Call for papers - The Cultural Visualization of Hurricane Katrina

Students,

This was posted early in August but came to us again, so we are re-posting. If you already submitted something, please be assured that all the info remains the same.

Best,
Georgia

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Invisible Culture: A Journal For Visual Culture

Deadline for Papers: October 15, 2009

Guest Editors: Nicola Mann and Victoria Pass, University of Rochester

 The Cultural Visualization of Hurricane Katrina

Over the past four years, various forms of visual media have focused their
lenses on the swathes of watery land that make up the Mississippi delta.  Since
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in summer of 2005, the region and its
residents have been subject to intense televisual, filmic, artistic, and
media-based scrutiny.  From Geraldo Rivera’s tearful live reports from the
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, to Kanye West’s frustrated declaration at
the NBC Concert for Hurricane Relief that “George Bush doesn’t care about
black people,” to the widely acclaimed documentary film Trouble the Water
(2008), images of the hurricane, the people it affected (and continues to
affect), and the land it ravaged have been projected into our living rooms
through a series of visual representations.

Much of the scholarship on this topic has focused on socio-cultural issues
including rebuilding strategies, the failure of homeland security, and
testimonial accounts of “survivors” or “witnesses.”   This issue aims to
analyze representations of Katrina and its aftermath using the methodologies of
visual and cultural studies.  We are interested in the ways that analyses of the
politics of representation, as exemplified in the case of Katrina, opens up into
a discussion the evolution of visual and cultural studies in the last ten or
twenty years.

We seek papers that consider visual representations of Hurricane Katrina in a
ways unimaginable at earlier points in the intersection between visual studies
and cultural studies.  From CNN.com’s award winning “Voices from the Gulf
Coast” podcasts, to the various discussion blogs that have emerged in the wake
of the event, to Google Earth’s satellite imagery overlays of the devastation
in the affected region, to the television show “Extreme Makeover: Hurricane
Katrina Home Edition,” we have seen in Katrina’s aftermath a plethora of new
modes of visual diffusion. Furthermore, the intensification of mass media, both
in terms of the sheer quantity of media outlets and in the reach of its
dissemination, has given rise to a new experience of historical time and
geographic proximity, in which we experience historical events through media
representations almost immediately as they happen and regardless of where they
occur.

Additionally, the interactivity of new media has reoriented the
producer/consumer binary of traditional media.  We are interested in the
representational politics of these new visual rhetorics and in the new and often
hybrid apparatuses through which we experience them.  For example, a critical
alternative to the mainstream news media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina arose
across multiple platforms. When compared to more “traditional” documentary
forms of disaster representation such the Associated Press’ controversial
global dissemination of “looting” photographs, does the immediacy and
interactive nature of new media responses render their vision more absolute,
real, and perhaps most importantly, “true”?

Is the semiotic approach of, for example, Roland Barthes on photography—which
arose in relation to a very different mode of cultural production—still
relevant?  Can the even earlier model of Frankfurt School-style ideology
critique help us to understand popular culture and its capacity for social
change?  How might these now-familiar methodologies be refashioned for the
current culture?  Or what methods have eclipsed them?  One key concern of this
issue is whether technological shifts and advancements in the dissemination of
media over the past twenty years have changed the way we see beyond the
recognition of our interpretive paradigms.  If the object of visual studies has
changed, how might we adapt the discipline to engage with the current mode(s) of
cultural production?

Accepted essays will accompany the transcript of an upcoming roundtable
discussion between the founders of the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural
Studies at the University of Rochester’s co-founders, on the occasion of the
program’s twentieth anniversary (Mieke Bal, Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly,
Kaja Silverman, Constance Penley, and Janet Wolff; moderated by Douglas Crimp).

Possible avenues for the exploration include, but are not limited to:


Films:
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
- Trouble the Water (2008)
-When the Levees Broke (2008), Spike Lee
-Hellp, Darren Martinez

Blogs:
New Orleans Ladder
The Survival of New Orleans weblog
Nola blog

Televisual depictions of the hurricane and responses to it, for example:
-news coverage of “looting”
-Comic Relief (2006)
-House (May 16, 2006), FOX
-Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, “The Christmas Show,” (Dec. 4, 2006)
-The Daily Show

Artistic responses to Hurricane Katrina:
Prospect 1: New Orleans (international biennial)
News photographs
“Remembering Katrina,” the official Hurricane Katrina souvenir program.

Mainstream news journalism
Urban renewal efforts
Personal photographs

NOLA:
NOLA tourism
The disappearance of “authentic” indigenous NOLA culture
NOLA outside of Bourbon Street
Representations of local culture in New Orleans

Please send inquiries and completed papers (MLA style) of 2,500 – 5,000 words
to Nicola Mann (nmann2[at]mail[dot]rochester[dot]edu) and Victoria Pass
(vpass[at]mail[dot]rochester[dot]edu) by October 15, 2009.

In Visible Culture is also currently seeking submissions for book and exhibition
reviews (600-1000 words). To submit book or exhibition review proposals please
email ivcbookreviews[at]gmail[dot]com. For a list of reviewable titles, see:
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Reviews/review_copies.html

***********
Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture is a peer-reviewed
journal dedicated to explorations of the material and political dimensions of
cultural practices: the means by which cultural objects and communities are
produced, the historical contexts in which they emerge, and the regimes of
knowledge or modes of social interaction to which they contribute.

http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/

Draper Student News: Yvonne Garrett, Reader in Sixth Annual Marathon Reading of "Song of Myself"

On Sunday, September 6th, Draper student Yvonne Garrett participated in the Sixth Annual Marathon Reading of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." Yvonne writes about the experience below.

This past Sunday I was one of some forty New Yorkers who read aloud Walt Whitman’s epic poem “Song of Myself.” Organized by the Whitman Project, the reading was hosted by NYU Professor Karen Karbiener and took place aboard the tall ship Peking at the South Street Seaport Museum in Lower Manhattan.

Jack Putnam from the Museum started the reading with a brief historical background and Prof. Karbiener provided an introduction to Whitman and his work. Each of the readers was vastly different in reading style – some very straightforward and others highly theatrical. All ages and many accents – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Southern, some I couldn’t identify – were represented giving the reading a decided Whitman-esque quality. Although the day started out sunny and fair, by the time my sections came up (36 and 37), the wind had picked up, the sky was filled with ominous clouds and the temperature had dropped – a fitting backdrop for those sections which start, “Stretch'd and still lies the midnight/Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness..” Most of the readers read from the project-provided Dover Thrift edition although some used their own preferred version of the poem. Whitman was famous for his revisions (some claim that these revisions often did not improve the poem) and hearing the back and forth between the different versions gave the reading a unique depth that a straight reading can’t provide.

The reading itself took nearly three hours – an exhausting but also exhilarating event. This is my second year participating and the uniquely New York experience of hearing and reading this poem aloud with so many other New Yorkers in such an apt setting (the foredeck of a 19th Century barque) is one I highly recommend.

Draper Fall Orientation and Welcome Back Party: Tonight!

Thursday, September 3, 2009
5:00 - 7:00 PM

Introduction and Presentations:
13-19 University Place, 1st Floor Auditorium (Room 102)

Reception following in Draper Map Room, 14 University Place

Incoming and returning students are encouraged to attend our fall orientation to receive important information about starting the semester, learn about fall courses and upcoming events, and meet faculty and staff. A reception will follow in the Draper Map room and food and drink will be served.

Introducing Amber Musser: Draper's New Faculty Fellow in Gender Politics

This semester, Draper is delighted to welcome two new faculty fellow members to our program. Amber Musser joins us as the faculty fellow in Gender Politics and will be teaching two courses for us this year: 'Introduction to Gender Politics I: Melancholy, Politics, and Identity' and 'Topics in Gender Politics: Objects of Affection.' Please see below for her introduction.

Amber Musser joins the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program as an Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow in gender politics. Dr. Musser received an A.B. in Biology and History of Science from Harvard (2002), a M.St. in Women’s Studies from Oxford (2003), and a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard (2009).

My work focuses on psychoanalysis, queer affect, and theories of subjectivity. My dissertation, "On the Subject of Masochism," is a history of the various readings and re-readings that produced masochism's discursive shift from psychiatry to critical and queer theory. Portions of my dissertation have been published: “Masochism, a Queer Subjectivity” in Rhizomes and "Reading, Writing ,and the Whip" forthcoming in Literature and Medicine. All of my work is a dialogue between history and philosophy of science, critical theory, queer and feminist theory, and critical history. In addition to bringing science and gender and sexuality studies together in conversation, I believe that treating these areas together reveals a new space in which to situate and destabilize our prevailing notions of subjectivity and agency. This perspective allows me to focus on understanding race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and class as critical dimensions of personal experience, which also extends to the realm of science. In keeping with this theme, I have published an article, “From Our Body to Yourselves,” which discusses the shift in concepts of Woman and community within the Women’s Health Movement in the 1970s. I have also been working on an article, “The Obscure Object of Desire,” that interrogates negotiations of intimacy and sexuality in relationships with inanimate objects. In addition to turning my dissertation into a book, I am currently researching queer attachments to objects and embodiments of multiple subjectivities.

Introducing Rebecca Colesworthy: Draper's New Faculty Fellow in Literary Cultures

This semester, Draper is delighted to welcome two new faculty fellow members to our program. Rebecca Colesworthy joins us as the faculty fellow in Literary Cultures and will be teaching one course for Draper this fall: 'Introduction to Literary Cultures I.' Please see below for her introduction.

Rebecca Colesworthy joins Draper as the new Faculty Fellow/Assistant Professor in Literary Cultures after having received her PhD in English from Cornell University. Her dissertation, entitled “Modernism’s Gifts,” explores the relationship between modernist ethics and poetics by juxtaposing the work of Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Stevie Smith with theories of the gift and exchange drawn from the fields of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. In addition to completing articles on Jean Rhys and on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, she looks forward to undertaking her next project, which considers the ways in which various 20th-century writers reimagine the traditionally exceptional position of the feminine subject with respect to moral laws.

Professor Colesworthy attributes much of her investment in interdisciplinarity to her longstanding interest and work in the field of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. As an undergraduate concentrating in English and Women’s Studies at Brown University, she had the opportunity to develop a course of study at once variegated and specific to her intellectual concerns. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant for three Brown faculty members: Professor Carolyn Dean in History, Professor Mary Ann Doane in Modern Culture and Media, and Professor Elizabeth Weed at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Before attending Cornell, she also worked for two years at the National Council for Research on Women – a nonprofit network of feminist research, advocacy, and policy centers – where she gained significant insight into the difficulties and rewards of bringing the humanities and the social sciences into dialogue.