITI NewsBreaks, ITI NewsLink
Contributor, Streaming Media
Ebook Coordinator, ITI/Plexus