Call for Submissions for a Proposed Edited Volume
Feminist Grassroots Media in Europe: An anthology
Edited by Red Chidgey ( UK), Jenny Gunnarsson-Payne ( Sweden) and Elke Zobl ( Austria)
Women have always played an important role in movements for social justice. Using media to transport their messages, to disrupt social orders and spin novel social processes, feminists have long recognised the importance of self-managed media to forge resistant identities and build coalitions. In fact, as Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi has found, “almost by dint of their existence alone, autonomous media controlled by women with women-defined output offer a challenge to existing hierarchies of power; when these media take up specific issues and campaigns, and align themselves with larger social movements, their political potential is significant” (1996:234).
Autonomous media cultures are currently gaining in critical attention. Over recent decades, scholars have developed conceptual frameworks such as ‘radical media’, ‘alternative media’, ‘activist media’, and ‘citizens’ media’ to help explain the unique characteristics and working models of grassroots media production – and to ask whether self-managed media can foster critical consciousness, aid in participatory democracy, and effect social change (Atton, 2002; Bailey, Cammaerts, and Carpentier, 2007; Byerly and Ross, 2006; Downing 1984, 2000; Rodriguez, 2001; Waltz, 2005).
Within this burgeoning field, however, few in-depth studies of grassroots media from a specifically cross-generational and European feminist perspective have been published.
The Feminist Grassroots Media in Europe anthology proposes to address this lack in research, bringing together activists and academics to re-evaluate existing theoretical frameworks and to portray activist projects in light of feminist media production. As such, the book will be of interest to a broad audience, such as activists and researchers within the fields of gender and media studies, and will serve as an undergraduate textbook for research on feminist ‘radical media’ praxis whilst delivering a much-needed archive of DIY media projects, networks and producers from the 1980s to the present day.
The Book Project
The term ‘Media’ is employed broadly here to include traditional broadcasting channels (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, films, photography) and non-traditional genres (zines, blogs, vlogs, websites, wikis, posters, burn stations, podcasts, textiles). ‘Grassroots’ refers to self-managed media, produced outside of a commercial agenda, by a collective and/or individuals working from a community or social movement perspective.
The editors seek a variety of submissions from throughout Europe. The anthology aims to represent feminists from a diversity of age cohorts, backgrounds, races, classes, genders, geo-social regions and political priorities. The book seeks to ask what possibilities, limitations and vulnerabilities – with attention to class, race, ethnicity, age, disability, sexuality and gender dynamics – feminist grassroots media projects currently engender, and to map the histories, successes and challenges of women-led grassroots media in the late twentieth century and beyond. The editors are also keen to explore the links and discontinuities between ‘second’ and ‘third wave’ feminist media production.
The call includes, but is not limited to, work which addresses the following topics:
European Feminist Grassroots Media and:
