Call for manuscripts for special issue of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture

Target Issue: Volume #5, Issue #1 (2011)

Coloring the Environmental Lens:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cinema, New Media, and Just Sustainability

Guest editors: Salma Monani, Gettysburg College; Belinda Chiu, Duke University; Carlo Arreglo, University of California-Berkeley

We are seeking manuscript submissions on the role of cinema and new media in engaging environmental issues from the perspectives of traditionally marginalized groups (specifically socio-economically depressed groups and racial and ethnic minorities in the American and global context). We deliberately conceive cinema broadly (as its Greek root suggests) to include various moving images—documentary and fictional film, video, television—and are also interested in new media such as video games, internet video shorts, blogs and online gaming.

Recent scholarship has begun to actively highlight the importance of engaging different racial, cultural, and socio-economic perspectives within the arena of environmental sustainability. Specifically, the concept of just sustainability forwarded by Julian Agyeman, Robert Bullard, and Bob Evans (2005) is a theoretically and pragmatically vigorous framework that scholars have begun to use to evaluate and elucidate issues of color, race, ethnicity, and/or regional power dynamics that determine whose voices are heard within the environmental arena and how they are heard. However, there is relatively little comprehensive attention devoted to the way cinema and new media intersect with and highlight issues of environmental justice and sustainability. This special issue hopes to fill this current gap in environmental, cinema, and new media scholarship.

We invite essays from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary angles, and welcome analysis of films/videos/new media, filmmakers, film festivals, national cinemas, or classroom practices. We are particularly interested in readings of cinema that do not neatly fit traditional categories of nature or environmental films, and in articles that engage new media, such as online gaming, Internet video platforms (i.e. YouTube), and blogospheres that utilize social spaces in alternate ways. We are also interested in critiques of contemporary environmental cinema and new media that omit the voices of various traditionally marginalized groups despite their relevance to the issues discussed.

Manuscripts should be prepared in English, and should not exceed 8,000 words including references. The journal adheres to APA Style. Manuscripts must not be under review elsewhere or have appeared in any other published form. For further details on manuscript submission, please refer to the ‘Instructions for authors’ on the journal’s website (www.informworld.com/renc). Upon notification of acceptance, authors must assign copyright to Taylor and Francis and provide copyright clearance for any copyrighted material. Manuscripts should be emailed tosmonani@gettysburg.edu by January 30, 2010. Please disseminate this CFP to any colleagues that might be interested.