Special issue of NmediaC, The Journal of New Media and Culture
Topic: New Media, Sex, and Culture in the 21st Century
Submission Deadline: April 15, 2010
NmediaC invites submissions of research articles, essays, and web-based art for a special issue on New Media, Sex, and Culture in the 21st Century. Sex has a long history of being subjected to technologies of observation, regulation, enhancement, and representation. Certainly many of the discourses and technologies of the Internet have been preoccupied with it, even though the U.S. government and other groups have tried to make it harder for people to find sex online. One of the messages of the “cyberporn scare” of the mid to late 1990s in the U.S. was: It’s here, and it’s bad! But in the drawn-out process of letting everybody know about it, online porn became somewhat normalized. As van Doorn (2009) argues: “pornography has been involved in a ‘mainstreaming’ process over the past decade…simultaneously, the public discourse on sex and sexuality has grown exponentially.” Foucault observes how sundry discourses of sexuality espouse a veil of silence and prudishness towards sex while at the same time positioning people to seek knowledge about it, observe it and talk about it. The rhetoric of the cyberporn scare asked society to wall up and hide pornography, but ended up forcing people to accept it and engage it more directly, whether it is to talk about it, joke about it, actively seek it, or actively avoid it. Web2.0 publishing tools and social media networks have made it easier for people to publically talk about sex and to publish their own sex online for anyone to see. Scholars and artists who explore any aspects of online pornography, NetPorn, the sexualization of Web2.0, sexual identities in postmodern society, and many other subject areas are invited to submit their work.
This special issue of NmediaC will be launched in collaboration with a juried art exhibit in Detroit, Michigan set for the summer of 2010. The articles and web-art from the special issue will be featured in the show.
Submission: Email submissions in Word, HTML or PDF to jlillie@loyola.edu
The editor for this issue will be Jonathan Lillie of Loyola University.
Submissions and inquiries about the on-site art show in Detroit should be directed to Steve Coy at: loucoy@hotmail.com
Jonathan Lillie, Loyola University Maryland
Email: jlillie@loyola.edu
Visit the website at http://www.ibiblio.org/nmedi
Object of Fashion 