‘CFP “Home Video & Media Texts” – Post Script Special Issue
Editor: Richard Nowell
Despite exerting an almost unprecedented influence on audiovisual cultures across the globe, home video has inspired a relatively narrow range of scholarly inquiry. On the one hand, media theorists and historians have tended to consider how this multifaceted phenomenon facilitated changes to the structure and organization of national film industries, especially that of the United States. On the other, they have examined the responses of stakeholders such as fans, moral watchdogs, and state institutions, especially in the United Kingdom. By contrast, apart perhaps from hardcore pornography, comparatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which home video shaped the texts the media industries crafted and disseminated; not only films but also movie marketing campaigns, companies’ brand identities, and works of professional criticism, to name but a few. As a consequence of these tendencies, home video has come to occupy something of an exceptional position in media historiography insofar as it has yet to provoke the type of sustained, multi-directional analyses rightly devoted to other technologies and means of delivery, such as television, widescreen, multiplexing, DVD, and new media like the internet and mobile telecommunications. By shifting attention from industrial structures and the dynamics of various forms of critical reception toward home video’s affect on texts produced by the culture industries, this issue of Post Script hopes to contribute to the larger task of deepening understandings of the economic, aesthetic, and social impact of arguably the most important change in content delivery and consumption of the late twentieth century.
Accordingly, submissions of original essays are sought, which may cover, but are by no means limited to, the relationships between home video and:
– the types of film produced
– the types of film imported into a specific country or region
– the character of specific film genres
– trans-generic content
– the content of individual films and series
– the content of international co-productions
– multimedia collaborations and tie-ups
– marketing campaigns and strategies
– professional magazine and book publishing
– corporate or institutional branding
– public personae of media workers
Interviews with industry professionals relating to this topic are also welcomed.
Those interested in being considered for inclusion in this issue of Post Script should submit an abstract of 200-300 words along with an academic bio of around 100 words, to no later than 30 September 2015. All acceptances will be issued within a couple of days of this deadline (if not sooner). Please feel free also to direct any general inquiries about this issue of Post Script to the aforementioned email address; a swift response is guaranteed.
Completed essays can be expected to be 7,500-8,000 words in length (including references and bibliography), with final drafts expected late summer 2016 (exact dates to be confirmed upon
acceptance).
Richard Nowell teaches American Cinema at the American Studies Department of Charles University in Prague. He is the author of Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle (Continuum, 2011), the editor of Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2014), and has published essays in several volumes and journals including Cinema Journal, the Journal of Film and Video, the New Review of Film and Television Studies, and previous issues of Post Script.
POST SCRIPT is a refereed journal, publishing three times a year for the last thirty-four years, and is indexed by the Federation Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF); The International Index to Film Periodicals; Film/Literature Index; MLA International Bibliography; An Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities; Gale, EBSCO, and, the International Index to the Performing Arts(Chadwyck-Healey). POST SCRIPT does not publish any work that has previously appeared in print with the possible exception of a translation of rare material not generally accessible to scholars.’
