“Screening Indigenous Bodies”
Special Issue of Screen Bodies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Experience, Perception, and Display
Guest Editor: Dr. Sol Neely (Cherokee Nation)
Screen Bodies is a peer-reviewed journal focusing on the intersection of Screen Studies and Body Studies across disciplines, institutions, and media. It is a forum promoting research on various aspects of embodiment on and in front of screens through articles, reviews, and interviews. The journal considers moving and still images, whether from the entertainment industry, information technologies, or news and media outlets, including cinema, television, the internet, and gallery spaces. It investigates the private experiences of portable and personal devices and the institutional ones of medical and surveillance imaging. Screen Bodies addresses the portrayal, function, and reception of bodies on and in front of screens from the perspectives of gender and sexuality, feminism and masculinity, trans* studies, queer theory, critical race theory, cyborg studies, and dis/ability studies.
For this special issue, we are curating a collection of essays that concern the screening of Indigenous bodies across a variety of con/texts—from historical and genealogical studies of representation to the most contemporary Indigenous film productions including feature films, short films, animated films, and more. We are also interested in topics that directly relate to (as the above description indicates) “the portrayal, function, and reception of [indigenous] bodies on and in front of screens from the perspectives of gender and sexuality, feminism and masculinity, trans* studies, queer theory, critical race theory, cyborg studies, and dis/ability studies.”
At Screen Bodies, we are no less interested in the “Screens” side of the journal mission as the “Bodies” side—which means that contributions can take up the depiction and reception of indigenous bodies on any kind of screen, including museum screens, television screens, tablets, or smartphone screens.
The timeline for this project is pretty swift. We would like to have all articles ready by December for a spring 2019 publication date. We realize this is quick but if you have a project in the works or an idea needing an occasion, we encourage you to submit your manuscript. This special issue of Screen Bodies will be titled “Screening Indigenous Bodies.”
If you are interested, please send completed manuscripts by 1 December. We also welcome authors to submit 3-6 images with their articles. Please feel free to forward this email to others who might be interested in contributing. We would like to establish our list of contributors in the next few weeks.
Send abstracts and submissions to Dr. Sol Neely: sjneely@alaska.edu