NECSUS Autumn 2018_#Mapping — call for submissions

guest edited by Giorgio Avezzù (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), Teresa Castro (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 / IRCAV), and Giuseppe Fidotta (Concordia University)

Recent media scholarship has been undergoing a spatial turn. Borrowed from geography, key concepts such as mapping/cartography, space/place, environment, landscape, mobility, territory, and others have gradually become unavoidable in the domain of media and visual studies, while the notion of ‘media geography’, once considered a ‘peripheral area’ of study, has already made steady progress among research institutions throughout the world. Mapping, however, remains an undeveloped field of inquiry. We will explore it in this forthcoming special section of NECSUS.

In the wake of these multiple theoretical debates, we would like to reflect on the mapping impulse of new and traditional media (film, television, video games, geospatial technologies and locative media). This notion refers to the different strategies used by media for the spatial understanding of the world, also the ordering, coding, and scaling of its places and landscapes, the imagining of territories, the production of space(s), etc. Embedded in power relations, these strategies very often translate the world into forms that answer socio-political, juridical, and administrative demands which dispose of spatial features according to the machinations of late capitalism, while at the same time restructuring more ancient scopic and discursive regimes. However, many of these strategies also propose sensible experiences and bodily affects that escape the entrapments of power so often associated with mapping (i.e. mapping as a way of possessing, objectifying, controlling, or commodifying the world). Moreover, the very notion of ‘impulse’ suggests the presence of (un)conscious desires and (ir)rational drives. In this context, we would like to invite contributions on (but not limited to) the following topics:

# theoretical intersections between media, geography, and mapping

# media, maps, and other ‘technologies of the intellect’ (grids, lists, graphs, catalogues, tables, etc.)

# media representations of the world as knowable totality – e.g. as in Fredric Jameson’s concept of ‘cognitive mapping’

# colonialism, geopolitics, and the mapping impulse of media

# mapping global flows (of people, goods, and capital)

# audio-visual strategies for mapping spaces and places

# mapping as analytical thinking in media studies

# media and haptical, sensorial, and ‘emotional’ cartographies

# media and geographical imaginations

# counter-mapping, media, and the politics of space

# mapping as allegory in film and visual media

# geo-surveillance and spectacle

# media as/and topological metaphors

# community, grassroots, and alternative mapping

We look forward to receiving abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic references, and a short biography of 100 words by 15 April 2018 at the following address: g.decuir@aup.nl. On the basis of selected abstracts, writers will be invited to submit full manuscripts (5,000-7,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) which will subsequently go through a double-blind peer review process.

NECSUS also accepts abstract submissions on a rolling basis throughout the year for a wide variety of articles on a number of themes related to media studies but not necessarily connected to a special section topic, in addition to proposals for festival, exhibition, and book reviews, as well as audiovisual essays. Please note that we do not accept full manuscripts for consideration without an invitation. Access our submission guidelines at http://www.necsus-ejms.org/guidelines-for-submission/.