The Payne Fund studies of the 1920s and 1930s attempted to discover—with questionable scientific rigor—whether attending the movies was emotionally and physically harmful to children. Was it the case that disturbing scenes and sensory reactions to light and sound caused children to become nervous, agitated, and upset? Although the Payne studies were controversial and inconclusive, they reflected a general concern about the effect of films on children’s well-being that would influence media regulation and discourse for years to come. Many popular and academic conversations about kids and media are still dominated by the belief that children are vulnerable, developing bodies in need of constant oversight. David Buckingham famously defined these discourses as pedagogical and protectionist, and argued that they can limit the study of kids’ media. Like Buckingham, we see potential pitfalls with the pedagogical and protectionist approaches, including regressive views of audiences; arbitrary boundaries between adult and child cultures; and a neglect of formal analysis and historical inquiry. Significant work has been done in a number of disciplines that seeks to address these challenges and concerns, but there is more to add to the film and media studies conversation that recognizes the complexity of children’s media and the cultures surrounding them.

For this issue, The Velvet Light Trap seeks historical and contemporary studies of kids’ media: that is, media aimed exclusively at kids, media produced with kids in mind as part of the larger audience, or media made by kids themselves. Submissions should add to the study of kids’ media as a creative, social, and cultural phenomenon by moving beyond the protectionist and pedagogical binary. We welcome topics that reflect the agency of young people, acknowledge the complexity of these media texts, and expand film and media histories. We will consider papers that concern people under the age of 18—teens, tweens, “young adults,” infants, and everyone in between—and topics with a national, regional, or international scope. The following subjects offer some topic areas, though submissions are not limited to the following:

• Issues of gender, race, and the queering of childhood
• Children as producers of content, online and in film or TV narratives
• New research methodologies: issues when studying kids or using kids as co-researchers
• Merchandising, toy culture, franchising, and paratexts of kids’ media
• Traditional kids’ media forms and genres—fairy tales, animation, fantasy, etc.—and their boundaries and hybridity
• Child stars and the stars of children’s shows or films
• Sites of kid fandom and kids’ fan culture
• Age and age differentiation within the realm of kids’ media
• Texts with crossover appeal to multiple age demographics
• Industrial studies of kid-focused networks, studios, websites, etc.
• Children’s film festivals and other sites of exhibition
• Historiographic inquiries into the conditions affecting children’s media: technological change, taste cultures, distribution and exhibition practices, external censorship, self-regulation, etc.
• Institutional and educational media

Submission Guidelines:

Submissions should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words, formatted in Chicago style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. 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.

Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com. Submissions are due September 5, 2015.

The Velvet Light Trap has extended the deadline for its forthcoming “On Sound (New Directions in Sound Studies)” issue to September 1, 2013. Though the initial call was very successful, the Editorial Board especially welcomes any additional submissions that address sound-related issues and topics in radio, television, video games, digital/new media, and other non-film media.

The medium of sound, long placed in a secondary position to the visual within media studies, has experienced a considerable increase in scholarly attention over the past three decades, to the point that “sound studies” is now a distinct field of scholarship. Within media studies, sound-related research today expands well beyond the film and television score or soundtrack to include a broad range of scholarship on radio and popular music.  And while sound studies still tends to cohere around media studies departments, an increasing amount of sound media research is interdisciplinary in nature. A “sonic turn” is under way across the humanities and social sciences with sound studies work now coming out of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, science and technology studies, cultural geography, American studies, art history, and cultural studies.  Recent issues of differences (2011) and American Quarterly (2011) and anthologies like The Sound Studies Reader (Jonathan Sterne, 2012) are just a few examples of this expanding range of interest.

This issue of The Velvet Light Trap aims to build upon many of the new lines of inquiry that are coming out of this intersection between sound media and various other scholarly perspectives. In that spirit, we are seeking essays for an issue on the research and study of sound in and across a range of media.

Potential areas of inquiry may include, but are by no means limited to:

• analysis of music, voice, and sound effects in film, radio, television, video games, podcasting, and other digital or “new media,” including significant developments in audio aesthetics and style
• convergence of sound and visual media
• sound art and experimental forms of sound media
• materiality of sound, including sound reproduction and other technologies of sound
• media industries, production cultures, and issues related to sound labor, audio production practices, or the commodification of sound
• histories of audio media and archaeologies of mediated sound
• aural representations of identity, power, difference and the politics of sound media
• mediation of voices and language, noise and silence, and muteness, deafness, and other issues of the body and disability
• listening practices and sound media in perception and everyday life
• psychoacoustics and cognitive studies of sound media
• architecture, acoustics, and space, including “soundscapes” and sound media in relation to public health and public policy
• theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of sound media

Submissions should be between 6,000–7,500 words (approximately 20-25 pages double-spaced), formatted in Chicago style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a one-page abstract, both saved as separate Microsoft Word files. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. The journal’s Editorial Board will referee all submissions. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com. All submissions are due September 1, 2013.

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 Charles Acland, Richard Allen, Harry Benshoff, Mark Betz, Michael Curtin, Kaye Dickinson, Radhika Gajjala, Scott Higgins, Barbara Klinger, Jon Kraszewski, Diane Negra, Michael Newman, Nic Sammond, Jacob Smith, Beretta Smith-Shomade, Jonathan Sterne, Cristina Venegas, and Michael Williams.

Men watching television at US Penitentiary Terre Haute Indiana 8/7/1959, From "These Americans"

As breakthroughs in digital technologies compel scholars to address media consumption outside the traditional contexts of the theater and the home, media historians remind us that audio/visual materials have always proliferated in other places: city halls, churches, courtrooms, classrooms, hospitals, union halls, corporate offices, factories, and laboratories. Within such alternative venues, media function as tools of education, justice, agitation, advocacy, professionalization, strategy, training, and proselytizing. These frequently overlooked uses of media, beyond art and entertainment, remind us that the patterns of production, distribution, and consumption commonly invoked by terms like “the movies” or “television” represent only certain configurations within the broader field of media practice.

Recent developments in the accessibility of educational and industrial media—through the Internet Archive, YouTube postings of leaked training videos, and DVD anthology collections (e.g., Treasures from American Film Archives)—have brought these other media venues and practices to a new prominence. Likewise, an increase in scholarly attention paid to “useful” media, as in the recent anthologies Useful Cinema (Acland and Wasson, 2011) and Learning with the Lights Off (Orgeron, Orgeron, and Streible 2012), encourages us to revise our assumptions about how media function in everyday life and rethink the very definitions of media forms that scholars often take for granted.

Exploring the incredible diversity of media production and practice across these many contexts opens up a wide field of possible study. Attending to how media has long been used by religious institutions, civic organizations, NGOs, unions, libraries, governments, and prisons might mean investigating alternative modes of reception, compulsory viewing, and resistant readings. It could also mean a turn to how various modes of ideology, style, and representation serve institutional ends. Studies interested in media within the academy might explore how audiovisual and applied media are employed in scientific and social scientific research or how media policy shapes the production and distribution of educational media. Historical analyses could investigate how film, video, and sound recordings found their way into the factory and museum tours and why ambient music has infiltrated public and semi-public spaces (malls, factories, restaurants, waiting rooms). Likewise, production cultures of industrial media and the histories of key practitioners and production houses provide robust topics for media industries research. The list of additional possible avenues of research is expansive, ranging from training videos, sponsored film, and institutional uses of podcasts to the intersections between institutional media, architectural design, and spatial politics.

These are the issues the editors of The Velvet Light Trap are interested in exploring in its latest issue. If you are also interested in the production, distribution, exhibition, and/or reception of educational, industrial, and other institutional film, video, television, audio, and new media, past and present, we encourage you to submit a paper. We are accepting anonymous electronic submissions between 6,000 and 7,500 words in Chicago style until September 15, 2012. To submit a paper or to learn more, send an email to thevelvetlighttrap@gmail.com.