CFP: Issue 117: Radical Histories in Digital Culture (Radical History Review)
The Radical History Review seeks submissions for an issue that will explore the political and historical implications of the accelerated proliferation of digital culture in the first decade of the 21st century.
We are now in the midst of a dramatic cultural and political change as digital culture in the form of personal communication devices, online social networking sites, instant mass messaging, multiuser video games, and numerous other digital media forms, reshape the way we communicate and interact with each other. Just as the modern industrial era reshaped the nature of human and political subjectivity, the digital information era is reshaping social movements, how we view ourselves in relation to the social and political, and rewiring where, how, and with whom we engage in political action.
This issue of RHR will examine the impact of digital culture on political life at the local, national, and transnational level, such as the “Twitter Revolution” in Iran, social networking and the Arab Spring, and the popular use of digital communication tools in “Occupy Wall Street”. It will explore the strengths and weaknesses, and popular perceptions, of digital media in struggles for justice through a series of interlocking themes including but not limited to:
1. The mobilization of local, national, and transnational social movements through the use of social network sites, tweets, texting, and other forms of networked and instantaneous communication forms.
2. The rhetoric of digital “equality” and unequal access to digital culture: class, race, region, and gender, and access to social media and digital communication technologies.
3. The impact of digital culture on collective memory, conceptions of the historical, historical research methods, and the writing of history.
4. The role of history in digital humanities: archival practices, collecting history online, historical text mining, and digital storytelling.
5. New and emerging communication gatekeepers, stealth campaigning, corporate/state deception or propaganda, online surveillance or information mining, and the state’s manipulation of networked information in war/conflict situations.
6. Oppositional consciousness and a reshaping of civic involvement and political participation in a digital world.
7. Individualism, social networking, and the emergence of a neoliberal subjectivity in cyberspace.
8. “Serious” video games and social change; multiuser online games and the countering of complex social/political challenges.
9. Art, culture jamming, and a contestation of visual culture by artists or artist groups working in the digital arena.
10. Digital technology and journalism/photojournalism: from the proliferation of alternative news sources to the impact of cell phone photos and video as documentation.
11. Digital culture and the law: the policing of cyberspace; digital media as legal evidence.
12. Radical software, open-source initiatives, and efforts to liberate software, hardware, or digital media infrastructure from corporate/state governance.
13. Radical pedagogies for the digital age.
At this time we are requesting abstracts that are no longer than 400 words; these are due by December 31, 2011 and should be submitted electronically as an attachment, to contactrhr@gmail.com with “Issue 117 submission” in the subject line.
By February 15, 2012, authors of approved abstracts will be asked to submit their full articles for peer review. The due date for completed drafts of articles is July 1, 2012. An invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee publication.
Please send any images as low-resolution digital files embedded in a Word document along with the text. If chosen for publication, you will need to send high-resolution image files (jpg or tif files at a minimum of 300 dpi), and secure written permission to reprint all images. For preliminary e-mail inquiries, please include “Issue 117” in the subject line. Those articles or other materials selected for publication after the peer review process will be included in issue 117 of the Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in Fall 2013.
Abstract Deadline: December 31, 2011
contactrhr@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/calls.htm
