[ecrea] CFP: Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier

CFP for Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier


Cinema Journal Teaching Dossiers aim to foster critical reflection on 
media studies teaching and

pedagogy and to engender serious discussion of pedagogical issues via an 
active online

platform. Please visit: www.teachingmedia.org <http://www.teachingmedia.org>


The following dossier has already been commissioned and is seeking short 
contributions.

Cinema and Media Studies amid a Global Turn to the Right

How does teaching a course in film and media studies today involve 
reckoning with

the political turn to the right? Does the ascendance of right-wing and 
rightward-leaning

electorates and elected officials in the United States, the United 
Kingdom, India, Bangladesh,

Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Australia, Austria and comparable contexts bode 
a fulfillment of

narratives of capitalism, nationalism and globalization that we have 
always presumed in our

accounts of their media histories, or are we confronting a historical 
rupture in the trajectory

of their precarious democracies? Are universities and institutions of 
higher education, under

assault as alleged bastions of left and liberal thought, implicated in 
current political and

economic shifts?


Histories of the contemporary are elusive, in part because of the 
difficulty of

abstracting the present and situating it within a longer durée. 
Accepting the challenge, this

teaching dossier aims to take the measure of our times by gathering 
reflective as well as

analytic essays on pedagogy by media scholars and practitioners teaching 
in a range of

national contexts, who are reassessing the structure, curriculum, 
strategies and assignments

of their existing and forthcoming media courses in light of contemporary 
political, social and

economic events. Depending on context, this provocation to rethink 
courses may come

from institutional shifts in policy and practice, changing student 
opinions and campus

climate, a changing sense of an instructor’s own pedagogical 
commitments, and more. As

adversarial political affiliations and opposing futures for national and 
global economies get

articulated on popular and social media platforms, this dossier asks 
media scholars to reflect

on the extent to which it is possible or necessary to continue with 
business as usual.

Alternatively, scholars may defend the ways in which it is incumbent for 
teachers to

interrogate or adapt conventional courses in film and media studies in 
response to current

political upheavals occurring on the local, national or global scale.


We seek a wide geographical spread of contributions from North America, 
Asia,

Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Russia, the Middle East and 
more, to take the

temperature of staple media studies courses amid governments that are 
aiding or tackling

anti-immigrant, anti-minority, and pro-nationalist movements in a 
variety of contexts. This

dossier is intended as a platform for scholars interested in reassessing 
familiar methods and

materials in media studies that are enabling or shutting down 
conversations in response to

broader political shifts. In other words, we are less interested in 
tracking courses on explicitly

“political” topics (such as the rise of the right), and more concerned 
with the reformulation

of conventional media studies courses in response to the political 
galvanization of issues that

have always interested media scholars, such as censorship, religious, 
national, sexual, racial or

gender identities, corporate structures, media forms and networks, and 
so forth.


Contributors can address this in any way they choose, but the dossier 
will prioritize

essays that provide specific examples of political (or once apparently 
apolitical but now

politicized) contexts, and situate them in clear ways to their 
reinvention or reframing of

standard media studies courses, such as national cinema and media; 
global media; film

history; film theory; race, gender and media; reality television; 
celebrity culture; queer theory;

social media; non-fiction film; digital media; documentary cinema, to 
name a few.


Please submit a 300-word abstract for a proposed 1300-1800 word essay 
describing

your essay topic and how it connects to the dossier theme, as well as a 
150-word teaching

biography highlighting courses taught to Priya Jaikumar 
(pjaikumar /at/ cinema.usc.edu) <mailto:(pjaikumar /at/ cinema.usc.edu)> and Kay

Dickinson (kay.dickinson /at/ concordia.ca) <mailto:(kay.dickinson /at/ concordia.ca)> 
by February 20th, 2018. We will send notifications

of acceptance by March 30th, 2018. Completed essays (including any links 
to syllabi,

assignments, media clips and strategies used in class) will be due May 
15th, 2018.


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