CFP: The Imposter
The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 99 (to be published Spring 2027)
Imposter is a loaded term that has invaded and fascinated media including accusations of
illegitimacy, fraud, and fakery. The imposter unsettles understandings of our media’s
truth, authority, and belonging. More than ever, the imposter feels unavoidable in our
lives: generative AI challenges the very idea of creativity, algorithms create debates
around curation and manipulation, and the evolving labor landscapes make us question
who is recognized as a legitimate media worker. Beyond technology, this figure is
political, social, and juridical. The imposter makes us think about precarity; precarity for
those who do not belong, and for those who feel fraudulent, for those who have been
excluded by institutional systems, for those who have imposter syndrome. Entire
communities, creators, and cultural forms have been branded as outcasts, reflecting
broader structures of power, marginalization, and control.
The imposter is not just a threat, but a possibility. To “pass,” to mimic, to slip through
constraints; these acts are playful, resistant, and freeing. Reading this, you wonder, does
this Call for Papers pass? Is it AI? Can I “read” it? These questions of passing and failing
detection are not new. The imposter is unsettling, sure, but it shines the light on structures
of verity.
In this sense, this masquerade connects to broader debates around precarity in media
today: unstable labor, fragile distribution models, platform volatility, environmental and
political crises, and narratives of dread and survival that permeate our cultural moment.
The imposter also questions freedom and free-ness in media; issues of cost and
accessibility, piracy and ownership, surveillance and censorship, resistance and identity
expression. Who gets to create freely? Whose voices are deemed authentic? And when
does the imposter expose media itself as constrained by corporate and authoritarian
systems?
This issue seeks to hold together and interrogate multiple threads: the instability of media
industries, the lived experience of imposter syndrome, the technological blurring of
authorship, the possibilities of resistance and freedom, and the precarity of labor. We
welcome diverse methodological approaches ranging from industrial, cultural, textual,
theoretical, decolonial, and more, to examine how the imposter is present in a variety of
manifestations.
Possible Areas of Inquiry Include (but are not limited to):

•  Generative AI, deepfakes, and the imposter as author
•  Historical cases of hoaxes and fraud in media industries
•  Imposter syndrome and precarious belonging in creative labor and academia
•  Media’s role in branding marginalized groups as imposters or outsiders
•  Questions of detection: how media technologies define, expose, or conceal
•  The imposter within the classroom and pedagogical considerations oftechnologies of detection
•  Precarity and instability in media industries, platforms, and labor
•  “Free” media: cost, access, piracy, surveillance, and censorship
•  Media and imitation: acts of mimicry, performance, and passing as resistance
•  Authenticity and performance in film, television, music, and digital culture
•  The imposter as a cultural figure in narratives of crisis, climate catastrophe, orpolitical instability
•  Considerations of interlopers and belonging within fan spaces

Open Call
In addition to accepting submissions that relate to the above theme, The Velvet Light Trap
will accept general submissions broadly related to the journal’s focus on critical,
theoretical, and historical approaches to film and media studies. 
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words (inclusive of notes), formatted in
Chicago Style/notes-bibliography. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with
a separate one-page abstract, both saved as Microsoft Word files. Remove any identifying
information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. Quotations not in
English should be accompanied by translations. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any
questions to vltcfp@gmail.com by January 31, 2026. 
About the Journal
The Velvet Light Trap is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new
media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographical approaches from
the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing
processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism.  Graduate students
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas at Austin coordinate
issues in alternation, and each issue is devoted to a particular theme.