[Commlist] CFP -- The Archivability of Television and Related Media

CFP: The Archivability of Television and Related Media (tentative title)

Editors: Lauren Bratslavsky, Illinois State University and Elizabeth 
Peterson, University of Oregon

About the book: This anthology will critically engage and evaluate 
archives and archival processes that collect, order, and preserve 
elements of television and other media as historically, culturally, 
socially, politically, and economically significant material. What do we 
know about how television and radio have moved from ephemeral 
broadcasts, and mounds of paperwork documenting bureaucratic and 
creative processes, to become historical material housed in archives? 
How might scholars, archivists, librarians, media professionals and 
others work together to better preserve and understand television and 
media culture?



The overarching intent of the anthology is to interrogate where 
television as historical material ‘live.’ To do so, we aim to bring 
together scholarship by academics, archivists, and others about the 
processes and places that confer all sorts of television and related 
materials with historical value, or in some cases, where television 
almost or could have resided in such sites as archives, libraries, 
historical societies, museums, and private collections. Although the 
focus is on television, chapters which look at related issues in radio, 
film, and digital media archival preservation are encouraged and will be 
considered as well.



With these goals in mind, topics for the anthology include, but are not 
limited to:

  * How do we advance conceptualizations about value, specifically
    economic value to owners, and research value to scholars and
    historians? In what ways have the theories and practices of archives
    (such as the archival traditions of records management vs.
    historical manuscripts) resulted in ignoring television and ‘new
    media’? How are governing discourses about heritage, nation,
    identity, history, and other overarching conceptual frameworks
    implicated in the decisions and processes to collect and preserve
    certain forms of television and media over others?

  * What archival theories, histories, and processes do archivists,
    librarians, and others laboring at archival-type institutions wish
    scholars understood when it comes to contextualizing the presence
    of, or lack thereof, television-related materials in archival
    holdings? And what do scholars wish that archivists and others
    understood about the dynamics about the industries, technologies,
    and social significance of all sorts of television? In other words,
    what are some requisite shared epistemological, ontological, and
    other theoretical bridges between the scholars who use archives and
    the archivists/librarians/curators who steward the contents of and
    access to archives?

  * What are case studies of either specific institutions or genres?
    What are the histories of archives and archival collections with
    television-related material? How did those materials enter the
    archive, or alternatively what were interceding factors that
    prevented pursuing the establishment and preservation of
    television-related and other media collections that are less common?
    We are particularly interested in explorations that tackle products
    – programs and scripts – and the processes – the paper-trail about
    production and reception, unaired material, and so on.
  * What is the relationship between publicly-funded / non-profit
    institutions and the investment in the preservation and access to
    private, corporate, proprietary material? Relatedly, how does
    copyright and fair use figure in to television’s archivability?

  * What are the interventions that we, as media scholars, archivists,
    and curators of historical material, need to make about today’s
    television for future researchers? What are speculative “future
    histories” of the sorts of archives that we desire, and the more
    pessimistic prognostication about the paucity of materials with
    traces of television’s products and processes? Will our future
    archives be heavily skewed towards certain points in the life cycle
    over others?



This project is being developed for consideration by the Peabody Series 
in Media History from the University of Georgia Press, edited by Jeffrey 
P. Jones and Ethan Thompson.



Submit abstracts of 500 words, current CV (optional), and brief author 
bio to co-editors Lauren Bratslavsky ((lbratsl /at/ ilstu.edu)) and Elizabeth 
Peterson ((emp /at/ uoregon.edu)) by September 15, 2021. Contributors will be 
notified by October 2021. Full essays of 6000-8000 words will be due 
August 15, 2022. Questions about the project or expressions of interest 
prior to the deadline are welcome.


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