Radio scholarship can be found in many pockets of academia. Media studies, communications departments, cultural studies, popular culture, history, and radio-television-film programs are some of the fields where radio research takes place. In recent years, sound studies can be added to this list.
The Velvet Light Trap, “a journal devoted to investigating historical questions that illuminate the understanding of film, television, and other media,” is opening its pages to the topic of sound studies for an upcoming issue. A special issue will focus on “the research and study of sound in and across a range of media.” According to the call for papers,
“The medium of sound, long placed in a secondary position to the visual within media studies, has experienced a considerable increase in scholarly attention over the past three decades, to the point that ‘sound studies’ is now a distinct field of scholarship. Within media studies, sound-related research today expands well beyond the film and television score or soundtrack to include a broad range of scholarship on radio and popular music. And while sound studies still tends to cohere around media studies departments, an increasing amount of sound media research is interdisciplinary in nature.”
For this issues, papers can cover a range of topics related to sound studies. Radio scholars might craft papers that provide an “analysis of music, voice, and sound effects in…radio…podcasting, and other digital or ‘new media.'” Other topic ideas mentioned in the call for papers include research about sound art, sound reproduction, media industries, histories of audio media, and listening practices.
Interested writers can submit 6,000 to 7,500 word papers to Velvet Light Trap until August 1, 2013.
