CFP: “Fotografia e género”, número temático de Comunicação e Sociedade.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Journal “Comunicação e Sociedade”, no 32�
Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho, Portugal

Special Issue:
Photography and Gender

Editors: Maria da Luz Correia (maria.lf.correia@uac.pt) and Carla Cerqueira (carlaprec@gmail.com)

Languages: bilingual| Portuguese and English*

The generalization of photography between the end of the century XIX and the beginning of the XX century was a determining factor for the recognition of a collective social iconography. This recognition, which was exemplified already in the visionary thinking of philosophers like Walter Benjamin or art historians like Aby Warburg, would nevertheless be strengthened in the second half of the XX century, due to a renewed concern with the asymmetries of the gaze that would cross this prolific visual culture: the theory of the panoptic society introduced by Michel Foucault in 1975 is particularly illustrative of this. Methodologies inserted in post-structuralism, but also in cultural studies, in visual culture Studies, in feminist and postcolonial studies are exemplary of this paradigm of political questioning and visual criticism. On the basis of this assumption, this issue deals specifically with the photographic device and gender inequalities, often intertwined with other social inequalities, which are affirmed and denied by this and through it.

Since John Berger laid the groundwork for a feminist analysis of painting and advertising in 1972’s Ways of Seeing, and Laura Mulvey coined the term male gaze on the subject of cinema in 1975, Studies that focus on gender asymmetries – and the tendentiously stereotyped representations associated with women and men – which are often confirmed and often challenged by the photographic medium have followed. On the one hand, photographic narratives and practices that stabilize and/or destabilize these asymmetries have been the object of critical photography in its different thematic scopes: family photography, documentary photography, scientific photography, police photography, erotic photography, photography of modern and contemporary art, journalistic photography, advertising photography … On the other hand, studies on women, on gender and feminist studies have sought to analyze various types of media and cultural production, where photography also appears as a focus for Research, whether as a means of reproducing gender asymmetries and the dominant social order, or as a means of social resistance. How it is produced, who produces it, what is produced and how this production is negotiated between producers, consumers and publics are some of the cores of this questioning, which not only cross photography and gender, but also interweave cultural and technological issues.

The meeting between of photography studies and gender studies has already established a vast domain of interdisciplinary study, in which recurrent historical episodes and scientific landmarks which are worth remembering stand out, like photographs of an album that this thematic issue intends to enlarge. The photographic iconography of the Salpêtrière Hospital hysteria – psychiatric hospital and asylum exclusively for female patients which had, at the end of the XIX century, a department exclusively dedicated to photography; the representations of the Kodak Girls, introduced in 1893, in the context of the Chicago Universal Exposition and the generality of family photography; the photographic production of the surrealist avant-garde at the beginning of the XX century and its gender policies; the photographic production in colonial context and the representations of the colonized subject, in the framework of which Le Colonial Harem study by Mallek Aloula, published in the 80s, is a historical landmark; war photography and its relation to sexual politics, as discussed in 2009 by Judith Butler in Frames of War: when is life grievable?; the representation of sexual ambiguity by photographers ranging from the pioneer Felix Nadar to the more contemporary Diane Arbus; photoelicitation and photoessay as visual methods adapted to gender studies – these are just some of the examples of recurring encounters between photography and gender.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- re-reading history and theory of photography from the perspective of gender issues;
- optical devices and pre-photographic apparatus from a gender perspective;
- family photography, albums, collecting and gender issues;
- photography, gender, private and public space;
- photojournalism, collective memory and representations of gender;
- photography and feminist and post-colonial studies;
- photography and intersectional approach;
- police photography and gendered representations;
- photography as a technological and sensory device;
- photography and body representations;
- photographic methodologies and gender studies;
- photography, artistic vanguards, contemporary art and gender approaches;
- feminist studies, cultural productions and the photographic medium;

“Comunicação e Sociedade” [“Communication and Society”] is a double blind, peer-reviewed journal (http://revistacomsoc.pt/). �

Editorial rules:
Guidelines for electronic submission of manuscripts can be found, both in Portuguese and English, at: http://revistacomsoc.pt/index.php/…/about/editorialPolicies…

Original texts should be sent in Word format to cecs@ics.uminho.pt. Please copy, in “Cc”, the e-mail of the coordinators of this special issue: Maria da Luz Correia (maria.lf.correia@uac.pt) and Carla Cerqueira (carlaprec3@gmail.com).

*Original texts can be submitted in Portuguese or in English. The translation into the other language is the responsibility of the author(s). However, the translation of the article can be provided at a later stage, after confirmation of acceptance for publication of the original manuscript.
In the SUBJECT, please write: Communication and Society Journal – Vol. 32.

Important dates:
Submission deadline: 31st July 2017 Notification of acceptance: 15th September 2017 Publication date: December 2017.