[ecrea] Cfp Literary Journalism as a Discipline - Brazilian Journalism Research

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/Brazilian Journalism Research/, Vol. 14, N. 3

Literary Journalism as a Discipline

John S. Bak, Monica Martinez

The introduction to /Literary Journalism across the Globe/ concluded 
with an open challenge to literary journalism scholars around the world: 
“… [to] stop referring to literary journalism as a genre … or even as a 
form … and [to] start calling it what it is: a discipline” (Bak and 
Reynolds, 2011: 18). Response to that challenge has been overwhelming, 
evidenced by the many monographs, collections and scholarly articles 
that have since been published in various languages worldwide. And yet, 
efforts in establishing literary journalism studies as an independent 
discipline (that is, an internationally recognized field of study with 
institutional backing and support from university administrators to 
publishing houses, from individual scholars to learned societies, and 
from commercial enterprises to governmental agencies) have been slow in 
developing, and the reasons for this are several.

To be considered a discipline, literary journalism will need to continue 
advancing along many fronts. To start with, adiscipline, of course, 
needs historians to determine its pedigree and to establish its moments 
of institutional crises, and literary journalism has certainly been 
blessed with many of them from around the world: Norman Sims (2007) and 
John C. Hartsock (2000) in the U.S.; Edvaldo Pereira Lima (1993) and 
Monica Martinez (2016)in Brazil; Sonja Merljak Zdovc (2008) in Slovenia; 
Myriam Boucharenc (2001) and Marie-Eve Thérenty (2007) in France; 
Isabelle Meuret and Paul Aron (2012) in Belgium; Albert Chillón (1999) 
in Spain;**Charles A. Laughlin (2002) in China, Isabel Soares in 
Portugal (2011), to name but a few. These historians have established 
the main periods of literary journalism’s development over the 
centuries, which scholars have since been fleshing out. A discipline 
also needs a corpus of primary and secondary texts on which to found 
itself, and scholarship over the past decade or more has surely 
increased the number and visibility of the literary journalistic texts 
around the world. And yet, while recovering lost texts for the literary 
journalism canon and arguing cases for new recruits has been invaluable 
to the field, a discipline that has been idling in corpus building and 
textual analysis, which is where literary journalism studies seems to be 
today, is not entirely advancing. To move forward, a discipline also 
needs its own theories and methodologies, which have heretofore been 
borrowed mostly from the disciplines of journalism and literature.

Given this current state of affairs, this volume of /BJR/ seeks articles 
that theorize literary journalism studies or explore methodologies that 
will advance its scholarship. Literary journalism as a praxis has been 
flourishing these past couple decades, and its scholarships needs to 
keep apace. While some theoretical inquiry into literary journalism 
aesthetics has already been conducted (Hartsock, 2015; Lima, 1993; Aare, 
2016), and ad hoc research methodologies have frequently been imported 
from other disciplines (e.g., framing theory and life history from 
journalism/communication or deconstructionism and postcolonialism from 
literature/Cultural Studies), literary journalism studies is faced with 
the challenge to formulate its own theories and research methods, which 
would allow it both to assert its own authority and autonomy and to lend 
its epistemological resources to other disciplines that are faced with 
resolving similar quan daries surrounding textual hybridity, 
international specificities and historical subjectivity. For example, 
the reading experience of literary journalism differs from that of 
traditional journalism and of literature, yet we are repeatedly 
borrowing theories from both of these fields to explain this 
reader-literary journalistic text experience. Literary journalism 
studies would surely benefit from new theories on how a reader of a /New 
Yorker /article, who knows that the story is factual but who nonetheless 
takes pleasure in the reading the text as if it were a short story, 
processes information differently from those readings a story in the 
/Folha de S.Paulo/ or a historical novel.

Possible submissions on the epistemologies, methodologies and praxes of 
literary journalism studies that are linked directly to the greater 
debate of disciplinary identity could include: the theorization of 
literary journalism’s aesthetics (text-, author-, reader- and 
environment-based theories); a bibliographic assessment of the current 
state of research in international literary journalism studies (in 
including a section on future research topics); an examination of other 
disciplinary theories and methods being imported into literary 
journalism’s analytical framework; the application of inter-, pluri- and 
transdisciplinarity to literary journalism studies around the world 
(that is, scholarship of literary journalism studies will likely come 
from other disciplines, such as history, sociology, media studies, 
communication studies, etc., thus it might be considered an emerging 
post-academic science); the exploration of litera ry journalism’s 
theories and methodologies that could be taken up by other disciplines; 
etc. The specific questions that the volume seeks answers to include 
episthemological and methodological but also sociological and cultural 
issues in relation to the possible disciplinarization of literary 
journalism.

This volume’s gambit is that, just as the praxis of literary journalism 
has been carving out its niche in the world of journalism, the study of 
literary journalism will need to branch out and explore new frontiers 
within the academy. Like any adolescent whose passage into adulthood 
inevitably draws upon and, at times, contests the experiences and 
knowledge of its parents, literary journalism studies will need to weigh 
the theories and methodologies of its parent disciplines – literature 
and journalism – against its own epistemological wants and needs and, in 
so doing, establish its own means to addressing the many questions and 
quandaries that preoccupy it, as much today as tomorrow. While such 
critical thinking may elicit contrastive responsesfrom both sides of the 
literary journalistic spectrum, the editors welcome the debate, firmly 
believing that nothing new emerges without dialogue, from both outside 
and inside the discipline. After all, literary and journalistic studies 
are not haunted by their many, at times antagonistic, schools of 
critical thought. On the contrary, both are made richer by them. This 
volume thus hopes that any debate that it generates will ultimately 
serve literary journalism studies in establishing itself as a discipline 
unique to itself, but always open and willing to foster a dialogue with 
other fields of knowledge.

Articles, from 40,000 to 55,000 characters with spaces, APA Style, must 
be submitted by June 1st, 2018.

As Brazilian Journalism Research publishes two versions of each issue 
(in Portuguese/Spanish and in English), the authors of the articles 
accepted in Spanish or Portuguese should provide the English 
translation. In the same way, the authors of texts accepted in English 
should send a version in Portuguese or Spanish.

The articles should be sent exclusively through the SEER/OJS electronic 
system available on the website of the journal: http://bjr.sbpjor.org.br 
If in doubt, please, send an email to (bjr /at/ gmail.com).

Guidelines for authors: 
http://bjr.sbpjor.org.br/bjr/aboutsubmissions#authorGuidelines

Deadline for article submission: June 1st, 2018

Notification of acceptance: August 15th, 2018

Deadline for submission of the final version in English and 
Portuguese/Spanish with revision and additional information suggested by 
the editors: September 30, 2018

Published: December 30th, 2018

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