The Postdigital Cultures, Aesthetics and Politics
Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies
University of Warsaw
Thematic Issue 2024: The Postdigital Cultures, Aesthetics and Politics
Editors: Spencer Jordan
Associate Professor in Creative Writing, Faculty of Arts, University of Nottingham
Bartosz Lutostański
Assistant Professor, Department of British Culture, University of Warsaw
ANGLICA: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIESis an open-access, annual, peer-reviewed journal in literary, cultural, and linguistic studies published both in print and online under the auspices of the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. The journal is indexed in SCOPUS, DOAJ, CEEOL, MLA, BazHum, EBSCO, MIAR, Index Copernicus, ERIHPLUS, Sherpa Romeo, and included in the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers. The editors encourage scholars from across the academy to explore and provide their unique insight within the suggested thematic focus of The Postdigital Cultures, Aesthetics and Politics:
At the turn of the 2010s and 2020s, the concept “postdigital” gained a new paradigmatic resonance due to in part the use of the Internet on an unprecedented scale and also its profound penetration of every layer of the social, cultural and political fabric of our life.
Inspired by work by, amongst others, Mel Alexenberg (2011) and Nathan Jurgenson (2011), research groups (such as the Coventry University Centre for Postdigital Cultures) and individual scholars (David Berry and Michael Dieter (2015), Justin Hodgson (2019), and Spencer Jordan (2019)) have helped popularise the postdigital in the humanities and arts, and in the consciousness of the general public.
The publication of The Silent Story, Belgravia, Arcadia or The Pickle Index in the mid-2010s serves as a relevant illustration of the impact of the postdigital on literature. These “app novels”, that is, narrative texts designed, created, and published on mobile devices (i.e. iPhones) in the form of a downloadable application, employed the affordances of mobile technology and digital media combined with embodied and physical experience; in addition, they remediated traditional literary genres, forms, and styles. A good case in point is Julian Fellowes’ Belgravia, a historical novel based in the 1810s, which adapts the Victorian format of the novel in instalments delivering one chapter a day; it also boasts an array of multimedia and multimodal resources which provide the historical and social backdrop to the story. The Pickle Index by Eli Horowitz features homodiegetic narration (the diary genre) embedded within mock-social media infrastructure with games (RPG) mechanics.
In the upcoming issue of Anglica, we would like to invite you to contribute to the ongoing discussion on postdigital cultures, aesthetics, and politics. We welcome texts exploring the following subjects, but in no way limited to them:
⁃ The digital and the postdigital divide today
⁃ The postdigital and human-machine interaction
⁃ The postdigital in the context of the body/embodied experience
⁃ The postdigital in relation with the materiality and physicality of digital devices
⁃ The postdigital as a catalyst in the transformation of genres, forms and styles in the arts, games, literature, and music
⁃ The postdigital and new cultural and creative practices online and offline
⁃ The postdigital used in education
⁃ The postdigital affecting political decision-making
⁃ The societal dimensions of the postdigital
⁃ The postdigital in the context of memory studies
⁃ The postdigital and the latest developments in technology (e.g., AI).
We are looking for papers of 6000 to 8000 words (maximum) of high-quality lively writing, which show evidence of original research, which address, questions and dialogue with the subjects put forward above. Papers in English should be submitted by 31 January 2024, and closely follow the ANGLICA stylesheet.
All queries, proposals, and complete papers should be sent to b.lutostanski@uw.edu.pl and m.a.sokolowska-paryz@uw.edu.pl
Proposals should be no more than 300 words and submitted preferably before 30 September 2023. With the proposal, please include your name, affiliation, ORCID, and your contact information, including email address.
Timeline:
Proposals: 30 September 2023
Notifications of acceptance: 15 October 2023
Deadline for complete papers: 31 January 2024
Note: All papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed. Submitted essays should be original and not under consideration or published elsewhere.