CFP: NECSUS issue on War

CALL FOR PAPERS

NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 
#6   Autumn 2014
"War"

On the occasion of the centenary of the First World War, NECSUS is announcing a call for abstract submissions for a special section on ‘war’ to be published in autumn 2014. The First World War was called the ‘Great War’ and is often claimed to represent the birth of modern warfare. How can this modernity be related to the concurrent development of new forms of mass media in the early 20th century? How are military and entertainment technologies entangled in what Paul Vitilio calls a ‘logistics of perception’?

War has been a central topic for media of all kinds on a global scale. Can we re-evaluate the shifting terrain of aesthetics and ethics of war films and television broadcast series? The birth of modern warfare also means the birth of modern methods of documenting war. How has a rapidly-changing documentary impulse affected depictions and the reception of war? How has new media affected the execution of war plans and maneuvers? Now that strategies and actions can be planned and enacted using computers and a variety of handheld devices, what does war mean in the 21st century? What are the implications of cyber-warfare? In the age of digital networks, violent confrontations appear to be multiplying under many different names: asymmetrical war, guerilla fighting, terrorism, low-intensity conflicts. How does the thinking about ‘new wars’ (Mary Kaldor, Martin van Crefeld, Herfried Münkler) affect media and media studies? Furthermore, modern video games allow one to enter wartime environments and function as a soldier or commander. How do we chart our fascination with reliving and reinventing war narratives? War, in all of its mass-mediated qualities, is the subject for exploration in this NECSUS special section.

Abstracts can relate, but are not limited, to the following:

• World War 1 feature films, documentaries, and footage in online archives
• the relation between war technology and media technologies in the past and the present
• war photography
• changed perceptions on war and war memories
• cyber war and future scenarios of war

Abstract due December 1, 2013. Full submission instructions and call available at the NECSUS website.