G'day ! Given the discussion about closed- and open-access journals on the list at the moment, our latest call for submissions to M/C Journal seems timely - M/C has been open-access and published under a Creative Commons licence since its inception in 1998. We now invite submissions for our 'cute' issue, with articles due by 28 Feb. 2014. As the Internet is fuelled by cute cat images, I hope this may be of interest to some of you. Also still open is the CFP for our 'taste' issue, with articles due 17 Jan. 2014. Please contact the issue editors for further information ! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 9 Dec. 2013 M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/ is calling for contributors to the 'cute' issue of M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ M/C Journal is inviting new contributors. Founded in 1998, M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. Our Website at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/<http://journal.media-culture.org.au/provides> provides open access to all past issues. To find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/about/submissions. Call for Papers: 'cute' Edited by James Meese and Ramon Lobato Cute content is a fundamental but under-researched component of the Internet economy. Millions of people around the world start their day with videos of kittens, puppies and meerkats. Recent years have seen the rise of global animal brands, such as Maru and Grumpy Cat, along with new talent agencies for this purpose. Online portal I Can Haz Cheezburger has received millions of dollars in venture capital funding, becoming a diversified media business in its own right. YouTube channels, Twitter hashtags and blog rolls form an infrastructure across which a vast amount of cute-themed user-generated content, as well as an increasing amount of commercially produced and branded material, now circulates. Cute content can also be understood as an aesthetic tradition. Tracing the history of animal imagery leads us to a range of practices - kitsch portraiture, stock photography, greeting card imagery - as well as newer online spaces, such as the 4chan message boards, which have resignified the captioned cat pic as a geek subcultural practice. Approaching cute content as a sphere of contemporary cultural production raises a number of questions for analysis. How can we contextualise digital cute content within a longer history of mediated human-animal interactions? What is the nature of animal celebrity and stardom? What textual forms does online cute imagery take in different national and regional contexts? This issue of M/C Journal invites contributions interested in exploring 'cute' as a mode of textual production and as a sector of the Internet economy. Possible topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following: * Histories of animal imagery in digital and pre-digital contexts * The specificity of particular national and regional cute cultures * Authorship and genre in cute content * The political economy of cute content * Intellectual property and attribution disputes * Case studies of animal celebrities, memes, and cute portals * Comparative perspectives on cute cultures Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition). Article deadline: 28 Feb. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://5> Issue release date: 30 Apr. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://6> M/C Journal was founded (as "M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture") in 1998 as a place of public intellectualism analysing and critiquing the meeting of media and culture. Contributors are directed to past issues of M/C Journal for examples of style and content, and to the submissions page for comprehensive article submission guidelines. M/C Journal articles are blind peer-reviewed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2013/4: 'augment': article deadline 11 Oct. 2013, release date 11 Dec. 2013 'taste': article deadline 17 Jan. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://9>, release date 19 Mar. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://10> 'cute': article deadline 28 Feb. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://11>, release date 30 Apr. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://12> 'persona': article deadline 25 Apr. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://13>, release date 25 June 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://14> 'gothic': article deadline 20 June 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://15>, release date 20 Aug. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://16> 'illegitimate': article deadline 15 Aug. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://17>, release date 15 Oct. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://18> 'counterculture': article deadline 10 Oct. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://19>, release date 10 Dec. 2014<x-apple-data-detectors://20> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C - Media and Culture is located at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C Journal is online at <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>. All past issues of M/C Journal on various topics are available there. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- end Dr Axel Bruns -- General Editor editor@media-culture.org.au<mailto:editor@media-culture.org.au> M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/ -- M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/