Call for Papers – Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology

TRACE Innovation Initiative’s first call for papers, Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology.

The University of Florida’s TRACE journal publishes online peer-reviewed collections in ecology, posthumanism, and media studies. Providing an interdisciplinary forum for scholars, we focus on the ethical and material impact of technology. We welcome submissions in a variety of media that engage cultures, theories, and environments to “trace” the connections across and within various ecologies.
The first issue of TRACE explores current conversations at the intersection of animal studies and digital media studies. Animal studies scholars argue that animals influence the ways we engage with philosophy, critical theory, literature, and filmic technologies. Moreover, posthumanist theorists, such as Cary Wolfe and Donna Haraway, challenge how humans relate to animals–decentering humans as the reference for understanding relationships between nature and technology. TRACE’s Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology extends conversations by examining the role of digital media in animal lives and representations.

Building on recent conversation in Antennae’s “Virtual Animals” and similar publications, TRACE questions how digital technology augments human-animal interactions and reimagines alterity, agency, affect, identity, embodiment, and experience. Animals influence digital media by challenging anthroponormative approaches to technology use and design. From drone surveillance systems shaped like sharks to ipad apps for cats – animals drive innovations in digital technology. This issue invites scholars to explore the shared ecology of animals and technology.

Contributions should make evident how cultures conceptualize nonhuman species, as well as illustrate how digital media can either reify or challenge established perceptions.

Topics for papers may include:

• Representations of animals in digital games, social media, applications, hypertexts, internet memes, etc.
• Digital media designed for nonhuman animals
• Digital imaging, modeling, motion capture, or 3D printing of or related to animals
• Artificial intelligence
• Animal robotics and prostheses
• Microchipping, tagging, and other mechanisms of digital tracking
• The roles of digital media in animal rights advocacy or ethics
• Posthumanism and systems theory

Completed articles will be peer-reviewed and should be between 5000-7000 words in length. Multimedia submissions are accepted. If you are interested in contributing to the TRACE Innovation Initiative’s Fall issue, please send a 500 word abstract to mbianchi@ufl.edu by June 1, 2015.