The Mechademia series continues twice a year from the University of Minnesota Press, edited by Frenchy Lunning and Sandra Annett.
All submissions should be sent to the Mechademia submissions editor. Please indicate the title of the volume you are submitting to as follows: “Submission–[volume name]” in the subject line. Submit two copies of your article as either a Word document or a PDF. One of these copies should be anonymized: do not include your name anywhere in the article (named citations of your own work are acceptable, provided you do not use first-person language to discuss the work in question).
Submissions should be 5,000-7,000 words and follow the Mechademia style guide, which is based on the Chicago Manual of Style.
Vol. 11.1: Childhood
The first volume of Second Arc will be published in 2019.
Vol. 12.1: Transnational Fandom, guest ed. Andrea Horbinski
The second volume of Second Arc will be published in 2019.
Vol. 12.2: Materialities Across Asia, guest ed. Stevie Suan
The third volume of Second Arc will be published in autumn 2019.
Vol. 13.1: Queer(ing), guest ed. James Welker (due 1 July 2019; published spring 2020)
Japanese manga, anime, and games culture is associated with excessive sexuality and gender-bending that have unsettled cultural norms in multiple, often queer, ways. The appeal of such queer(ing) and hypersexual attributes has at least partially driven the spread of these media and fan practices around Asia and beyond. In spite of the ongoing strong association with Japanese popular culture, however, Japan is but one of multiple centers of queer(ing) media and fan practices in contemporary Asia.
This issue of Mechademia: Second Arc will focus on queer(ing) comics, animation, and games, and other related media as well as their fandoms in Asia. The editors invite papers of 5000 to 7000 words which offer new insights on queer aspects of popular media and fandoms, or alternatively new queer(ing) perspectives on media and practices that are not self-evidently queer. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Asian media and fandoms and intersectional queer studies
- Fujoshi and fudanshi fan cultures
- Boys love/yaoi, and slash media
- Yuri/girls love, and femslash media
- Representations of queer identities (transgender, intersex, bisexual, pansexual, gender-fluid/genderqueer/nonbinary/X-gender, asexual, lesbian, gay, etc.)
- Queer(ing) pornographies (“hentai,” tentacles/“consentacles,” BDSM/fetish media, etc.)
- Queer(ing) fan practices (crossplay, maid cafes, butler cafes, etc.)
- Flows of queer(ing/ed) media and fandom practices around Asia
Vol. 13.2: Soundscapes, guest ed. Stacey Jocoy (due 1 July 2019; published autumn 2020)
Works of anime, manga/manhua, gaming and related forms of popular culture contain, interpret, and are in turn embodied and informed by sound and music. Sound and the audiation of sound is an ever-present aspect of the consumption of media — even the lack of sound creates its own soundscapes. Music, instrumental, vocal, electronic, and even implied, color the ways that audiences interact with characters and storylines in conscious and even unconscious ways. The study of soundtracks and the ways that they assist in telling these many and multi-layered stories, however, is just one of the branches of inquiry into the ways that sound influences their understanding and reception. Fan-based art such as Vocaloid and DTM creations through the software of Niconico have expanded from their musical origins into gaming and manga, AMVs and MMVs are often musically conceived to reimagine the narratives upon which they are based, fanfiction authors have increasingly listed songs and tracks that colored their creations, reception and reaction videos record perceptions of this media, and responses to all of these from internet audiences provide countless testimonies to the power of sound and memory.
This issue of Mechademia will consider sound and soundscapes, broadly conceived, as an aspect of the deeper narratives of anime, manga/ manhua, gaming, and related fields. The editors invite papers of 5000 to 7000 words revolving around critiques, musicological, socio-cultural, musico-psychological, music theory and analytical approaches, and acoustical considerations toward the investigation into the global ramifications of soundscapes.
Possible topics include:
- Music, sound, and narrative in anime, manga, gaming, and other East Asian media, including sound effects and musical iconography
- Musical allusions to notable compositions, performers, or genres (e.g. classical, jazz, rock, traditional folk musics)
- Media representations of idol singers, musicians, bands
- Composers in the contents industry
- Original soundtracks (OSTs) in visual media and fan practice
- Image songs, character albums, podcasts, and other tie-in audio media
- Fan creations: AMVs, MMVs, Vocaloids, Desk Top Music (DTM) software
- Group dances, song memes, viral music/performance phenomena
- Links between anime otaku culture and J-Pop/K-Pop/C-Pop idols and groups
- Voice acting, seiyû, voice-based celebrities