CALL FOR PAPERS MEDIA AND TRANSPORT PANEL (SCMS NEW ORLEANS): MARCH 2011

This panel seeks papers that interrogate the relationship between media and transport and attempt to rethink media through the lens of transportation and vice versa. At a metaphoric level, transport indicates carrying away, in the sense of physical mobility, movement between worlds, and even emotional ecstasy. Understanding the term in this way can lead to fruitful new ways of understanding media technologies.

In a cultural historical vein, some scholars, such as Ben Bachmair and Lynn Kirby, have called attention to the pervasiveness of transportation preceding and accompanying the omnipresence of communication devices in which the culture of the transportation system paves the way for the ensuing media form. More broadly, theorists such as El Lissitsky and Rudolf Arnheim have analogized forms of transportation to forms of communication, and still others, chiefly Marshall McLuhan include vehicles of all sorts as media. This panel defines media broadly to include visual and aural forms with electronic, digital, and mechanical systems of production and transportation.

The CFP is for a conference in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA) from March 10-13, 2011. More information is available at SCMS, Society for Cinema Media Studies.