[ecrea] VELVET LIGHT TRAP Call for Papers: Useful Media

The Velvet Light Trap
Call for Papers: Issue 72

Useful Media: Industrial, Educational, Institutional

Submission deadline: October 15, 2012

As breakthroughs in digital technologies compel scholars to address
media consumption outside the traditional contexts of the theater and
the home, media historians remind us that audio/visual materials have
always proliferated in other places: city halls, churches, courtrooms,
classrooms, hospitals, union halls, corporate offices, factories, and
laboratories. Within such alternative venues, media function as tools
of education, justice, agitation, advocacy, professionalization,
strategy, training, and proselytizing. These frequently overlooked
uses of media, beyond art and entertainment, remind us that the
patterns of production, distribution, and consumption commonly invoked
by terms like “the movies” or “television” represent only certain
configurations within the broader field of media practice.

Recent developments in the accessibility of educational and industrial
media—through the Internet Archive, YouTube postings of leaked
training videos, and DVD anthology collections (e.g., Treasures from
American Film Archives)—have brought these other media venues and
practices to a new prominence. Likewise, an increase in scholarly
attention paid to “useful” media, as in the recent anthologies Useful
Cinema (Acland and Wasson, 2011) and Learning with the Lights Off
(Orgeron, Orgeron, and Streible 2012), encourages us to revise our
assumptions about how media function in everyday life and rethink the
very definitions of media forms that scholars often take for granted.

In that spirit, The Velvet Light Trap seeks essays for an issue on
"useful" media. We welcome submissions concerning the production,
distribution, exhibition, and/or reception of educational, industrial,
and other institutional film, video, television, audio, and new media,
past and present.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not limited to:

Examples of educational, industrial, and useful media:
-       media used by religious institutions, civic organizations, NGOs,
unions, libraries, governments, and prisons
-       training films, videos, and software
-       closed-circuit television in educational contexts
-       sponsored films and institutional advertising
-       ambient music within institutional settings (malls, factories,
restaurants, waiting rooms)
-       audio/visual materials in museum and factory tours
-       medical films
-       other institutional uses of sound media (records, podcasts, etc.)
-       audiovisual and applied media in scientific and social
scientific research

Approaches to studying useful media:
-       reception, compulsory viewing, and resistant readings
-       audiovisual aesthetics and stylistic trends
-       useful media and emotional engagement
-       production cultures of industrial media
-       histories of key practitioners and production houses
-       policy and educational media
-       useful media and ideology
-       representation in educational and industrial media
-       educational and industrial media as "found footage"
-       institutional media, architectural design, and spatial politics

Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words (approximately
20-25 pages double-spaced), in Chicago style. Please submit an
electronic copy of the paper, along with a one-page abstract, both
saved as a Microsoft Word file; remove any identifying information so
that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. The journal's
Editorial Board will referee all submissions. Send electronic
manuscripts and/or any questions (tothevelvetlighttrap /at/ gmail.com). All
submissions are due October 15, 2012.

The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film,
television, and new media studies. Graduate students at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas-Austin coordinate
issues in alternation. Our Editorial Advisory Board includes such
notable scholars as Charles Acland, Richard Allen, Harry Benshoff, Mia
Consalvo, Radhika Gajjala, Darrell Hamamoto, Joan Hawkins, Scott
Higgins, Barbara Klinger, Jon Kraszewski, Diane Negra, Michael Newman,
Alisa Perren, Yeidy Rivero, Nic Sammond, Beretta Smith-Shomade,
Cristina Venegas, and Michael Williams.

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The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film,
television, and new media. It is collectively edited by graduate
students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of
Texas at Austin, with the support of media scholars at those
institutions and throughout the world. Each issue provokes debate
about critical, theoretical, and historical topics relating to a
particular theme.


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