Mission Statement
The Media Fields research collective formed at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2007 to advance scholarship on the spatial aspects of a range of media forms, including film, television, radio, and digital media.
“Media Fields” encompasses research on representations of space in media, as well as on spatial and environmental characteristics of media forms and practices. We are interested in critical investigations of the many other dimensions of the term “field,” such as its methodological, disciplinary, and epistemological configurations. The collective has convened two successful conferences: the 2007 conference brought together media scholars and practitioners to reflect upon how their projects related to the idea of the “field,” and the 2009 conference showcased research on media infrastructures.
Media Fields Journal is a platform for the dissemination of current research on the spatial dimensions of media, opening up new critical directions that account for the changing roles that different media forms play in the world today. “Media Fields” is a conceptual catalyst for rethinking relationships between national, transnational, and global boundaries and flows; language, leisure, and law; theory and practice; space and time; place and space; networks and infrastructures; and the many complicated ways in which various media forms cross paths. Drawing on the unique qualities of an online format, the journal is public and open access, inviting and soliciting submissions from researchers, practitioners, and artists from various fields. It will distribute medium-length scholarly essays on timely and provocative themes, and it will include works that are not typically found in traditional academic print journals, such as photo essays and audio interviews. The journal’s aim is to circulate research on media and space, to function as a testing ground for new disciplinary trajectories, and to facilitate conversations that advance space, spatiality, and critical practice as crucial topics in the field of media studies.
Editorial Collective
- Rachel Allen
- Meredith Bak
- Ryan Bowles
- Pablo Colapinto
- Maria Corrigan
- Mona Damluji
- Hannah Goodwin
- David Gray
- Anastasia Yumeko Hill
- Kevin Kearney
- Lan Xuan Le
- Chuk Moran
- Rahul Mukherjee (Coordinating Editor)
- Lindsay Palmer
- Jade Petermon
- Daniel Reynolds
- Athena Tan
- Lindsay Thomas
- John Vanderhoef
Affiliate Editors
- Hye Jean Chung (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
- Joshua Neves (University of Toronto)
- Jeff Scheible (University of California, Santa Cruz)
- Nicole Starosielski (Miami University)
Advisory Board
- Charles Acland (Concordia University)
- Peter Bloom (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Brown University)
- Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths, University of London)
- Michael Curtin (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Edward Dimendberg (University of California, Irvine)
- Anna Everett (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Nitin Govil (University of California, San Diego)
- Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California)
- Brian Larkin (Barnard College, Columbia University)
- Scott MacDonald (Hamilton College)
- William Mazzarella (University of Chicago)
- Anna McCarthy (New York University)
- Lisa Nakamura (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
- Lisa Parks (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Constance Penley (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Rita Raley (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Bhaskar Sarkar (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Michael Shapiro (University of Hawai’i at Manoa)
- Cristina Venegas (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Janet Walker (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Haidee Wasson (Concordia University)
- Charles Wolfe (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Zhang Yingjin (University of California, San Diego)
Contact Information
Please address general correspondence to the coordinating editor at editors@mediafieldsjournal.org. Submissions should be directed to submissions@mediafieldsjournal.org as per our submission guidelines.
Acknowledgments
Media Fields Journal benefits from the generous support of the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Graduate Division at UC Santa Barbara.