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Upcoming Issues

Title	Issue Editors	Submission Date	Release Date
'barbie'	Jo Coghlan, Lisa J. Hackett, and Huw Nolan	12 Apr. 2024	12 June 2024
'porno'	Kelly Jaunzems, Harrison See, and Lelia Green	7 June 2024	7 Aug. 2024
'land'	Malcom Bywaters and Shaun Wilson	2 Aug. 2024	2 Oct. 2024
'artificial'	Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Angelique Nairn	27 Sep. 2024	27 Nov. 2024

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'barbie'

From the very outset, Barbie was marketed as a ‘Teen-age Fashion Doll’, beginning her long association with fashion. Barbie’s extensive and ever-evolving wardrobe has seen collaborations that led to her celebrating her 50th birthday in a fashion parade of designs from leading designers including Calvin Klein and Vera Wang. Barbie may have started her career as a fashion model, but her CV includes “astronaut, surgeon, Olympic athlete, downhill skier, aerobics instructor, TV news reporter, vet, rock star, doctor, army officer, air force pilot, diplomat, rap musician, president, baseball player, scuba diver, lifeguard, fire-fighter, engineer, dentist, and many more”, and in doing so she has become a role-model for girls, showing them “You Can be Anything”.

The depth of Barbie’s reach into popular culture extends into other forms: animated films, video games, books, and magazines, for example. Since 2001, 42 animated Barbie films have been made, with over US$695 million in revenue from box office, DVD, and merchandise sales. Currently, there are three animated Barbie films on Netflix, with Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse trending in Netflix’s top ten. Over 70 Barbie-themed video games have been released since the 1980s, generating US$14 million in revenue. There are also over 400 fictional Barbie books and magazines in print. In its opening weekend, Barbie (2023) set records as the biggest film opening in the US in 2023, and became the highest-grossing in history of all movies directed by a woman.

This call for papers is seeking articles on the role and impact of Barbie in popular culture, from her inception by Ruth Handler in 1959 to the 2023 film release. We are happy to accept papers on any topic relating to Barbie, but here are some ideas to inspire you:

• “I want to be a part of the people that make meaning...” – Barbie in popular culture
• “I begged my mother for a Barbie doll and she said no because I was assigned male at birth” – gender and toys
• “Some things have been happening that might be related. Cold shower. Falling off my roof. And my heels are on the ground” – Barbie in the real world
• “Don’t eat!” – the 1960s Barbie diet guidebook and the thinness ideal
• “I'm here to see my gynaecologist!" – Barbie and the physical and literal representations of genitalia
• “I’m a liberated man, I know crying’s not weak” – a male doll in a female world
• “Why didn’t Barbie tell me about patriarchy?” – gender and politics in Barbie
• “Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism have been solved” – Barbie and feminism
• “Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him” – the female and male gaze
• “KEN IS ME!” – Barbie and the fluidity of identity
• “Be who you wanna be” – Barbie as inspirational role model
• “Hey Barbie girl” – people who take on real-life Barbie personas
• “Life in plastic, it’s so fantastic!” – environmental concerns
• “She’s black! She’s beautiful! She’s dynamite!” – racial dimensions and tensions
• “Everyone knows the real Barbie is the blonde, white one” – Barbie as a racial construct
• “Math class is tough!” – contradictions in Barbie rhetoric
• “I am not a Barbie doll!” – feminist backlash against Barbie’s construction of womanhood
• "To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses I lost interest" – animals in Barbiesphere
• “I'm a man with no power, does that make me a Woman?” – gender constructions in Barbie
• “Barbie for President” – political representations of Barbie
• “In the dreamhouse” – the architecture of Barbieland
• “There’s a princess in every girl” – what is Barbie role-modelling?
• “Barbie is a doctor, and a lawyer, and so much more than that” – Barbie, work, and occupation
• “Humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever.” – the immortal life of Barbie
• "Do you guys ever think about dying?" – the mortal life of Barbie
• "I don’t have anything big planned. Just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies, and planned choreography, and a bespoke song. You should stop by" – music and dance in Barbieland
• Barbie’s ‘Happy Family’ series – pregnancy and parenthood in Barbieland
• “Don’t blame me: Blame Mattel; they made the rules” – weird Barbie and projected meanings
• “I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world” – popular culture responses to Barbie
• “What was I made for?” – reinterrogating Barbie then and now

Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be double-blind refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition).

Details

• Article deadline: 12 Apr. 2024
• Release date: 12 June 2024
• Editors: Jo Coghlan, Lisa J. Hackett, and Huw Nolan

Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to barbie@journal.media-culture.org.au.

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'porno'

At the crossroads of popular culture and adult sexual content, the porno casualises pornography, rolling off the tongue and slipping neatly into the everyday lives of adolescents and young adults. Although not universally used by teens, ‘porno’, like porn, references the affection and affectation implied by the Australian diminutive. It robs ‘pornography’ of the heavy load placed upon it by health education syllabi, by content classification regimes, by parents, and by law enforcement. The word porno reclaims acceptable aspects of pornography with the aim of presenting it as a casual, non-threatening part of everyday life, enabling those who accept and circulate this reading to be part of the ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’. Who wouldn’t want to align against ‘them’ with a little frisson of autonomy and self-directed exploration of sexual content from the Web, sharing key texts as part of a favourite gaming platform? Does being a fun, oppositional aspect of popular culture mean that porn is nothing to worry about? Or does it mean it’s more insidious than ever: the predatory wolf dressed as a cuddly sheep? Is porn today’s biggest risk to childhood innocence?

This issue of M/C Journal problematises a very contemporary Catch-22: most Australian children have seen pornography before they leave primary school, but adults can’t really talk to them about it, or provide critical commentary upon it, because under-18s are minors, and there are few acceptable adult speaking positions when it comes to talking to kids about porn. We ask:

• What do pornos mean to those deemed too young to consume sexual content?
• How do teens perceive porn? Do they see it as adults do?
• What cultural materials do teens mobilise to formulate their attitudes to porn?
• Do pornos intersect positively with LGBTIQA+ teen culture?
• “Everywhere they say that it’s harmful but they don’t say how” (Spišák). Is it?
• Is the porno a particular feature of the global north?
• Does porn differ from its more serious cousin, pornography?
• Is porn appropriately regulated? (Would age verification measures solve underage access to porn?)
• Is sexting a part of porn culture?
• Do teens learn anything useful from pornos?
• Are parents and politicians always going to worry?

Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be double-blind refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition).

Details

• Article deadline: 7 June 2024
• Release date: 7 Aug. 2024
• Editors: Kelly Jaunzems, Harrison See, and Lelia Green

Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to porno@journal.media-culture.org.au.

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'land'

The environment is one of our most valuable assets, critical to food production, sustainable living, societal health, and well-being. In the physical sense, land is the ground we walk on and the locality we move through. Yet a philosophical meaning also implies what this issue considers as a ‘landing’. Moreover, the ingredient for this issue is a conversation between the physical land and more esoteric or ambiguous ‘landings’.

Land can be the dwelling we call home, the neighbourhood of our local community, or even the state or nation to which we are born, belong, or aspire to inhabit. The word ‘land’ carries an environmental semiotic with undertones of nationalism, boundaries, and personal ownership. Some considerations from this reveal a relationship with land that, on the one hand, imbues a spiritual subjectivity, and on the other hand, reveals a tumultuous relationship: we mine, deforest, and pollute land in as much as swathes of expanding suburbia continue to envelop our cities and urban sprawls.

However, land can also imply the aircraft or ship returning us home from a journey, delivering us to work, or escaping to another experience. We may land on a great idea, finally make that important decision, or simply drop down beside a friend on the couch. A landing may be planned or an immediate, impulsive decision. To land upon something may give great joy or deliver significant tragedy. People land on a distant shore, planet, or far-flung island with the result being innovation, new experience, or potentially contagion, destruction, and violence.

We invite submissions to this issue of M/C Journal that investigate the contemporary understanding of land and landing. Authors are encouraged to explore beyond the interpretation of land as the quarter-acre block with a garage.

This issue is interested in the intersection of politics, community, home, environment, suburbia, health, and land. Topics and areas of discussion may include but are not limited to:

• The airport landing
• Health and landscape
• The intersection of Internet and land
• Queer landscape
• New lands
• Agriculture
• Deforestation
• Suburbia
• Regional living
• Memory of previous land
• The relationship between local and global

Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be double-blind refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition).

Details

• Article deadline: 27 Sep. 2024
• Release date: 27 Nov. 2024
• Editors: Malcom Bywaters and Shaun Wilson

Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to land@journal.media-culture.org.au.

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'artificial'

In our twentyfirst century, the distinction between the natural and the artificial has blurred, with advancements in technology and the increasing sophistication of synthetic materials and virtual environments. For instance, in recent years much has been made of the evolutionary power of artificial intelligence by media and communication scholars (amongst others), excited by the advances this technology can herald. Yet considerations of artificiality are not always willingly embraced, given that the ‘artificial’ has been perceived as unnatural, human-made, and unreal. These understandings have and do hold negative connotations, constructing artificiality as imitative, fake, and insincere. Such perceptions exist despite artificial developments bringing benefits to several fields including the environment, food technology, biology/life, and aesthetics (to name a few).

Exploring the artificial is also commonplace across popular culture, from films like The Matrix and Blade Runner to fiction novels like Klara and the Sun, to the virtual and augmented realities common in gaming. The application of the artificial, then, is far-reaching, penetrating broadly. In view of these considerations, this issue seeks to explore the broad and multifaceted concept of the artificial, examining its essence, its manifestations across different domains, and its implications for society, intelligence, culture, ethics, media, and the environment.

We invite submission for this issue of M/C Journal that investigate the multifaceted and multidisciplinary interpretations of the term ‘artificial’ in media and culture, in social, cultural, political, and representational terms.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• The perceived dichotomy of ‘real vs artificial’
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Social media and the ‘artificial self’
• Artificial worlds and virtual/augmented realities
• Artificial identities (digital, social, and beyond)
• ‘Natural vs unnatural’ discourses
• Intersections of the biological, the medical, and the mechanical (including cybernetics)
• Artificial bodies and prosthetics
• Artificial foods and consumption experiences
• Artificial life and the environment
• Artificial life forms and dystopian futures
• The ethics of ‘artificial’
• The human and the inhuman
• Art and ‘artificial’ creations
• Representations of ‘artificial’ in film, television, games, comics, anime, manga, and beyond

Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be double-blind refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition).

Details

• Article deadline: 27 Sep. 2024
• Release date: 27 Nov. 2024
• Editors: Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Angelique Nairn

Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to artificial@journal.media-culture.org.au.

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