[ecrea] Film Criticism Special Issue on Film & Merchandise Call For Papers

In recognition that it is the end of the semester, we have extended the 
deadline for submitting essays to the special issue of /Film Criticism 
/on film & merchandise until June 1. The CFP is below.  While we hope 
you will consider submitting an essay, we'd also greatly appreciate it 
if you shared the CFP with folks in your network for whom it might be of 
interest.

/
/
/Film Criticism/ Special Issue on Film & Merchandise Call For Papers 
(November 2018)
Guest editors: Dr. Elizabeth Affuso (Pitzer College) and Dr. Avi Santo 
(Old Dominion University)

Despite Jane Gaines’ (1989) recognition that the cinema screen and the 
department store display window have long participated in providing 
audiences with spectacles of consumption that steered shoppers toward 
one another’s venues, there is surprisingly little work that critically 
interrogates film-related merchandise.Only recently have scholars 
started to take this area of study seriously. For example, media 
industry scholars have begun to pay attention to the creative, legal, 
and managerial contestations among licensors, manufacturers, and 
retailers, contending that merchandise is not simply an afterthought of 
media production, distribution, acquisition, and circulation, but also 
an area where industry lore about differentiated franchises and 
consumers are affirmed and challenged.Others contend that the meanings 
merchandise accrue are constituted through their use as much as by how 
they are positioned for consumers. On the fan studies front, scholars 
have become interested in object-oriented fandom as well as 
‘fan-trepreneurs’ who sell ‘fan-made merchandise’ through crafting and 
customization sites like Etsy. These works have explored the 
commoditization of fandom, but they have also sought to understand what 
fan communities ‘do’ with merchandise and how fan-based economies 
operate. There has also been a tendency to explore how 
merchandise interpellates particular gendered and age-based identities, 
with fashion and toy-based merchandise receiving the bulk of attention, 
but scholarship on the intersections of merchandise with race, 
sexuality, and religion remains scarce as does work investigating the 
ways film-inspired products have entered into daily routines as 
household items and other lifestyle categories.

For this special issue of/Film Criticism,/ we are seeking essays that 
take a variety of approaches to the intersections of film, television, 
and merchandise that open up new avenues of inquiry to studying the topic.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

-Industrial, consumer and fan sense-making practices when it comes to 
merchandise (i.e., their imagined appeal to various constituencies, 
their “authenticity”)
-Films about merchandise and/or product integration within films (/The 
LEGO Movie/, /Toy Story/, /The Devil Wears Prada/)
-When manufacturers become entertainment companies (Hasbro, Mattel, 
Sketchers)
-Industry lore, trade rituals, and their impact on merchandising
-Film merchandise beyond toys and fashion (including everyday household 
and luxury items)
-Merchandising beyond the franchise/tentpole/blockbusters
-Branded educational, nutrition, health and hygiene merchandise (or the 
use of branded merchandise within schools, healthcare, and other service 
industries)
-Merchandise and transmedia storytelling
-Packaging and product design
-Race and merchandise (merchandise featuring diverse racial groups or 
failing to do so; merchandise marketed to diverse racial groups; 
merchandise used by diverse consumer and fan groups)
-Merchandise beyond child markets (including adult merchandise)
-Merchandise and the troubling of gender binaries
-Celebrity and merchandise (or celebrity and lifestyle)
-DIY merchandise and the logics of customization/maker cultures (as well 
as anxieties over 3D printers and other DIY technologies)
-Merchandise and performative consumption (or interactive consumption)
-Merchandise and (commoditized) self-expression/group affiliation
-Fan-made merchandise
-Ethnographies of merchandise usage among fans or different consumer groups
-Fan consumer-activism
-Promotional giveaways and premiums


Essays should be a maximum of 7000 words including notes and references 
and use Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition 
(http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html 
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chicagomanualofstyle.org%2Ftools_citationguide.html&data=01%7C01%7CASanto%40odu.edu%7Ca91aab6088af40142cac08d545e6d74e%7C48bf86e811a24b8a8cb368d8be2227f3%7C0&sdata=WW45v%2B6841RThhO1BsTdZS7Ejz40UYp0gjJ6ttNwNRk%3D&reserved=0>). 
Please submit essays electronically as a Word document file to 
(asanto /at/ odu.edu) <mailto:(asanto /at/ odu.edu)>. Submissions should also include 
a cover page with: (a) all authors’ names, academic affiliations, and 
e-mail addresses; (b) author biography, no more than 70 words in length; 
and (c) an abstract of 150 words or fewer. Drafts should be submitted 
for review by June 1, 2018.  You will receive acknowledgment of your 
submission within ten days.  Works accepted for this special issue will 
be returned to contributors with reviewer feedback by July 15 and 
revised drafts will be due on September 15 for a November 2018 
publication date.

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