[12/15] CULTURE UNBOUND: Journal of Current Cultural Research

Special Issue: Signs of the City/City of Signs

What is the nature indissolubly, of the city as reality, as image, and as symbol? (Hubert Damisch)

What kind of meaning is connected to the city and by what kind of mechanisms? (Martin Krampen)

The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it. (Roland Barthes)

The modern city offers us an endless and, some might say, excessive proliferation of signs, symbols, and images.  This density of representational practices has provided a rich field of study for scholars working in architecture, environmental psychology, sociology, popular music studies, anthropology, geography, communication, film, cultural and media studies, among others.  In many of these studies, the signifying power of cities is seen as vital to the ways in which people make sense of urban contexts in intimate and profound ways.  As has also been made clear, the stylization of cities and city life is often embedded in a range of ideological configurations whereby power makes itself both visible and invisible, namely through the material and symbolic environments available in the city.  Thus, the notion of the city as a sign is not simply about reading the surface of the city to get at its depth; rather, an interdisciplinary approach to urban contexts offers nuanced considerations of the city as a multi-layered communicative phenomenon.

This volume of Culture Unbound is designed to bring together contemporary research on the city as sign/signs of the city.  As this collection intends to make clear, the manner in which meaning circulates, the spaces through which it flows and to which it becomes affixed, provides ample opportunities for robust analyses of the signifying power of the city.  In the end, this volume will examine the many textured resonances of urban signs by situating them in relation to a number of interrelated dimensions of city life.

Areas to consider (but not restricted to) can include:
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        •        The branded city
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        •        The (post)creative city
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        •        The mythic city
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        •        The cinematic city
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        •        The sonic city
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        •        The city of culture
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        •        The mediated city
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        •        The networked city
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        •        The built city
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Abstracts and expressions of interest, of no more than 250 words, can be sent to the editor, Geoff Stahl, at geoff.stahl@vuw.ac.nz by December 15th, 2008.  Completed articles to be submitted by May 1st, 2009.



CULTURE UNBOUND: JOURNAL OF CURRENT CULTURAL RESEARCH will be launched in 2009 as a new academic journal for border-crossing cultural research, including cultural studies as well as other interdisciplinary and transnational currents. It is globally open to articles from all areas in this large field, easily accessible for downloading as open access, and a forum with a wider scope than existing journals for cultural studies or other, more specific subfields of cultural research.

Information: www.acsis.liu.se