[Commlist] CFP New Genre Studies Anthology

CFP: NEW GENRE STUDIES(ANTHOLOGY)
Jonathan Cohn, Jennifer Moorman, Samantha Noelle Sheppard 
<mailto:(sheppard /at/ cornell.edu)>
Abstracts/Proposals (300 words) due August 1st
Chapters (no longer than 6000 words) due Feb 1st
Send abstracts and questions to (cohn /at/ ualberta.ca) <mailto:(cohn /at/ ualberta.ca)>

Genre profoundly shape the pleasures and disappointments of media 
spectatorship. Whether watching a film, binging a series, playing a 
game, surfing the web, or scrolling through social networks, genre 
shapes our expectations.

Yet, genre has not been a central concern of media studies since the 
1980s and the early scholarship of the likes of Rick Altman, Thomas 
Cripps, Carol Clover, Jane Feuer, Vivian Sobchack and Linda Williams.  
In some areas of media studies (most notably video games and new media), 
serious discussions of genre are almost non-existent.  Where it is 
present, it is--with some important exceptions--typically eurocentric.  
Media and genre are often opposed to one another as two discrete ways of 
categorization and the field has largely sided with media as the more 
helpful, productive, and critical of the two.  Since the 80s, media 
studies has built itself up by tearing genre studies down.

In fetishizing media, our field has overlooked the possibility that 
often when we say ‘media’, we really mean ‘genre.’  How many arguments 
over whether or not TV as a medium turns you into a ‘couch potato,’  the 
Internet makes you active, or VR makes you empathetic could be quickly 
settled if framed as an effect of particular genres instead? Or consider 
Lev Manovich’s canonical The Language of New Media, which seeks to point 
out the similarities between new media and the montage heavy city 
symphony, Man With a Movie Camera. He ends up having to ignore vast 
swaths of new media in order to make his comparison work: insodoing, new 
media becomes a genre.

But genre may right now be a far more helpful heuristic for the 
questions many of us currently ask.  The way we engage with a piece may 
have far more to do with its genre than medium.  The way we consider and 
judge a piece’s depictions of our cultural, economic, and political 
reality are also shaped first and foremost by genre.  While discourses 
around media are typically interested in defining clear distinctions 
between media, genre is valued for being a far looser form of 
categorization that privileges connections, overlaps, and hybridity. 
Genre is also transmedial and can readily help to show the connections 
between media. These are just a few of the avenues that a more fulsome 
discussion of genre could lead us down.

Starting from these provocations, we seek to revitalize discussions of 
genre in media studies by providing a showcase for some of the most 
exciting work in the area. In this anthology, we ask the question of 
whether organizing our field around media was a mistake or not.  Would 
we have been able to better confront and consider the many central 
debates and dead ends of media studies over the last three decades if we 
had started by centering on genre rather than media, or at least setting 
them up as equals.  What other potential difficulties and problems may 
have arisen instead? New media had its  moment; now it’s time to 
consider what new genres can do.

We are especially seeking papers on the following or similar topics:

  *

    New Genres across media

  *
    Non-Western Genres
  *
    Genres of the dispossessed
  *
    The culture, politics, and/or economics of genrification
  *
    Forgotten and misunderstood genres
  *
    Genre as embodiment and/or interactivity
  *

    Genres, historicity, and historiography

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