call for chapters

Call for Chapters: Edited collection on tablet computers, e-readers and other new media objects

We invite contributions to a peer-reviewed edited collection that brings together empirical, theoretical, critical and creative responses to tablet computers, e-readers and other artifacts.

Building on the research presented at the Tablet Symposium at the University of Sussex in April 2013, this edited collection will gather chapters which address the use of tablets, readers and ipads across many walks of life including academic, artistic, pedagogical, medical, corporate, activist and everyday contexts.

Chapters will develop themes including, but not limited to:

-Tablet and e-readers’ relationship with the book
-Challenges and rewards of using tablets to replace current working, creative and research practices
-Definitions, representations and ways of understanding this object or set of objects
-Roles that tablets and e-readers play in more general cultural understandings of technology
-Questions of materiality
-Users.  Who uses tablets?  In what ways are these devices inclusive?  In what ways do they exclude people or groups?
-The historical placement of tablets and e-readers: within the history of the book, the history of ubiquitous computing, popular culture and science -fiction
-Critical tools and frameworks for interrogating tablets and other new media objects.

Chapters should be 8000 words in length and use Harvard referencing.

The collection will be peer reviewed, and will be published in e-book format via REFRAME.

REFRAME is an open access academic digital platform for the online practice, publication and curation of internationally produced research and scholarship. Its subject specialisms—media, film and music (including media practice, cultural studies and journalism) — are also those of its publisher, the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex, UK.

Abstracts should be 600-800 words and contain a clear outline of the argument, the theoretical framework, methodology and results (if applicable).   Abstracts should also include 5 keywords which describe the chapter, and should be sent to r.burns@sussex.ac.uk by the deadline of 30th June 2013.