Call for Papers
Women and mobile intimacy in an age of social media and affective technology
Special issue of Feminist Media Studies (Dec 2012)
Edited by Larissa Hjorth & Sun Sun Lim
In the burgeoning of emotional, affective labour by the rise of ICTs
(Information and Communication Technologies) and the rise of public
and private intimacies by and through social media, what does it
mean to speak of "mobile intimacy" today? In a world aflux with
mobile, ubiquitous technologies how are various forms of mobility
(and immobility) across temporal, spatial, geographic, economic,
socio-cultural and technological differences transforming how we
experience and define intimacy? One thing remains certain - these
practices are informed by gender and cultural context.
Extant research suggests that women's relationships with mobile
technology are fraught with contradictions. As women domesticate
mobile technologies and employ their routine-altering affordances,
they seek to strike balances between aid-liability,
autonomy-dependency, contactability-intrusiveness and
intimacy-distance. The very affordances that give women the freedom
to sustain intimate, boundary-transcending relationships are the
same ones that impel women to create distances between themselves
and their significant others. Even as mobile technologies enable
women to traverse temporal, spatial and geographic barriers, women
are not always prepared to have these barriers dismantled,
particularly as they may be averse to there being too much intimacy.
With the advent of mobile technologies, the social roles ascribed to
women - of daughter, sister, mother, friend and teacher - have to be
performed through these always accessible and potentially disruptive
platforms, thus intens
ifying the burden of these responsibilities. How then do women
strategically deploy technology so that they can maintain a sense
of self, while ceding some parts of their lives to the obligations
and joys of "mobile intimacy?"
This proposed special issue seeks to unpack "mobile intimacy" - a
notion that encompasses many issues around emotions, co-presence,
diaspora, personal technologies and emerging forms of affective,
social, and emotional labour. Acknowledging that mobility can take
various permutations (technological, geographic, socio-economic to
name but a few), the papers should aim to focus upon particular
aspects of women and mobile intimacy in order to flesh out some of
the defining features of what encompasses mobile intimacy and the
associated gender performativity today.
Topics of interest in relation to women and mobile intimacy include
but are not limited to:
* Presentation of self
* Identify formation and assertion
* Technology domestication
* Issues of marginalisation
* Issues of empowerment
* Familial, social and professional relationships
* Transnational and diasporic relationships
The special issue editors are Larissa Hjorth (Senior lecturer,
School of Media and Communication, RMIT University) and Sun Sun Lim
(Associate Professor, Communications and New Media Department,
National University of Singapore).
Please submit a 350-word abstract and abridged CV to both
(larissa.hjorth /at/ rmit.edu.au)<mailto:(larissa.hjorth /at/ rmit.edu.au)> and
(sunlim /at/ nus.edu.sg)<mailto:(sunlim /at/ nus.edu.sg)> no later than May 1, 2011.
IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for abstracts 1 May 2011
Decisions to authors 15 May 2011
First drafts 1 December 2011
Decisions 15 February 2012
Second/final drafts 1 June 2012
Final proofs 1 August 2012
Issue publication 1 December 2012
AIMS and SCOPE
Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational
forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of
media and communication studies, with attention to the historical,
philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions
and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and
the arts, and new media technologies. The journal invites
contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of
disciplines and conceptual perspectives.
Feminist Media Studies offers a unique intellectual space bringing
together scholars, professionals and activists from around the world
to engage with feminist issues and debates in media and
communication. Its editorial board and contributors reflect a
commitment to the facilitation of international dialogue among
researchers, through attention to local, national and global
contexts for critical and empirical feminist media inquiry.
For guidelines on how to submit a paper to Feminist Media Studies
please visit:
www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rfms<http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rfms>
