CALL FOR PAPERS: Comic Books and Video Games

Idea-bot Magazine invites submissions for two upcoming theme-issues: comic book and video games. An online journal to be launched in April 2005, Idea-bot is an inter-disciplinary academic journal that, like the London Review or the Boston Review of Books, seeks to make academic discourse intelligible for the general public. We believe that a sense of humor and personality are not antonyms with thoughtfulness, creativity, and intellectual rigor. Idea-bot also views the magazine as its own art form and seeks to use the magazine genre to explore intellectual topics in ways that may not otherwise be possible in book or journal form. We update four articles a week on politics, literature, arts, film, and anthropology. Upcoming features include work by painter Alex Katz, an interview with Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, a theme issue on the poetics of translation, and “Sacred Cows,” a five-part series of progressive essays critiquing the dogmas of liberalism.

Idea-bot seeks essays that approach comic book and video games with the assumption that these are legitimate art forms. We’re interested in essays that can approach these mediums from a general level, either from a formalist or social-political analysis. What do these forms do that’s unique from other types of media? Are there specific works you can analyze that exemplify this? What social milieu do these works occur in?

We’re also looking for essays on specific works and creators; interviews with academics and creators; original creative work (comics and video games we could post online); and 500-word long “blips” that would help readers unfamiliar with these topics understand their basic discursive terminology (for example, short articles on the history of video games or comics). Reviews and articles written too far within the fan culture would probably not be appropriate. For both topics, we will be publishing ongoing content, but for these specific themes, we would like queries by Monday, 3/28/2005.

COMIC BOOKS
Comic Books have become part of both mainstream popular culture (primarily in the form of movies and cartoons) and mainstream high culture (in the work of Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman, and Dan Clowes). But as comics dilute themselves into Hollywood blockbusters or New Yorker covers, what is left of the comic form itself? How does the experience of reading a comic differ from that of experiencing other mediums? Essays might focus on a poetics of the comic book format; in-depth essay exploring a particular phenomenon or creator’s work; the sociology of comic book stores and readers; and the social subtext behind comic books.

VIDEO GAMES
Video games are a burgeoning media, like film in the silent era, whose formal properties are still establishing themselves. What are the possibilities for this new media? How would you describe video games to someone who’d never played them before? What are the most appropriate discursive approaches to this new medium? Essays might cover on formal properties unique to video games; the spurious link between video games and violence; future possibilities of video games; sociology of online communities; gender and race analysis of audiences.

Pieces should be rigorous and contribute to the discourse, but should also be understandable to a general interest reader. Papers should be between 2000 and 5000 words and explain terminology that will not be understandable to someone outside the discourse. Please email a query and writing samples (pasted in the body of email or as links) to Kenneth.chen_at_yale.edu.