FYI... Stefanie Rixecker ECOFEM Coordinator ------- Forwarded message follows ------- CALL FOR PAPERS Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia Introduction Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia is a collection being edited by Audrey Yue (English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne), Chris Berry (Performance Studies, University of California, Berkeley) and Fran Martin (English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne). It will be the first book to examine the strategic appropriation of new media technologies in the dynamic production of Asian sexual identities. We have had strong expressions of interest from both Duke University Press and The University of California Press, and are seeking proposals for papers for inclusion in the collection. Timeline We seek 200 word proposals for papers, including a brief bibliography where appropriate, by June 15 2000. Proposals should be emailed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The editors will contact authors by July 15 and solicit the 5 to 6 remaining papers to be included in the anthology. Finished papers should be between 4000 and 5000 words in length, and should be received by November 1 2000. The Book Challenging eurocentrism in queer and gender studies, Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia seeks to draw critical attention to the much noted but under-researched emergence of queer Asia. It aims to answer recent calls for work on local responses to cultural globalisation. And it will further the current shift away from generalised speculation about new media uses and effects and towards qualitative empirical research. Taking a perspective on Asia to re-orient critical thinking across these fields, Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia will investigate new media such as faxes, mobile phones, the Internet, bulletin board systems, pagers, global television and diasporic cinema. It will consider these as sites for the everyday negotiation of emerging Asian sexual identities and cultures. The queer appropriation of these media has both local and global impacts and implications, subverting state regulatory policies, delineating new consumption practices, and mapping locally specific but transnationally interconnected routes of desire. Contents We welcome all proposals for papers. At this point, we have a core body of work, as detailed below. Therefore, we are especially interested in work that addresses South Asian and South East Asian contexts. We are also keen to include papers dealing with technologies not addressed in the existing chapters, such as cell phones and pagers. Questions we hope would be addressed by the papers to make up the remainder of the collection include the deployment of new media in the negotiation of gender, class and ethnicity, and the role of new media in trans-local communication among queer communities within and outside the region. Core papers already confirmed Below is a list of abstracts of chapters confirmed for inclusion in the collection. Veruska Sabucco, "Western Queer Reading of Eastern Queer Texts: How the Internet Enabled Western Fandom of Japanese Shounen Ai and Yaoi Manga". Sabucco's paper analyses the cultural politics of the recent explosion of interest by Western audiences in Japanese queer and slash comics, arguing that the Internet has played a crucial role in the dissemination of these products to non-Japanese readerships. Veruska Sabucco has recently completed her doctoral thesis in the Sociology Department at La Sapienza University in Rome. Her book Shounen Ai will be published by Castelvecchi this year. Mark McLelland. "Japanese Queerscapes: Global/Local Intersections on the Internet." McLelland's paper looks at the ways in which Japanese Internet sites trouble heteronormative constructions of sexuality in terms of the reproductive demands of the Confucian family, suggesting that sexual representations on the Internet have much in common with Japan�s traditional� entertainment world where gender ambivalence has long been a central fantasy trope. Dr Mark McLelland is a research fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. His Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities is forthcoming with Curzon Press this year. Chris Berry and Fran Martin. "Queer�n�Asian On the Net: Syncretic Sexualities in Taiwan and Korean Cyberspaces." Berry and Martin�s paper intervenes in recent debates about "global queering" through an analysis of the role of Internet technologies in emergent local lesbian, gay and queer communities in Taiwan and South Korea in the late 1990s. Dr Chris Berry has published widely in the areas of Asian cinema and queer studies. He is author of A Bit on the Side: East-West Topographies of Desire, and co-editor of The Filmmaker and the Prostitute: Dennis O'Rourke's The Good Woman of Bangkok. He is shortly to take up a position in the Film Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Fran Martin recently completed her doctoral thesis in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, where she is currently lecturing. She has published papers on queer literature, cinema and cultures in Taiwan in journals that include Positions and GLQ, and has published literary translations of recent Taiwan fiction. Ta-wei Chi, "Castro Street in Taiwan: Imagining Queer Communities on the Internet" Chi�s paper argues that the transnational imaginings of Taiwan�s emergent lesbian, gay and queer communities have been realised not on the streets, but online, and raises questions that include: is an online community anything close to a community in real life? Is the Internet less a community than a closet? Ta-wei Chi is one of Taiwan�s foremost young "queer" writers. He is the author of three story collections, Queer Senses (1995), The Membranes (1996) and Fetish: the Stories (1998), as well as one critical essay collection, Sexually Dissident Notes from Babylon (1998). Chi has also edited two anthologies of queer literature and queer theory from Taiwan. Chi is a graduate of National Taiwan University and is currently a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at UCLA. Audrey Yue. "Singapore as New Asia�: Modern Sexuality, Multicultural State Policy and Cybernetic Rice." Yue�s paper analyses the consumption of computer-mediated communication technologies by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in Singapore, and argues that the Internet has enabled an emerging queer presence that redefines the essentialised discourse of guanxi (networks, friends, alliances, kinship). Dr Audrey Yue is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at The University of Melbourne. She is the author of Pre-Post-1997: Postcolonial Hong Kong Cinema 1984-1997 (forthcoming) and her publications on diaspora cultures, media, sexual and ethnic identities have appeared in The Horror Reader (Routledge, 2000), Meanjin, New Formations and Multicultural Queer: Australian Identities (Haworth Press, 1999). ------- End of forwarded message ------- ************************************ Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker, Senior Lecturer Environmental Management & Design Division Lincoln University, Canterbury PO Box 84 Aotearoa New Zealand E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: 64-03-325-3841 ************************************
