Elissa Jenkins on 13 Dec 2000 11:33:22 -0000


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[Nettime-bold] M/C: New Issue Available/Call for Contributors


(If for some reason you would rather not receive future M/C news
releases, please drop us a line at mc@api-network.com).

M/C has a new email address:
from now on, please direct all correspondence to
mc@api-network.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 13 December 2000

The Media and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Queensland is proud to present issue six in volume three of the award-winning:

M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture - http://www.api-network.com/mc/

PLEASE NOTE THE NEW ADDRESS: UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS!

'renew' - Collectively Edited Issue

M/C is turning three. Well, not quite, but we're at the finish of our third volume, and that's a good time to pause and take stock of what and where we are and what we want the future to hold for us. The M/C operation is going through a number of changes at the end of 2000 -- editorial collective members are stepping down from their jobs, others are taking up the challenge --, and this infusion of fresh blood is bound to renew our
impetus. To mark this changeover, we've brought the band back together, with articles from most of the original contributors of M/C 1.1 ('new').

But the 'renew' issue is not about self-congratulary navel-gazing. Our outlook in this issue is to the future, not to the past -- to the ongoing study of media and culture rather than the contributions we've been able to make in our own brief existence. At M/C, we've always seen ourselves as part of a wider movement towards the crossover between the popular and the academic.

There is no question that our strategy has been successful. We have a regular and widely international readership. We have an incredible international list of contributors to M/C which has given the journal an enviable international and national profile in the field of media and cultural studies. But we want more. We want to be more engaging, more
widely read and actively make ideas move from the intellectual periphery to the cultural and political hearths.

The 'renew' issue underlines this mandate and attempts to reinvigorate the journal with its original style posture and acknowledgement of its now international contributors. Part of this issue is designed as a moment of self-reflection by those first M/C writers, not so much on the journal itself but more generally on the concept of renewal. The other part of the issue is collected from submissions made to this theme from other writers.

What we have produced is a powerful double-shot of perceptive ponderings on renewal in and around media and culture, including the following articles:

"'Unacceptable Renewals': The Geopolitics of Martian Cartography"
Adam Dodd uses the Mars face controversy as a looking glass through which
to critique the broader science of cartography, the technologies actualising this science, and the politicised discourses of the people who practice Martian cartographies.

"Reknowing the Bicycle; Renewing its Space"
Felicity Meakins considers the early impacts of the bicycle on our land- and cityscapes, before the motor car made its presence felt. With the resurgence of cycling as a means of transportation as well as recreation, Meakins suggests some of these effects may be renewed.

"Virtual Domesticity: Renewing Cybernetic Living Environments"
Nick Caldwell moves from discussing cyberspace in terms of how it manipulates the real to suggesting how the real can "colonise" cyberspace. Caldwell relates the personal computer to metaphors of domestic space, suggesting that we relate to the PC in ways which reflect our own manipulation of living space.

"Dash or Slash?: Renewing the Link between Media and Culture"
Axel Bruns ruminates on some issues that surrounded the naming of the journal nearly three years ago -- looking at the name "M/C" and the implications that pesky "/" has had for information structuring conventions on the World Wide Web and computer systems in general.

"Renewing Cultural Studies"
P. David Marshall suggests that the project of cultural studies can be described as the study of recombinant culture, which inherently engenders its own renewals of theory, policy and practice, and he engages with the study of cultural production as it occurs on the side of the audience.

"One or Many Media?"
Steven Maras uses M/C's title slash to begin a discussion of the tensions between those treacherously similar terms 'medium', 'media', and 'the media'. In an effort to tease out the fine distinctions separating them, he traces the conceptual frameworks attached to each term, uncovering their complex interrelationships.

"Plus Que Ça Change: The Telephone and the History of the Future"
Janin Hadlaw mobilises the material and social realities which provide the emergence of new technologies with their historical footing as a legitimate ground from which a notion of ongoing renewal in the field of techno-communications can be advanced.

"Natives on the Electronic Frontier: Television and Cultural Change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation"
Taking apart an older anthropological position around media and traditional culture -- that media such as television and radio destroy the authenticity and community roots of a society --, Steven Mizrach works through a preliminary reading of how television can be a source for the renewal of the languages and crafts of an Amerindian community.

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M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture - http://www.api-network.com/mc/

Call for Contributors

The University of Queensland's award-winning journal of media and culture,
M/C, is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal.

To see what M/C is all about, check out our Website, which contains all the
issues released so far, at http://www.api-network.com/mc/. To find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit http://www.api-network.com/mc/contribute.html.

We are now accepting submissions for the following issue:

'sorry' - article deadline: 22 January 2001
issue editors: Paul Newman, Tseen Khoo & Kathryn Goldie

The issue of a national apology to the stolen generation by the Federal Government has for some time been central to cultural and political debate in Australia. The desire for the performance of official sorrow has come to dominate arguments about racial atonement, taking over from native title in the 1990s and the (recently resurgent) treaty focus of the
1980s.

The official 'end' to Australia's initial reconciliation process offers an opportunity to assess the current and future status of the sorry issue, with its inextricable links to problems of cultural responsibility, mourning and historical guilt. International instances of redress, treaty, and apology offer potential models of resolution for Australia's
divisive history of race relations. With the likelihood that Australia's next Prime
Minister will offer some form of national apology, the terms of the movement for the redress of white-indigenous relations may alter considerably.

This issue will reflect on the process and the implications of saying 'sorry', in this and other cases. Send us your contributions!

'sorry' issue release date: 21 February 2001


Further topics for the year 2001 are:

'mix'         (deadline 19 Mar. / release 18 Apr.)
'sick'        (deadline 14 May  / release 13 June)
'creator'     (deadline  9 July / release  8 Aug.)
'colour'      (deadline  3 Sep. / release  3 Oct.)
'work'        (deadline 29 Oct. / release 28 Nov.)

We're looking forward to your articles !

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And finally...

This issue marks the end of Axel Bruns's work as M/C's Production Editor since 1998. All M/C correspondence to the new address, mc@api-network.com, will now be handled by M/C's new Coordinating Editor, Elissa Jenkins. The M/C team is very grateful to Elissa for accepting this interesting and challenging role, and we wish her the best of luck in her work with M/C.

Personal correspondence for Axel Bruns can be directed to snurb@uq.net.au.

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M/C issue six, vol. three is now online: http://www.api-network.com/mc/.

Previous issues of M/C on various topics are also still available online.

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M/C Reviews is now available at http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/

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All M/C contributors are available for media contacts: mc@api-network.com

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end

Elissa Jenkins
Co-ordinating Editor
M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture
mc@api-network.com
http://www.api-network.com/mc/