[csaa-forum] CFP: New Zealand Journal of Media Studies Special Issue - Technology in Aotearoa-New Zealand

[Geoff Stahl]

Apologies for cross-posting.  Please circulate the following to those you think would be interested in contributing.

New Zealand Journal of Media Studies Special Issue: 
Technology in Aotearoa-New Zealand
Editors: Minette Hillyer and Geoff Stahl (Victoria University of Wellington)

This special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies is dedicated to exploring the role technology plays in constructing narratives told of Aotearoa-New Zealand.

Historically, technology exists as an interface and form of interaction between place (real and imagined), the individual, and the nation. In Aotearoa-New Zealand, this has played out in many varied and complex ways. Technology holds a privileged place in many narratives describing how New Zealanders imagine themselves. Contemporary terms like ‘DIY’ and ‘Kiwi ingenuity’ reflect this familiar story, in which New Zealand nationhood is typically figured as a series of problem-solving encounters between technology and landscape. Such a narrative can minimize the significance of encounters between people(s) in this place, and conflate regional, cultural, and historical variations in modes of production and ways of being. Among the questions we might ask of the historical role of technology in narratives of Aotearoa-New Zealand are: How well have narratives of techno-nationalism in Aotearoa-New Zealand accounted for the encounter between peoples in this place? How has technology been used to narrate our historical relationships to place and to one another, and how else might it do so? How, and where, do settler and indigenous narratives figure in discourses of technology? Do discourses of the ‘creative industries’ and the ‘knowledge economy’ reflect a similar facility with the use and incorporation of technology in the production of a national ethos and ethnos as our previous, and apparently intimate relationship with, to take one example, number 8 fencing wire? How do technology and its discourses mediate or reflect configurations of power, race and ethnicity, whakapapa, gender, or place? 

We welcome contributions on the role that technology plays, and has played in mediating a range of identities and discourses, as well as symbolic and political economies in Aotearoa-New Zealand.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words are due on November 30th.

Final drafts of no more than 6000 words to be submitted for review on March 1st, 2011.  Inclusion of images and audio clips are encouraged.  Intended publication date is July 1st, 2011.

Please send your abstracts to both editors:
Geoff Stahl: geoff.stahl at vuw.ac.nz
Minette Hillyer: minette.hillyer at vuw.ac.nz

Best regards,
Geoff Stahl

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Dr. Geoff Stahl
Lecturer, Media Studies
81 Fairlie Terrace, Room 102
Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600
Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand
Phone: +64 4 463 5233 (ext. 7472)
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