Cultural legitimation: the valorization of popular culture

Posted: February 20th, 2010 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | Comments Off on Cultural legitimation: the valorization of popular culture

Edited by Hélène Laurin and Dominic Arsenault

Founded at the Université de Montréal, Kinephanos is a bilingual inter-university web-based journal. Focusing on questions involving cinema and popular media, Kinephanos encourages interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. The journal’s primary interests are movies and popular TV series, video games, emerging technologies and fan cultures. The preferred approaches include cinema studies, communication theories, religion sciences, philosophy, cultural studies and media studies.

Theme

Kinephanos’ second issue aims to explore cultural legitimation. One of the discourses in our late modernity era seeks to valorize many movements and phenomena dubbed “popular.” According to Pierre Bourdieu, cultural legitimization is a movement toward making one field autonomous, whether be its audience, or its economic foundations. However, this accreditation operates according to many strategies, oftentimes unique, oftentimes shared, but always drawing on wider social issues. One can think of remediation, as explained by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin: whether be it cinema as “filmed theater,” comic books as “graphic novels,” or video games as “interactive movies,” the same relationship of “homage and rivalry” is at stake with the prior, already established media and arts. We wish to publish articles presenting those moments where popular culture is valorized, while addressing the characteristic issues of this phenomenon, such as the question of aesthetics or the question of power relations.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– Case studies: video games, popular music, Hollywood cinema, television, animation
– Cultural legitimation and celebrity
– Power and cultural legitimation
– Internet and cultural legitimation
– Academia and cultural legitimation
– Adaptations and transmediality
– Cult objects
– Popular culture and its socio-economic context
– Cultural industries’ histories

While Kinephanos privileges publication of thematic issues, we encourage writers to submit articles exceeding the theme which will be published in each issue.

How to submit?

Extended abstracts between 4 and 7 pages are to consist of the object, the problem addressed and the title of the article. Please include bibliographical references, your name, email address and your primary field of study.

Send submissions (in French or English) by March 15th, 2010 to: [email protected] or [email protected].

Following our acceptance sent to you by email (no later than April 1st), please send us your completed article by July 1st, 2010.

Editorial rules

For the editorial guidelines, refer to the section Us & How at: http://www.kinephanos.ca. Kinephanos accepts articles in French and in English.

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