<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Dear colleagues,</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><br><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Please find below a CFP for a special issue to be submitted to <i>Cultural Studies</i>. Abstracts should be directed to Stuart Poyntz (<a href="mailto:spoyntz@sfu.ca" target="_blank">spoyntz@sfu.ca</a>). Questions and inquiries may be directed to Stuart or myself.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><br>Benjamin Woo, PhD<br>--<br><a href="http://benjaminwoo.net" target="_blank">http://benjaminwoo.net</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/wooesque" target="_blank">@wooesque</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><b><br>
</b></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><b>Call for Papers</b></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><i>Scene Again: Social Life,
Research, and Cultural Studies</i>
–
Special Issue intended for <i>Cultural
Studies</i></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><br><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Scenes are bounded worlds set within the fabric of everyday life.
Participating in scenes produces shared experiences, affects, and identities.
They are places to see and to be seen, but they hide behind the everyday – to
find them you have to know where to look. The concept as we use it here was
introduced by Will Straw in a <i>Cultural
Studies</i> article just over twenty years ago (Straw 1991) as a way to
characterize the cross-fertilization and transformation of popular-music
practices in specific locales and communities. Straw has since revisited the
concept and extended <span> </span>its reach to
embrace other kinds of cultural life, “particular clusters of social and
cultural activity” that do not always have secure “boundaries which
circumscribe them” (Straw 2004, p. 412).</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><br></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>It is in this spirit that we contend “scene” was a concept ahead of
its time, a resource for a robust, empirically oriented cultural studies or
sociology of culture. Rather than simply studying scenes as cultural objects, however,
we believe the term is most generative for cultural studies research when
employed as a structuring tool for analysis – a “sensitizing concept.” Learning
to see “circulatory matrices” (Gaonkar & Povinelli, 2003) of people,
practices and objects as scenes enables us to pick out objects of analysis from
the flux and flow of everyday life. In our Internet era, terms such as
“network” are also available, but we believe that “scene” is a more materially oriented
and inclusive methodological resource that forces us to consider the shared spatial
and affective dimensions of social life. Using “scene” in a broader range of
research areas, beyond music scenes and art scenes, allows us to identify the prevailing
conditions and structures of feeling that bind people together in education
scenes, healthcare scenes, activism scenes, and so on.</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><br></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>As a concept and metaphor, “scene” is provocative and flexible, but
what difference might it make to the way that we approach and report on
cultural life? We wish to showcase the usefulness of “scene” as a research
concept in cultural studies by collecting together new scholarship in critical
dialogue with Straw and the scenes perspective. We invite contributions that
work with and test the limits of the scenes perspective through rich,
historical and material analyses of empirical case studies across a range of
cultural spaces and practices. Some potential topics include but are not
limited to:</font></span></p>
<ul><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Histories of scenes, including those
which explore the dissolution or dispersion of a scene.</font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Comparative analyses of scenes across
geographical or historical spaces.</font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Analyses of hierarchy and power within
and between scenes (particularly those which deal with race, gender, sexuality,
and/or class).</font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>The intersection of online and offline
practices which co-constitute a particular scene. </font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Institutions and intermediaries central
to the growth and reproduction of a scene.</font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Nodal places where multiple scenes
intersect (libraries, cafes, community centres, etc.)</font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Scenes produced in suburban, exurban,
or virtual environments.</font></span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font><span><span style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"></span></span>Efforts to map or visualize the
materiality of scenes as they develop over time.</font></span></li></ul>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Please submit an 800-word abstract by <b>December 15<sup>th</sup>, 2012</b> to <a href="mailto:spoyntz@sfu.ca" target="_blank"><b>spoyntz@sfu.ca</b></a>.</font></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Editors:<br></font></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Stuart
Poyntz<br>School
of Communication, Simon Fraser University <br></font></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Jamie
Rennie<br>Humanities,
Social Sciences and Social Justice Education, OISE at the University of Toronto</font></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font>Benjamin
Woo<br>Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities, Simon Fraser
University</font></span></p>