CFP The Velvet Light Trap Issue #73: Media Cultures of the Early Cold War Era

From: Amanda Landa <[email protected]>

*CFP The Velvet Light Trap Issue #73:* Media Cultures of the Early Cold War
Era

Few historical periods are as rich for film and media history as the
post-war/early Cold War era, which witnessed such epochal shifts as the
domestic decline and international expansion of Hollywood, the global rise
of art cinema, the diffusion of television, and the emergence of academic
film study. Though these events are well-known and well-documented, recent
scholarship has urged us to see them in the context of transnational
cultural exchanges. Vanessa Schwartz has noted that “although we often
speak of ‘global media’ culture we do not have a sufficiently textured
sense of how it came to be,” and her *It’s So French! *shows “just how
contingent the story of global media is when approached as a historical
problem.”  Recent anthologies expanding on this project include *Opening
Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife *(Andrews, 2011)* *and *Global
Neorealism: the Transnational History of a Film Style *(Sklar and
Giovacchini, 2012).

Issue #73, “Media Cultures of the Early Cold War Era,”* *will provide a
forum for further research on the complexity of global circulation--of
films, stars, personnel, technologies, media theories, habits of
viewing--that resulted from the period’s geopolitical and economic
realignments. Of particular interest is work attending to networks that
emerged independent from North America’s and Europe’s industrial alliance,
although research focusing on underexplored activities and practices of
these media industries and their adjacent institutions is also encouraged.
We are interested not only in commercial media industries, but also state
agencies’ and international organizations’ experiments with and deployment
of various media. For this issue, the editors of *The Velvet Light
Trap*seek to bring together original scholarship that engages new
theoretical frameworks, historiographical methods, archival sources, and
historical
perspectives that encourage re-evaluations of our  understanding of this
crucial period in media history.



Suggested areas of inquiry include, but are not limited, to:

- National and International film style and genre
- National, regional, and international documentary and educational films
- Early television history
- The rise of film culture, art cinema institutions, and cinephilia
- Cinemas and media cultures under occupation
- Global diffusion of new production and exhibition technologies
- International movement of filmmaking personnel
- Shifting centers of production, including International movement of
filmmaking personnel, International coproductions and runaway production
- Postwar remakes and repurposing of pre-war and wartime media
- Early international film festivals
- Debates on the function, political or aesthetic, of moving image media
- Media industry unions, guilds, and other professional organizations
- Development of film culture institutions: festivals, nontheatrical
distribution networks, publications, critics, academic courses and
departments, etc.

*Submission Instructions*

Papers should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, double-spaced in Chicago
style (“Humanities style” or notes and bibliography style with full
bibliographic citations included in unembedded endnotes).

Please send *two* electronic copies of your paper (each with an abstract
and each saved as a Word .doc or .docx file) to the email address provided
below. One copy should be suitable to be viewed by a reader anonymously,
with all information that identifies the author removed. The second copy
must include the author’s full contact information (name, phone number,
mailing address, and email address). Confirmation will be sent to the email
address you provide, within 48 hours of receipt. The journal's Editorial
Advisory Board will referee all submissions.

All submissions are due *January 4, 2013*, and should be sent to
[email protected]

*The Velvet Light Trap* is an academic, peer-reviewed journal of film and
television. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and
The University of Texas at Austin alternately coordinate issues. The
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, Nicholas Sammond, Beretta Smith-Shomade, Cristina Venegas,
Michael Williams. For more information, please visit the journal’s website
at http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/journals/jvlt.html.
-------------------------------
Amanda Landa
PhD Candidate, Radio-Television-Film
Screening Coordinator--FlowTV Conference 2010
Velvet Light Trap Editorial Collective
Column editor Flowtv.org
University of Texas at Austin