Call for Papers

Inaugural Issue

Vol. 1, no. 1 [ISSN applied for]
Call for Papers: "Re-defining Popular Entertainments"

To launch our new peer reviewed, inter-disciplinary e-journal, we invite scholars and scholar/practitioners to contribute to the ongoing debate and discussion about the nature and scope of popular entertainments. The issue's title recognises that scholars have made signal contributions to the topic especially in the last 35 years, but as well that there is a need to extend the discussion particularly in the light of new mediatised developments and the new audiences that they have created. We believe that popular entertainments are inextricably connected to "liveness" and the co-presence of performers and spectators. Yet the nature of performance and of presence may well have changed and in turn have affected the production and reception of popular entertainment.

We would therefore invite expressions of interest by scholars from a range of complementary disciplines: theatre and performance studies, health, history, psychology, dance, fine art and music, as well as performing arts curators and archivists, which address one or more of the following:

• To what extent have changing notions of "liveness" affected the nature of popular entertainment?
• How have popular entertainments been affected by their globalisation?
• What is the role of popular entertainment in the formation of national identities?
• Does popular entertainment still have a place in the formation and building of community identity?
• What are the new genres and styles of popular entertainment that have extended its scope and impact?
• Are the current orthodoxies related to the binary construction of high/low art still relevant?
• How have audience configurations and the spaces of performance changed in the last 30 years?
• Have changes in space and spatiality affected the performance of the popular?
• Have such changes affected the nature of performers of the popular?
• How should popular entertainments be recorded and documented?

These are merely suggested topics for investigation and we would welcome other perspectives that relate to the focus of our inaugural issue. Expressions of interest can be sent directly to the General Editor. The deadline for completed articles is December 12 2009.