Call for manuscripts for special issue of Environmental Communication: A
Journal of Nature and Culture (www.informaworld.com/renc)
Target Issue: Volume #5, Issue #1 (2011)
Coloring the Environmental Lens:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cinema, New Media, and Just Sustainability
Guest editors: Salma Monani, Gettysburg College; Belinda Chiu, Duke
University; Carlo Arreglo, University of California-Berkeley
We are seeking manuscript submissions on the role of cinema and new media
in engaging environmental issues from the perspectives of traditionally
marginalized groups (specifically socio-economically depressed groups and
racial and ethnic minorities in the American and global context). We
deliberately conceive cinema broadly (as its Greek root suggests) to include
various moving images?documentary and fictional film, video, television?and
are also interested in new media such as video games, internet video shorts,
blogs and online gaming.
Recent scholarship has begun to actively highlight the importance of engaging
different racial, cultural, and socio-economic
perspectives within the arena of
environmental sustainability. Specifically, the
concept of just sustainability
forwarded by Julian Agyeman, Robert Bullard, and Bob Evans (2005) is a
theoretically and pragmatically vigorous framework that scholars have begun
to use to evaluate and elucidate issues of color, race, ethnicity, and/or
regional power dynamics that determine whose voices are heard within the
environmental arena and how they are heard.
However, there is relatively little
comprehensive attention devoted to the way cinema and new media intersect
with and highlight issues of environmental justice and sustainability. This
special issue hopes to fill this current gap in
environmental, cinema, and new
media scholarship.
We invite essays from a variety of disciplinary
and interdisciplinary angles, and
welcome analysis of films/videos/new media,
filmmakers, film festivals, national
cinemas, or classroom practices. We are
particularly interested in readings of
cinema that do not neatly fit traditional
categories of nature or environmental
films, and in articles that engage new media,
such as online gaming, Internet
video platforms (i.e. YouTube), and blogospheres
that utilize social spaces in
alternate ways. We are also interested in critiques of contemporary
environmental cinema and new media that omit the voices of various
traditionally marginalized groups despite their relevance to the issues
discussed.
Manuscripts should be prepared in English, and should not exceed 8,000 words
including references. The journal adheres to APA Style. Manuscripts must not
be under review elsewhere or have appeared in any other published form. For
further details on manuscript submission, please
refer to the ?Instructions for
authors? on the journal?s website (www.informworld.com/renc). Upon
notification of acceptance, authors must assign copyright to Taylor and
Francis and provide copyright clearance for any copyrighted material.
Manuscripts should be emailed to (smonani /at/ gettysburg.edu) by January 30,
2010. Please disseminate this CFP to any colleagues that might be interested.