Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

 

I am happy to draw your attention to the open call for papers of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics. We are welcoming new submissions on the subject areas of ethnology, folkloristics, museology, socio-cultural anthropology, cultural studies and related disciplines. We welcome papers based on empirical data, literature review papers, methodological papers as well as case studies. JEF is indexed by Sciendo (De Gruyter Open), Elsevier - SCOPUS, Anthropological Index Online, ERIH PLUS, MLA and many others. We are a fully open access journal published both in print and online with neither article submission nor article processing charges. The journal is published jointly by Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum and the University of Tartu. The submissions are peer-reviewed double-anonymously.

Check our submission guidelines here and submit your manuscript in Microsoft Word, Open Office, or iWork Pages format to jef@ut.ee

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

With best regards,

Art Leete

Editor-in-Chief of JEF

Journal of Festive Studies Review Editor Call, Call for Volunteers

Subject Fields: 

Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Ethnic History / Studies, Fine Arts, Research and Methodology

Review Editor Call

The Journal of Festive Studies, published by H-Net Journals, is looking for a Reviews Editor to join its volunteer-based editorial team. JFS is an open access journal that publishes once a year, drawing together academics from all disciplines who share an interest in festivities, including holiday celebrations, family rituals, carnivals, religious feasts, processions and parades, civic commemorations, etc.

JFS also has an active reviews section and a list of books it would like reviewed. The Reviews Editor would work with the editorial team to expand that list and assign reviewers for the books. The Reviews Editor would familiarize themselves with H-Net’s Reviews Management System to request books for ordering, finding and adding reviewers, and finding new relevant titles. The Reviews Manager would act as the primary editor for approximately 5 reviews for each issue and shepherd the article through the rest of the editorial process.

Those interested in this position should send a short CV and brief letter detailing their interest in festive studies and any applicable editorial experience to the managing editor, Cora Gaebel (submissions-festive-studies@mail.h-net.msu.edu).

Contact Info: 

Cora Gaebel, submissions-festive-studies@mail.h-net.msu.edu

Contact Email: 

submissions-festive-studies@mail.h-net.msu.edu

Climate issue of Southern Cultures

 

Deadline for Submissions: October 10, 2022

Southern Cultures, the award-winning, peer-reviewed quarterly from UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South, encourages submissions from artists, writers, and scholars for a special issue, Snapshot: Climate, to be published Fall 2023. We will accept submissions for this issue through October 10, 2022.

For this special issue, Southern Cultures will focus on photography, pairing a single photograph with a short, written reflection (250–350 words). Each author/artist may submit one reflection and up to three related images, from which the editors will select a single image for the issue. Selected artists will receive a stipend to publish original, previously unpublished artwork and accompanying text. (Artists retain all rights.)

We invite work grounded in the specifics of place and community as they intersect with and engage the climate crisis, including regional and global understandings, disaster, impacts, advocacy, and reimagining. Who is impacted and what are the particulars of this community’s experience? How and where are burdens and responses playing out?

Specs:

Images: TIFFs, CMYK, 300dpi, at least 7” wide.

Text: 250–350 words. The accompanying text can be a short artist statement, reflection, or longer identifying caption. We ask that the text speak to the image and help contextualize it for readers.

Hungarian Cultural Studies: Call for Papers, Date: December 15, 2022, Date: December 15, 202

 

Subject Fields: 

Cultural History / Studies, Eastern Europe History / Studies, Ethnic History / Studies

Invitation to contribute to our eJournal, Hungarian Cultural Studies (HCS)

Submissions We are inviting submissions to our peer-reviewed, no-fee, online, open-access scholarly journal. Our mission is to publish leading articles dedicated to Hungarian studies across the humanities and social science disciplines. We publish high-quality, peer-reviewed original articles, book reviews, commentaries, and articles clustered around a unifying theme. We are committed to publishing scholarly, cutting-edge issues of importance to Hungarian studies. Manuscripts are accepted year-round—December 15 of each year being the deadline for the annual issue due the following summer. To find out more about the submission process, check our website. 

                                 About              Submit

If you'd like to discuss your planned submission, please email Paul Olchváry, Editor-in-Chief (editorhungarian@gmail.com).

Peer reviewers Our journal relies on volunteers with a diverse array of interests and expertise to review the submissions we receive to our journal.  We invite you to sign up to serve as a peer reviewer for the journal.  Go to the journal website and create a profile.

On the section marked “Reviewing interest,” add your areas of expertise and your reviewing interests.   It’s that simple!  When articles are submitted in your area of expertise, we may call upon you to review it.  Send questions or comments to our layout editor (info@ahea.net).

Contact Info: 

Paul Olchváry, Editor-in-Chief (editorhungarian@gmail.com). 

Contact Email: 

editorhungarian@gmail.com

URL: 

https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/ahea/index

• Read more or reply

Back to top

Museum libraries: recent trends and challenges in the sector, Call for Papers, October 15, 2022, Belgium

 

 

Subject Fields: 

Library and Information Science, Cultural History / Studies, Contemporary History, Research and Methodology

Issue 45 of the Cahiers de Mariemont will focus on the museum library as a specific service – or department – directly dependent on a museum institution.

The few studies devoted to museum libraries show that researchers, museologists and bibliographers have so far shown little interest in this issue (1). Their research has been mainly focused on museums and libraries as independent institutions. Perhaps this lack of interest in museum libraries is partly due to their unclear legal situation. Indeed, their importance and the definition of their missions are rarely governed by a dedicated legislation setting the rules and objectives to be achieved, unlike other sister categories such as public libraries. They are more often defined directly in the museum's strategic plan (2). This reality consequently generates a variety of organisations and structures which are not always easy to grasp and to codify given their multiple nature. From one situation to another, the department – whether it is a documentation centre, a research library or a media library - will have a reduced visibility, assumed, constrained or, on the contrary, will be considered as an essential adjunct to the museum policy.

However, museum libraries, like the museums to which they belong, are today affected by the changes that have led to a “market” organisation of the cultural institutions. In this model, attendance rate has become a crucial evaluation criterion. This change of paradigm is pushing professionals in the sector to rethink the orientations and missions of museum libraries (3).

It is with this in mind that we propose to analyse the issues and characterise the most recent trends in the sector. The focus will not be limited to an examination of the situation in the French-speaking world as there is much to be learned from a more global analysis, integrating the libraries of museum institutions throughout the world. Here is a non-exhaustive list of avenues to explore:

• The “revolution” in the cultural market and museum libraries ; How do museum libraries, whose historical missions are based on conservation, provision of documentary resources and research support, manage to adapt to the new museum culture?
• Attracting readers/visitors, a new mission for museum libraries? What new and relevant strategies can museum libraries follow to attract an audience beyond their traditional readers?
• Museum libraries and mediation; is the involvement of museum libraries in the organisation of events (exhibitions, conferences, etc.) an asset or a constraint? Does this involvement put their traditional missions at risk?
• The (in)visibility of museum libraries; the visibility of museum libraries is often problematic and contributes to their isolation. Whether it is a question of their physical location (within or outside the museum circuit), their digital access (structure of websites), or their communication.
• Trends and issues in museum libraries outside the French-speaking world; this section deals with the specificities or particular visions adopted by museum libraries outside the French-speaking world.
• Which collections for a museum library? The collections managed by museum libraries cover a wide range of typologies, but are often characterised by specific collections that distinguish them from other scientific libraries. Their nature, whether printed or digital works, catalogues, old and contemporary heritage books, manuscripts, archives, etc., has a profound impact on the organisation, credit and development of the service.
• Status and tasks of librarians within the museum; the staff of museum libraries has many and varied profiles, both at the head of the service and among the staff. Librarians, archivists, researchers, scientists, civil servants, volunteers... are all involved. The degrees of qualification and involvement of the managers in the decision-making committees of the museum necessarily have major impacts on the dynamism and strategic orientations of the library.
• The training of museum “librarians”; the main and continuing training courses currently available give little or no space in their programmes to the particular realities and methods of museum libraries. However, original initiatives are gradually emerging to meet an increasingly perceptible demand (INHA [Paris], Hénallux [Namur]...).
• What collaborative networks should be set up? Given the multiple structures of museum libraries and the different profiles of their managers, dedicated professional exchange and meeting places are rare, despite a growing desire to develop them.
• Etc.

 

Proposals for contributions, in French or English (including an abstract of 2,000 to 3,000 characters including spaces, with a provisional title, a short bibliography on the subject, and a biography of 2 or 3 lines) should be sent to the editor of the Cahiers de Mariemont, Jean-Sébastien Balzat (jean-sebastien.balzat@musee-mariemont.be) before 15 October 2022. The text of the article as well as an abstract (French and English) and 10 key words (French and English) are expected by 15 February 2023.

 

Dr Bertrand Federinov, Curator of the Heritage Library, Royal Museum of Mariemont

Dr Jean-Sébastien Balzat, scientific editor of the Cahiers de Mariemont

Fantine Lequeux, editorial assistant, Royal Museum of Mariemont

 

(1) Recent studies include issue 20 (2019) of La Revue de la BNU (Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg) (https://doi.org/10.4000/rbnu.2052).

(2) The Spanish law of 29 March 1901 on state archaeological museums is a notable exception.

(3) On this issue, see, for example, the work of André Gob and François Mairesse.

Contact Info: 

Dr Bertrand Federinov, Curator of the Heritage Library, Royal Museum of Mariemont (Belgium)

Dr Jean-Sebastien Balzat, Editor of the Cahiers de Mariemont

Fantine Lequeux, Editorial assistant, Royal Museum of Mariemont

Contact Email: 

jean-sebastien.balzat@musee-mariemont.be

URL: 

http://www.musee-mariemont.be/index.php?id=1128

• Read more or reply

Design Culture, Call for Papers, March 10, 2022

 

Location: 

Poland

Subject Fields: 

Anthropology, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Fine Arts, Psychology, Sociology

Thematic issue of the journal State of Affairs, edited by Dr Karolina Dudek (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Faculty of Design)

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 10 March 2022.

Not only beautiful, but also functional – design, as Bruno Munari argues, is the planning of everything that shapes the environment, the world of life. In this understanding, design is a matter not only of industrial design in the conventional sense but also of services, processes, and experiences. Design is therefore ubiquitous today. No wonder that there is a clear increase in interest in design, as is reflected in numerous scientific publications and in the emergence of new subdisciplines over the last decade, such as, for example, design anthropology.

Design processes cross disciplinary boundaries, and involve a wide variety of actors and their knowledge. The creation of innovative solutions and objects tailored to the contexts in which they are to operate increasingly often requires the launch of appropriate tools enabling in-depth diagnosis, that is, research in support of design processes. Design thus enters into an alliance with the social sciences, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to meet this need. The role of designers is also changing. In the past, designers were architects of selected utility items, and “design” itself was understood quite narrowly as styling and giving an aesthetic form to industrial products. Today, designers work in interdisciplinary teams, and thus design management is becoming ever more important.

We invite representatives of various disciplines to join in constituting the anti-disciplinary field of reflection on design as a socio-cultural phenomenon, as well as on the relations between design and the social sciences, in particular the issue of using knowledge from the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and management in design. We are also interested in the role of design and the designer in contemporary culture. Moreover, we want to recognize new areas of design theory and practice: experimental, speculative, critical, and social design.

 We also invite you to submit proposals for texts in the following thematic areas:

• the ethnography of the design process
• the social history of design and style
• the history of art and design, relations between art and design
• the use of research in the design of services, objects, technologies, and public spaces: areas of interest and methodologies
• using design ideas in areas not directly related to design, in particular in management
• participatory design and co-design
• vernacular design and research
• cultural differences as a design challenge
• design as an element of business and economic strategies
• designing the future
• the education of designers

/// Please send applications containing the title, an abstract of around 500 words, and the author’s name, affiliation, and contact e-mail to the following address: redakcja@stanrzeczy.edu.pl by 10 March 2022.

/// Authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to submit articles by 10 May 2022.

/// Any questions should be directed to Dr Karolina Dudek (karolina.j.dudek@stanrzeczy.edu.pl).

Język / Language

Polish or English

Contact Info: 

Dr Karolina Dudek

Contact Email: 

karolina.j.dudek@stanrzeczy.edu.pl

URL: 

https://www.stanrzeczy.edu.pl/index.php/srz/announcement/view/6

• Read more or reply

Culture Wars and Horror Movies: Social Fears and Ideology in Contemporary Cinema, Call for Papers, March 21, 2022

 

 

 

                                                  CFP: CULTURE WARS AND HORROR MOVIES:

SOCIAL FEARS AND IDEOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

(edited volume cfp)

 

 

When Jordan Peele’s Get Out made its big screen debut in 2010, it was met with instant, widespread praise among worldwide audiences for its creative blending of horror conventions and social commentary. As part of the horror film trend known as “social horror” (Heba, 1995; Kronja, 2016), Get Out championed the filmic representation of sociopolitical ideologies in the United States at a time when horror codes and sociocultural issues acquired recognized critical distinction. Parallel to current divisive sociopolitical disagreement, contemporary horror movies are emerging as a reproduction of what dominates popular culture and the current political framework: culture wars.

In the 2010 book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, M. Fiorina, J. Abrams and J. Pope turned the spotlight on commonly believed myths about American sociopolitical reality, claiming that Western civilization and, specifically, the United States are deeply divided in their fundamental political views. Confrontations between social conservative and progressive forces in American society, described as “culture wars” by sociologist James D. Hunter (1991), are as much a reality today as they were in the past. Beginning in the 1960s, the United States has experienced a partisan conflict over cultural issues such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, immigration and ecology which is actively exported as a model to other cultural spheres, such as contemporary cinema. According to theses on the present-day existence of culture wars, salient battles have led contemporary cinema to characterize these issues as “new fronts in the culture war” (Castle 2018), thereby giving reasons to revisit the culture wars debate.

This edited volume seeks to examine recent culture wars manifestations in American popular culture, considering their impact and representation in the field of horror cinema. In many contemporary examples of the genre, these ideologically charged battles over opposing moral values and fundamental belief systems are a substantial part of the definition and development of horror films. Night of the Living Dead (1968) as a commentary on Cold War paranoia and racism, or Rosemary’s Baby (1968), as an allegory of women’s liberation, are two good examples of the penetration of social references in the genre. In this way, American horror film hinges on

cinematically constructed fears of the Other, an Otherness “both drawn from and constitutive of any given era’s cultural history” (Benshoff 2000:31). However, the changing spectrum of filmmakers, producers and other agents involved in the making of these films in the 21st century has reached a turning point pitting the “normal” (white, middle-class, heterosexual, male) vs. the “monstrous” (defined by racial, sexual, class, gender, ideological markers). In this horror film trend, the “monster”, the foregrounded “other” is rooted in historically specific cultural and social horrors, which set the stage for the ideological depiction of contemporary culture wars.

The horror genre has long been ripe for social commentary precisely because it subverts the idea of what “villainous” is, allowing us to subtly empathize with the subject we fear while exploring why we fear it (Solórzano and Yosso 2002). In other words, these marginalized subjects become narrative agents who take possession of the gaze, and whose act of looking emerges from them. Moreover, culture wars and horror cinema do not shy away from the most diverse polarized issues: from religious dilemmas, immigration, and gender violence to racism or ecological consciousness. We are not only concerned with horror genre conventions and their sociocultural references, but also with the way in which the genre appropriates a divisive, polarized society, and what results from this situation in a global context. Thus, for example, consider the way Happy Death Day (2017), Antebellum (2020) or The Invisible Man (2020) can be analyzed as operating in the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo context by mobilizing horror film conventions to represent polarized social views as they are experienced today.

The widespread social discontent with recent political actions has been connected to recent horror films, which can be taken to be examples of a critical framework that attempts to understand social divisions today. Therefore, we ask ourselves the following: How can we create a framework for the analysis of conflicting and divisive sociocultural representations in contemporary horror cinema? Are American horror films becoming more polarized in their representation of social values? Have movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter or new narratives of slavery in film contributed to making this trend even more salient? Which conventions of the genre challenge traditional values and ideals within 21st century horror cinema? By what means are these movies taking sides on the current culture wars?

Contributors to this edited volume are invited to critically analyze the ways in which the ideology of culture wars has made its way through recent American horror cinema across different nations, topics and visual aesthetics. From indigeneity, race criticism, religion and ecology to issues such as post-feminism, gender violence, immigration, and social media as surveillance, the areas and films to be explored include but are not limited to:

 

• The relationship of social horror and indigeneity (The Dead Can’t Dance, 2013; Violet, 2015)
• Horror articulations of the Neo-slavery and the Old South (Get Out, 2017; Antebellum, 2020)
• Gender/Genre: the culture wars in the #MeToo era (The Perfection, 2018; The Invisible Man, 2020)
• Spaces and limits of the culture wars: borders, race, ethnicity (Planet Terror, 2007;Vampires vs. The Bronx, 2020)
• Endangered society and nature: Eco-horror (Take Shelter, 2011; The Incident, 2014)
• Representations and constructions of culture wars and immigration (Don’t Breathe, 2016; His House, 2020)
• Postmodern social horror: parody, pastiche, self-reflective humor (Happy Death Day, 2017; Midsommar,2019)
• Religion, faith and the Southern Gothic: (The Skeleton Key, 2005; Mother!, 2017)
• Horror, surveillance, and social media (Ratter, 2015; Spree, 2020)Social horror and late capitalism (The Purge, 2013; A Quiet Place, 2018)
• The monster as a symbol of Othering vs. a figure of resistanceThe reception of social horror movies: cinematic responses to the culture wars

 

If you are interested in proposing a chapter, please send an abstract of 400-500 words and a short biographical note including the author’s academic affiliation no later than 21^st March 2022 to socialhorrorvolume@gmail.com

Manuscripts should not have been previously published, and should not be submitted simultaneously for publication in another edited volume collection or medium.

March 21, 2022: abstract submission

April 1, 2022: notification of acceptance/rejection

September 15, 2022: paper submission

2023: Expected publication in a major publisher

 

Contact Info: 

Noelia Gregorio-Fernández (Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture- UNED Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)

Carmen M. Méndez-García (Associate Professor of American Literature-UCM Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)

Contact Email: 

socialhorrorvolume@gmail.com

Call For Research: Diaspora and Collections, Call for Papers, March 1, 2022

 

Subject Fields: 

Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Immigration & Migration History / Studies, Research and Methodology, Borderlands

The “Diaspora” has come to describe mass movements of displaced peoples, or the scattering of a people away from their geographical “origin”. Yet diasporic movements are not sequestered within the flow of people: objects and ideas have their own flow and transport, displayed through conventions of the elsewhere, usually “the West”. This “postcolonial” or “decolonizing” constellation of globalization, which ushers in the undoing of imperialism and global art discourse, defines our contemporary moment and its international exhibitions. Yet, lasting institutional change is still forming. Our Call for Research for issue 12 of the Stedelijk Studies Journal seeks approaches, ideas, or experimental projects that align with the broad scope of the Diaspora as a framework for the critical examination of museum collection strategies. 

Specifically, we are interested in how the Diaspora could be a foundation for collection policies that are based on kinship building, strengthening cultural affiliations, and how movement and relocation can be applied to the display and mediation of museum collections. Further, we are interested in the histories of peoples and objects themselves, and the speculative possibilities for museums that are grappling with the responsibility of being cultural mediators today. 

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is currently taking steps in rethinking its acquisition and exhibition strategies. The first step it has taken is to reconsider its collection of over 100,000 pieces into two spheres. The first comprises works that belong to the long twentieth century in which modernism was central—a collection that the museum acknowledges as its foundation and raison d’etre. Many of the works that are considered to belong to the “diverse” part of the collection, are made by artists within the worldwide European Diaspora—which can be seen as a regionalist repatriation and continuation of the Western canon of modern art.  

The second sphere is concerned with recently acquired works and is motivated by emigrational movements, postcolonial constellations, and community engagement. By breaking away from the modernist acquisition strategies that formed the heart of the Stedelijk’s foundational collection, the museum can now examine how plural Diasporas might shape its full collection by incorporating the complexities of (the movement of) objects and people. As custodians of the collection, we are obligated to care for it, now and for future generations, which means building in-roads for multiple heritages. While maintaining its steadfast recognition of the past as a source of (un)learning, the collection is then allowed a more open future as we are guided by deep research, critique, and care.  

We understand that “Diaspora” does not undo the logic of coloniality and modernity and could even be interpreted as reinscribing these systemic problems. However, as our current period suggests, global movements are diverse and multiple, and Issue 12 seeks out those complex connections between all agents, both animate and inanimate. While we are interested in the prospects that emerge from Diasporic acquisition strategies, we also understand systems are persistent and we will take extra care in considering contexts, and to give historical and speculative models equal weight. 

The deadline for the abstract or artwork proposal (max. 300 words and optionally max. 5 images) and CV (merged in one PDF file) is March 1, 2022. 

 

About
Stedelijk Studies Jourmal is a high-quality, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The journal comprises research related to the Stedelijk collection, exploring institutional history, museum studies, and current topics in the field of art and design.

This is an abbreviated text. For the full call for research, visit stedelijkstudies.com

Contact Email: 

stedelijkstudies@stedelijk.nl

URL: 

https://stedelijkstudies.com/call-for-research-stedelijk-studies-journal-12/

• Read more or reply

The Garage Journal Support Program for Independent and Early Career Researchers, March 1, 2022

 

The Garage Journal Support Program for Independent and Early Career Researchers is delivered by The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture. The program is intended to encourage new, original research and to foster diversity and inclusivity in the academic environment. It provides financial and professional assistance in preparing the recipient’s work for publication.
 

Who can apply for The Garage Journal Support Program? 

• early career researchers (those who are at the initial stage of their academic career, irrespective of their age—for example, graduate students in the last year of their studies, researchers who acquired a position at a university, museum or another institution in the past three years, etc.);
• independent researchers (those without institutional affiliation or support);
• researchers who do not have access to funding in their country of residence (i.e., where there is an inadequate provision of research funding, grant programs, or scholarships due to economic and/or political circumstances).

 

To participate in the program, applicants must provide:

(a) a short cover letter, where the author outlines her/his motivations and
reasons for applying for the support program (see Section 2);

(b) an academic resumé (one page);

(c) a list of the author’s publications (one page) or, in their absence, a
description of the planned research activities for the next 1–3 years (one
page);

(d) an abstract for the submitted research work (150 words);

(e) the full text/contents of the research work (article, essay, visual essay, etc.)
that the author would like to publish in The Garage Journal. The manuscript should be formatted in accordance with the journal’s style guide.

 

Application deadlines in 2022: 

1 round — March 1, 2022 
2 round — July 1, 2022
3 round — October 1, 2022
 

Details of the application process can be found in the Program regulations.

 

Founded in 2019, The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture (https://thegaragejournal.org/en/) is an independent interdisciplinary academic platform that advances critical discussions about contemporary art, culture, and museum practice in the Russian and global contexts. It publishes original empirical, theoretical, and speculative research in a variety of genres (in English, German and Russian), celebrating innovative ways of presentation. Fully peer-reviewed, The Garage Journal provides a source book of ideas for an international audience.

Contact Info: 

Anastasia Robakidze,
Editorial Manager, The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture
 

 

Contact Email: 

a.robakidze@garagemca.org

URL: 

https://thegaragejournal.org/en/int/announcements/grants-details?id=22

• Read more or reply

LIVING IN THE AGE OF ANGER: REPRESENTING ‘NEGATIVE SOLIDARITIES’ IN CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL CULTURE, Call for Papers, November 1, 2021 to November 25, 2021

 

Subject Fields: 

Film and Film History, Humanities, Popular Culture Studies, Race / Ethnic Studies, Social Sciences

Anglistica AION. An Interdisciplinary Journal

Call for Papers

Living in the Age of Anger: Representing ‘negative solidarities’ in Contemporary Global Culture

Editors Rossella Ciocca and Sabita Manian

When in 2017 Pankaj Mishra published The Age of Anger: A History of the Present, he verbalized an iconic title for a shared condition of our global contemporaneity. All over the world, forms of ‘negative solidarity’ (Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 1968) - a concept also evoked by sociologist, Emile Durkheim - manifests itself with local adaptations. It has traveled transnationally, and paradoxically prospered due to the weakening of national sovereignties in which the severe limits of the impoverished welfare state, unable to dispel the generalized perception of insecurity and sense of disposability, produces systemic mistrust in personal agency and a correlated thirst for ‘problem-solving’ authoritarianism. The challenges posed by refugees and immigrants to the bulwarks of citizenship, national culture and identity tends to make some individuals more prone to inventing scapegoats (e.g., intellectuals, elites, minorities such as Muslims, women, Blacks, Jews, and even mainstream politicians) for their real or imagined problems. Even the threat of global climate change, instead of inspiring cooperative action, tends to generate blind forms of social anxiety, pessimism and anti-scientific conspiracy theories.

The very beginning of 2021 saw one of the most striking episodes of this universal crisis of social consensus: on January 6, a mob of Trump’s supporters attacked the US Congress attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Such illiberal trends and negative solidarity have appeared globally - from Brazil to Myanmar, or from Turkey to India. 

This issue of Anglistica, will focus on the aforementioned historical conjunction and contemporary social features leading to the current global variant of ‘negative solidarity,’ and examine the role and manifestations of sociopolitical culture in highlighting, understanding, denouncing, contrasting, mourning the Age of Anger, as represented in literature, film, tv, the performing and visual arts, as well as through other media communication including journalism and historical and political discourse.

Papers must be original work that is not previously published elsewhere. We invite contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

• Religion and anger
•  
• Gender and anger
• Ethnicity, marginalization and anger
• Communalism Vs Community
• Isolation and competition
• Entrepreneurialism, social greed 
• Geo-political fields of tension
• Post-imperial melancholies, global fears
• Hate-speech and communication
• Visualizing terror, representing angst
• Storytelling and trauma
• Narration as antidote against poisonous socialization 
• Literary/artistic forms of activism

Deadline for abstracts:  15 November 2021 [250-300 words]

Notification of acceptance:   10 December 2021

Deadline for completed articles: 10 February 2022

Please contact: Manian@lynchburg.edu  OR  Rciocca@unior.it 

Contact Email: 

Manian@lynchburg.edu

• Read more or reply

Urban people journal. New issue, Journal, September 27, 2021 to February 1, 2022

 

Subject Fields: 

Anthropology, Cultural History / Studies, Modern European History / Studies, Race / Ethnic Studies, Urban History / Studies

Dear colleagues!

I am happy to announce the publication of the new English edition (23/2) of the international anthropological journal Lidé města / Urban People. 

The new issue covers a wide range of geographical areas and groups of people: Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang, China; Czech and Slovak migrants in the Arctic/Svalbard, Norway; Vietnamese migrants in Prague, Czechia; international tourists and ethnic minorities in New York; and the historical Catholic Church in Brazil.

More on the following link: https://urbanpeople.cuni.cz/LMENG-97.html

Please, read the new issue, and share it with your colleagues, students, and friends!

Moreover, authors can already start sending us contributions for next year’s English edition.

With regards!

David Verbuč

Editor-in-Chief of the English editions of Lidé města / Urban People journal

Contact Info: 

David Verbuč

Contact Email: 

david.verbuc@gmail.com

URL: 

https://urbanpeople.cuni.cz

Narrative Culture Seeks New Editors

 

---- posted on behalf of the journal's editorial team ----

The journal Narrative Culture (H-Index: 4) is looking for new editors. The journal claims narration as a broad and pervasive human practice, warranting a holistic perspective to grasp its place comparatively across time and space. Inviting contributions that document, discuss, and theorize narrative culture, the journal seeks to offer a platform that integrates approaches spread across numerous disciplines. The field of narrative culture thus outlined is defined by a large variety of forms of popular narratives, including not only oral and written texts, but also narratives in images, three-dimensional art, customs, rituals, drama, dance, music, and so forth.

The journal was founded by Ulrich Marzolph (Kitzingen, Germany) and Regina F. Bendix (Göttingen, Germany) in cooperation with Wayne State University Press. Three years ago, Francisco Vaz da Silva (Lisbon, Portugal) joined the editorial team. The editors have found strong and important support from peer reviewers for this double-blind reviewed journal. Wayne State University Press, specialized in the field of folk narrative research and beyond, provides excellent support in copyediting and processing the issues into publication as well as keeping the editors appraised of subscriptions and readership. In addition to full print and online subscriptions, the articles can be purchased individually on both JSTOR and Project MUSE. Thus the journal is a convenient resource for teaching in the realm of narrative research. The first issue of Narrative Culture appeared in 2014 and over the course of time, the journal  has garnered attention among scholars of narrative research in an interdisciplinary range of fields, from folkloristics to literature studies, anthropology, history, children’s literature and so forth. Currently, we are in the happy position of having a backlog of contributions ready to publish. As editors, we have sought to publish scholarly contributions from around the globe, and we are happy that the top countries reading Narrative Culture consistently include—besides North America and Europe—China and India, Australia and New Zealand.  We see this widespread readership as evidence of the success of our mission to promote a globalized scholarly discourse and exchange.

Along with this international orientation goes the journal’s affiliation with the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. One article per year, chosen by the editors, is made available to ISFNR members free of charge.

Having worked on the journal for a considerable amount of time, the editors would like to successively segue out of the editorial  responsibility, and pass the venture on to a team of 2-3 new editors. In order to ensure a smooth passage, at least two of us would stay on for one or more issues. We would hope to have the journal in new hands at the latest with volume 11 (2024).

Individuals or pairs of scholars interested in taking on this journal should have a well-established interest in “narrative culture” in the broad sense represented by Narrative Culture. The present editors have done this as a labor of love without institutional support but applicants may certainly attempt to have their institutions support the editorial task with course release or other forms of support.

Applications should contain a letter outlining the nature of interest in the editorship and possibly prior editorial experience, as well as a CV and publication list. They should be addressed to the present editorial team:

Ulrich Marzolph umarzol@gwdg.de

Regina Bendix rbendix@gwdg.de

Francisco Vaz da Silva francisco.silva@iscte-iul.pt