The Velvet Light Trap
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Description:
SEMIANNUAL · 8 1/2 x 11 · 112 PAGES/ISSUE · ISSN 0149-1830 · E-ISSN 1542-4251
VLT is collectively edited by graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and The University of Texas at Austin, with the support of media scholars at those institutions and throughout the country. Each issue provokes debate about critical, theoretical, and historical topics relating to a particular theme.
Recent Issues
#85, Spring 2020
#84, Fall 2019
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#83, Spring 2019
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#82, Fall 2018
#81, Spring 2018
#80, Fall 2017
#79, Spring 2017
#78, Fall 2016
#77, Spring 2016
Other past issues include:
#76, Fall 2015
#75, Spring 2015
#74, Fall 2014
#73, Spring 2014
#72, Fall 2013
#71, Spring 2013
#70, Fall 2012
#69, Spring 2012
#68, Fall 2011
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#45, Spring 2000
#44, Fall 1999
#43, Spring 1999
#42, Fall 1998
#41, Spring 1998
#40, Fall 1997
#39, Spring 1997
#38, Fall 1996
#37, Spring 1996
#36, Fall 1995
#35, Spring 1995
#34, Fall 1994
#33, Spring 1994
- The Reparative Bite of the Zombie Mouth
- Kyle Christensen
- You Already Know: Professionalizing Corrections through Instructional Film, 1976–1981
- Catherine Harrington
- Breaking the Mirror: Hausu and Bad Love Objects
- Erin Nunoda
- El Santo vs. Mystery Science Theater 3000: Lucha Libre's Transnational Journey into American Popular Culture
- Emily Rauber Rodriguez
- Remixing Vulgarity: Reint...
#84, Fall 2019
The 1990s: A Decade of Change
- Production Cultures and the "look" of Nostalgia: The Rocketeer as Failed Franchise
- Derek Long
#83, Spring 2019
The Politics of Space and Place
- "Not Very Attractive": How the Interstate Highway System Reconfigured Cinematic Space and Made the Rural Horrifying
- John Paul Taylor
- "Good Oriental Setting": Negotiating San Francisco Locations for The Killer Elite
- Joshua Gleich
- WGPR...
#82, Fall 2018
Media Dialogues
- Quality You Can't Touch: Mubi Social, Platform Politics, and the Online Distribution of Art Cinema
- Jennifer Hessler
- An "Exquisite Filmic Haze": The Complicated Politics of Reportedness in Zero Dark Thirty
- Grace Foster
- Meme Girls versus Trump: Digitally Recycled Screen Dialogue as Political Discourse
- Jennifer O'Meara
- Media Dialogues: A Scholarly Roundtable, mod...
#81, Spring 2018
Power, Freedom, and Control in Gaming
- White-Collar Play: Reassessing Managerial Sports Games
- Branden Buehler
- Beyond: Two Souls, Performance Capture, and the Negotiatory Nature of Control
- Gus Cook
- Your Daughter Is in Another Castle: Essential Paternal Masculinity in Video Games
- Shannon Lawlor
- Reaching Toward Home: Software Interface as Queer Orientation in the Video Game Curtain
- Whi...
#80, Fall 2017
#79, Spring 2017
#78, Fall 2016
#77, Spring 2016
Other past issues include:
#76, Fall 2015
#75, Spring 2015
#74, Fall 2014
#73, Spring 2014
#72, Fall 2013
#71, Spring 2013
#70, Fall 2012
#69, Spring 2012
#68, Fall 2011
#67, Spring 2011
#66, Fall 2010
#65, Spring 2010
#64, Fall 2009
#63, Spring 2009
#62, Fall 2008
#61, Spring 2008
#60, Fall 2007
#59, Spring 2007
#58, Fall 2006
#57, Spring 2006
#56, Fall 2005
#55, Spring 2005
#54, Fall 2004
#53, Spring 2004
#52, Fall 2003
#51, Spring 2003
#50, Fall 2002
#49, Spring 2002
#48, Fall 2001
#47, Spring 2001
#46, Fall 2000
#45, Spring 2000
#44, Fall 1999
#43, Spring 1999
#42, Fall 1998
#41, Spring 1998
#40, Fall 1997
#39, Spring 1997
#38, Fall 1996
#37, Spring 1996
#36, Fall 1995
#35, Spring 1995
#34, Fall 1994
#33, Spring 1994
Submissions:
The Velvet Light Trap is a journal devoted to investigating historical questions that illuminate the understanding of film, television, and other media. It publishes articles and interviews written with the highest scholarly standards yet accessible to a broad range of readers. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographic approaches from the humanities and social sciences. The journal welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism. While The Velvet Light Trap maintains its traditional commitment to the study of American film, it also expands its scope to television and other media, to adjacent institutions, and to other nations' media. The journal encourages both approaches and objects of study that have been neglected or excluded in past scholarship.
The Velvet Light Trap issues calls for papers based on specific themes. Submission requirements may vary from one call to another, and submissions must be sent to the university issuing the call. The format should follow the sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. The entire essay, including block quotations and notes, should be double spaced. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Photocopies of illustrations are sufficient for initial review, but authors should be prepared to supply camera-ready photographs on request. Illustrations will be sized by the publisher. Permissions are the responsibility of the author.
Call for Papers: The Velvet Light Trap Issue 87 - Sports and/as Media Studies
Submission deadline: January 31, 2020 
Submit to: vltcfp@gmail.com
Submission Guidelines
Historically, media studies scholars have shied away from sports-related media texts due to a variety of perceived challenges: the sheer volume of texts (there’s always something on), their inaccessibility (the texts are ephemeral and controlled by corporate archives), the ambivalence of sports cultures (at once masculine and mainstream), and more. Additionally, other fields have long dominated sports scholarship, with communication studies and sociology shaping the academic discourse and asserting their own approaches. To mitigate these challenges, media studies scholars have applied alternative approaches to understanding sports media, such as critical-cultural analyses that account for sports media constructions of difference via gender, sex, and race—and athletes’ abilities to contest those differences. There have also been deft examinations of the media industries’ economic and ideological dependence on sports; historiographical accounts that mine a wealth of underexplored repositories and sources; and audience studies that foreground the reception and consumption of the sports genre.
While these studies placed sports media squarely in the foreground, others have used sports as a case study to illuminate broader trends in media studies. For example, scholars have recently revealed the key role sports broadcasts played in the innovation and diffusion of color television, while others have considered the pivotal role broadcasting, licensing, and franchising rights played in the conglomeration and consolidation of cable networks and providers. Others have addressed gaps in audience and fan studies by engaging with under-studied sports fan cultures.
Velvet Light Trap #87 seeks to deepen media studies understandings of sports. Given our current era of destabilization (of texts, genres, technologies, industries, distribution models, franchises, policies, etc.), sports undoubtedly remains a stimulus of—and, at times, barrier to—change in the media industries. As such, we invite a variety of media scholars—not just those who specialize in sports media—to reconsider and engage with sports in new and dynamic ways, asking, for example: How have production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of sports media changed over the last century and how are those changes reflected in the wider media ecology? What is the afterlife of sports media and how have those practices impacted scholarship, pedagogy, and future production practices? Where do radio and podcasting fit into the history of sports broadcasting? How are new media technologies (streaming platforms, video games, etc.) responding to, reacting against, or complementing linear sports channels and networks?
We welcome submissions that push the boundaries of current sports media literature and/or use sports media as key case studies, exploring any of the following themes:
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National broadcasting and industrial histories
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Early film histories and the continuing theatrical exhibition of sporting events
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Sports as a key media market sector
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Identification and identity politics (race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, nationality)
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Place and space [localism with franchises and coverage; (trans)nationalism with Olympics]
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Changing role of agents and agencies
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Franchising, ownership, and management
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Publicity, promotion, and marketing
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Activism and community engagement
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Ephemerality and textual analysis
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Distribution, exhibition, and transnational flow of sports media
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Archival perspectives, footage libraries, and audiovisual asset management
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Regulation (copyright, retransmission rights, horizontal integration)
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Labor, compensation, and ecological concerns
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Production techniques
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Genre analysis (non-fiction, narrative, & documentary)
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Pedagogical applications
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Video games (licensed games and eSports)
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, formatted in Chicago Style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to vltcfp@gmail.com by January 31.
About the Journal
The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media studies. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas-Austin coordinate issues in alternation. Our Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Hector Amaya, Ben Aslinger, Miranda Banks, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Mark Betz, Michael Curtin, Kay Dickinson, Lisa Dombrowski, Daniel Herbert, Lucas Hilderbrand, Debra Jaramillo, Roberta Pearson, Debra Ramsay, Avi Santo, Jacob Smith, Jonathan Sterne. VLT's graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Jeremy Morris, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz, and Janet Staiger.
Editorial Office:
Wisconsin Editorial Office
Dept. of Communication Arts
Vilas Hall – Sixth Floor
The University of Wisconsin – Madison
Madison, WI 53706
Austin Editorial Office
Dept. of Radio-Television-Film
2504 Whitis Ave., STOP A0800
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1067
Indexers:
The Velvet Light Trap is indexed in Academic Search Premier, America: History and Life, Communication Abstracts, Contemporary Culture Index, Film Literature Index, Historical Abstracts, Humanities International Complete, IBR (International Bibliography of Book Reviews), IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature), International Index to Film Periodicals, and Sociological Abstracts.
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