[Commlist] New book series: Postcolonial Media Studies

Postcolonial Media Studies
New Book Series from Rutgers University Press Series Editor: Raka Shome, 
Villanova University
This series aims to publish manuscripts that employ postcolonial 
theoretical frameworks to examine contemporary and past media and 
technology practices and cultures. It also plans to publish manuscripts 
that use critical media and technology theoretical frameworks to examine 
contemporary and historical logics of colonialism (including resistances 
to it) and of nationalisms and postcolonial cultures, especially, but 
not only, in the global south (which is understood not through a 
hemispheric logic but as sites that have a history of colonial 
dispossession).
In doing so, this series aims to forge a conversation between 
postcolonial and media studies that has been, with a few exceptions, 
sorely missing in academic circles. Such a conversation is urgently 
needed because the politics of colonialism, especially today (but also 
in the past) as well as its iterations in various forms of nationalisms 
and global inequalities, are enabled through mediated and technologized 
logics and structures that dominate our times. Yet, less is known about 
the role of media and technology in enabling colonialisms and 
nationalisms even though media and technology scholars for some time 
have engaged the postcolonial. The idea for this series emerges from a 
recognition that no conversation on colonialism and postcolonial 
nationalisms can elide the power of media and technology in organizing, 
enabling, and representing colonial formations and nationalist 
structures in the politics of postcoloniality. Thus, how the 
"postcolonial" and the medial are entangled needs sustained attention if 
postcolonial studies is to be more relevant to our times.
This series thus seeks to expand and advance the epistemic frameworks of 
both postcolonial studies (primarily dominated by theories from literary 
studies) and media/critical technology studies (primarily dominated by 
western centric/global north frameworks). The series embraces an 
expansive view of media; it acknowledges traditional forms but also 
recognizes that what counts as media, and how something functions as 
media, cannot be known in advance. Thus, it eschews a stable and fixed 
understanding of media, and in using the term "media," the series 
includes technology as well. While the series is open to all forms of 
media, it is especially interested in nonrepresentational foci on media 
that can address media's materialities, broadly conceived. The series 
further wishes to engage media forms and practices that have typically 
not been considered as media in dominant media studies, and it welcomes 
postcolonial engagements with media from diverse disciplines.
Using the term "postcolonial" in the series title is not meant to imply 
that we are living in a time "after" colonialism—a critique that has 
wrongly been leveled at postcolonial studies. Rather, conceptually 
"postcolonial" here is meant to invoke a resistance to or a critique of 
colonialism and to envision logics of living beyond colonialisms even if 
that seems impossible. The series aims to publish books that are in 
conversation with, and draw on, theories and frameworks in postcolonial 
studies by complicating and advancing their scope and frames in ways 
that open up new possibilities for rethinking the postcolonial, when 
seen through the lens of media and technology.
It should be emphasized that this book series does not aim to fall 
within the "decolonial" tradition. While the underlying political goal 
of this series overlaps with the decolonial tradition, the decolonial 
tradition is significantly different, especially in its emphasis on 
"delinking" from Euro/Anglo modernities—an emphasis that has the 
potential to lapse into nativism or ethnonationalism, and that can 
obscure the reality of entanglements between the colonial and the 
postcolony. In the tradition of postcolonial studies, this series is 
instead focused on analyzing and examining the various functionings of 
colonial modernities (including non-Euro/Anglo colonial modernities) and 
national modernities in various postcolonies. It is primarily committed 
to advancing media studies and postcolonial studies; thus, works must 
demonstrate significant engagement with postcolonial theory in their 
engagement with media.
While postcolonial studies has typically had a South Asia focus, this 
series—while welcoming scholarship from and on South Asia—is also 
interested in expanding the scope of the postcolonial and thus welcomes 
work that engages diverse post/colonial contexts such as, but not 
limited to, Africa, the Caribbean, Palestine, postcolonial Latin America 
(including Cuba), Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Post Soviet.
The series is open to diverse methodologies. Manuscripts that attend to 
the entanglement of multiple axes of power—such as gender, sexuality, 
cisgenderism, class, caste, religion, and ability—in exploring 
connections between media/technology and colonialisms/nationalisms/the 
postcolony are especially attractive to this series. Additionally, 
manuscripts that engage the planetary are also welcome.
The series welcomes both research monographs and edited collections and 
is open to books that are empirically and contextually situated and 
informed by rich theorizing, as well as wholly theoretical works.
Series Editor, Raka Shome is a professor and Harron Family Endowed Chair 
of Communication at Villanova University. She has published widely in 
postcolonial, media, and cultural studies. She is the author of 
Cleansing the Nation: India, the Hindu Modern and Mediations of Gender 
(Duke University Press, 2025) and Diana and Beyond: White femininity, 
National identity and Contemporary Media Culture (University of Illinois 
Press, 2014). Shome has played a pioneering role in communication and 
media studies by bringing postcolonial frameworks into examinations of 
media cultures, and media/communication studies. Shome is an elected 
Fellow of the International Communication Association and has been named 
a ‘Distinguished Scholar’ of National Communication Association. She has 
won several awards for her research including most recently the Teresa 
Award for the Advancement of Feminist Scholarship in Communication 
Studies from International Communication Association. Prior to her 
current position, she also held full time faculty appointments at 
University of Washington, Arizona State University, London School of 
Economics and Political Science and served as a Visiting Fellow at 
National University of Singapore. She has delivered several keynotes, 
plenary and named lectures in the USA and globally.
Inaugural Editorial Board
Kajri Jain, University of Toronto.
Purnima Mankekar, University of California-Los Angeles. Rahul Mukherjee, 
University of Pennsylvania.
Madhavi Murty, University of California-Santa Cruz. Roopika Risam, 
Dartmouth College.
P. Thirumal, University of Hyderabad.
Wendy Willems, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Prospective authors are invited to first send a one-page abstract of the 
book to editorial director Nicole Solano (_Nicole.solano@rutgers.edu_ 
<mailto:(Nicole.solano /at/ rutgers.edu)>) and Raka Shome 
(_raka.shome@villanova.edu_ <mailto:(raka.shome /at/ villanova.edu)>). After 
reviewing the abstracts and determining their fit with the series goals, 
an invitation will be made to submit a full proposal. Full proposals 
should be submitted to Nicole Solano. You can find proposal guidelines 
on the Rutgers University Press website here: 
_https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/submitting-a-proposal_ 
<https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/submitting-a-proposal>.
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