“Critical Lessons on Media Industries”
Submission deadline: February 20, 2017
Helping students think critically about media industries is crucial for developing their media literacy skills and preparing them to understand the way in which ownership structures, regulatory policies, and profoundly unequal relations of economic power shape our media environment. From the early 20th century, when a handful of firms controlled the US movie industry, to the large-scale conglomeration and consolidation of media firms that followed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, to contemporary struggles over net neutrality and media convergence, to the liberalization of broadcast markets around the world, developments in media industry have had an extraordinary impact on content, access, labor, resource use, and more.
Much has been written on media industries. Contemporary scholars such as Robert McChesney, Susan Crawford, Eileen Meehan, Janet Wasko, Vincent Mosco, for example, have written extensively on the political economy of media. The proliferation of fake news during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, has once again raised questions about how to regulate in a radically deregulated media environment. Moreover, with new concerns about the fate of net neutrality under a new U.S. presidential administration, it remains as important as ever that media educators develop and share effective strategies for approaching the subject of media industries with undergraduates.
This issue of Teaching Media Quarterly seeks lesson plans that critically engage the structures, theories, and histories of media industry. We are particularly interested in lessons that bring political economy, critical theory, and/or the history of capitalism to bear on the teaching of media industries. We welcome activities that engage students in understanding, researching, writing about, and making media. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Media industries in convergence media culture
- Media industries and globalization
- Financialization and media industries
- Ownership and entertainment and/or news content
- Media ownership and social media
- The media-military-entertainment nexus
- Democracy, capitalism, and media conglomerates
- Histories of media conglomeration and consolidation
- Ethnographic approaches to media industries
- Media consolidation and advertisers
- Consumers-as-producers-as-commodities
- Distribution patterns
- Above-the-line and below-the-line labor
- Approaches towards a free press and independent media
- Ratings, big data, data mining, and surveillance
Teaching Media Quarterly Submission Guidelines
All submissions must include: 1) a title, 2) an overview (word limit: 500 words) 3) comprehensive rationale (using accessible language explain the purpose of the assignment(s), define key terms, and situate in relevant literature) (word limit: 500), 4) a general timeline, 5) a detailed lesson plan and assignment instructions, 6) teaching materials (handouts, rubrics, discussion prompts, viewing guides, etc.), 7) a full bibliography of readings, links, and/or media examples, and 8) a short biography (100-150 words). All citations must be in Chicago Author-Date style.
Please email all submissions using the TMQ Submission Template (.docx) in ONE Microsoft Word document to [email protected].
Review Policy
Submissions will be reviewed by each member of the editorial board. Editors will make acceptance decisions based on their vision for the issue and an assessment of contributions. It is the goal of Teaching Media Quarterly to notify submitters of the editors’ decisions within two weeks of submission receipt.Teaching Media Quarterly is dedicated to circulating practical and timely approaches to media concepts and topics from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Our goal is to promote collaborative exchange of undergraduate teaching resources between media educators at higher education institutions. As we hope for continuing discussions and exchange as well as contributions to Teaching Media Quarterly we encourage you to visit our website at http://teachingmedia.org/
“Difficult Discussions: Controversy, Triggers and Inclusivity in the Media Studies Classroom”
Submission deadline: ongoing
Recent conversations about the uses and misuses of trigger warnings in academia, and the re-emergence of accusations of “political correctness” have once again pointed out the complex role of instructors. As instructors, we provoke and challenge our students, and at the same time nurture their intellectual development. In the context of this seeming contradiction, the media studies classroom can be an especially fraught location for working through difficult questions about power and pleasure, subjectivity and identity, culture and politics.
For our upcoming issue, the editors of Teaching Media Quarterly seek lesson plans that demonstrate some of the ways media studies instructors have approached potentially explosive or painful conversations in their classrooms. What classroom activities have you used to help student think and talk through potentially upsetting material in ways that at once push them to engage critically, while at the same time maintaining an inclusive, respectful environment, especially for students from historically marginalized groups? How have you leveraged the safer space of our classrooms to explore painful subjects? How have you supported your students as they questions their relationship to media while pushing them to ask sometimes difficult questions about their own role in systems of power?
We are open to a variety of approaches and topic areas, but remind contributors that lesson plans should be specific to the media studies classroom.
Some possible areas of exploration might include:
- Racism and white supremacy
- Toxic masculinity, misogyny, feminism and postfeminism
- Class, money, economic philosophies and policies
- Critiques of empire and anti-Americanism
- Controversies within academia, such as the sexual violence epidemic, student debt, or neo-liberal labor practices
- Electoral politics
- Social movements and protest
- Bodies and biopolitics
- Sexuality and gender identity
Teaching Media Quarterly Submission Guidelines
All submissions must include: 1) a title, 2) an overview (word limit: 500 words) 3) comprehensive rationale (using accessible language explain the purpose of the assignment(s), define key terms, and situate in relevant literature) (word limit: 500), 4) a general timeline, 5) a detailed lesson plan and assignment instructions, 6) teaching materials (handouts, rubrics, discussion prompts, viewing guides, etc.), 7) a full bibliography of readings, links, and/or media examples, and 8) a short biography (100-150 words). All citations must be in Chicago Author-Date style.
Please email all submissions using the TMQ Submission Template (.docx) in ONE Microsoft Word document to [email protected].
Review Policy
Submissions will be reviewed by each member of the editorial board. Editors will make acceptance decisions based on their vision for the issue and an assessment of contributions. It is the goal of Teaching Media Quarterly to notify submitters of the editors’ decisions within two weeks of submission receipt.Teaching Media Quarterly is dedicated to circulating practical and timely approaches to media concepts and topics from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Our goal is to promote collaborative exchange of undergraduate teaching resources between media educators at higher education institutions. As we hope for continuing discussions and exchange as well as contributions to Teaching Media Quarterly we encourage you to visit our website at http://teachingmedia.org/
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