CFP: Octopus Vol. 4: "Import/Export"

Call for Papers: Import/Export
Octopus (Volume 3) Fall 2007
www.octopusjournal.org
Deadline for Submissions: May 1, 2007

"Octopus: A Visual Studies Journal" invites submissions for its third volume, Import/Export.

What do the registers of the visual and the aesthetic contribute to contemporary and historical perspectives on globalization, immigration, economics, culture, and artistic practice—especially as they relate to questions of exchange, influence, traffic, regulation, control, the porous, the impenetrable, and the transgressive? Our efforts to make these issues more tangible also compel us to investigate the stakes of cultural transmission and problematize forms of cultural exchange. Explorations of what occurs between these historical, geographical, and conceptual spaces are also encouraged.

We are interested in the ramifications for import/export in the art world. It is crucial that we rethink received modernist lineages of artistic influence and recover the place of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean world in the legacy of modernity and modernism. Moments of cross-cultural artistic exchange or collaboration offer another mode for thinking about artistic import and export. The continuing popularity of strategies of appropriation and recuperation demonstrates the vitality of the import/export question in visual and artistic practice.

Octopus encourages work that questions the notion of “import/export” or rephrases the question in fruitful ways from a diverse range of historical, theoretical, methodological, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary approaches.


Paper topics may include but are not limited to:

- Globalization: cultural and economic processes
- Pirates and Piracy: exchange/sharing of information
- Trade in historical perspective
- Transportation
- World bank, IMF
- Travel, tourism, souvenirs, and collecting
- Appropriation, rehabilitation, and recuperation
- Processes of selection and access
- Politics of space
- Pilgrimage, Ecotourism, destination shopping
- Rethinking the canon and modernism
- Data and new media
- Satellite television, Internet, viewer reception
- Nationalism, borders, and mestizo cultures
- Immigration debates
- Cultural export- and importation
- Center/periphery model and its limitations
- Imperialism and the colonial legacy of political importation
- Simulation, re-creation, re-enacting, anachronism
- Translation, reinterpretation
- Intellectual exchange: debates, emigres, “schools of thought”

Deadline for Submissions: May 1, 2007.

Submission Guidelines:
All submissions must include the title of the contribution, the name(s) of the authors, and the postal address, e-mail address, and phone numbers for the author who will serve as the primary contact with the editors on revisions.

Electronic submissions should be sent as Microsoft Word .doc or Rich Text Format attachments to [email protected]. Please put the word “submission” somewhere in the subject line.

Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 150 words, six keywords, and a short biographic entry about the author(s). Please provide a brief history of the manuscript; whether it is part of a dissertation or thesis, book-length project, conference presentation, etc. Because Octopus follows a policy of blind peer-review, no material identifying the author(s) should appear anywhere other than on the detachable title page. Manuscripts should conform to CHICAGO formatting standards.

For book reviews and criticism [~750 words] please include title of book(s), retail price, and ISBN at the beginning of the review. Art/show reviews should include the gallery, curator, and dates. For film and video/media reviews, include the director, production company (if applicable), and year of production.

Manuscripts and reviews submitted to Octopus should not be under consideration at any other journal. Written permission to reproduce film and video stills, artworks, photographs, song lyrics, or any other copyright protected materials must be obtained by the authors from the copyright-holders before submission.

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Octopus is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published by the graduate students of the Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. The journal is devoted to work by emerging scholars engaged with visuality, culture, history, and theory from a range of contexts, disciplines, and methodologies. In addition to submissions on “Import/Export,” Octopus welcomes scholarship and criticism addressing questions regarding the politics of vision, the historicity of visual practices, and the cultures and theories of vision and visuality on an on-going basis.

www.octopusjournal.org
[email protected]