Call for contributions: “Remodelling Narrative Spaces: Semiotic Insights”

Remodelling Narrative Spaces: Semiotic Insights is one of five books in the Early Career Researchers Series of the International Association for Semiotic Studies IASS-AIS.

Discussions of space are a recurring semiotic theme, especially since it has played a pivotal role in the making of meaning within narrative worlds as proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin in his discussion on chronotope. Since its theoretical foundations, semiotics has recognized space as a valuable object of inquiry, given its importance in the construction of the diegesis, in the geographical and symbolic displacement of characters, in the perception of narrative and historical time, in the deployment of verisimilitude and the role of the reader, and in the appropriation of different traditions of artistic genres, from naturalism and realism to the inventiveness of fantasy or gothic genres. However, brand new questions are raised as a result of the novel narrative possibilities offered by other cultural languages promoted by virtual environments, digital processes, and technological developments which have increased complexity and dimensionality in the semiotics of space.

The present volume aims to examine how spatiality is interpreted in terms of meaning creation, particularly in the original dynamics given by recent audiovisual narratives, fictions, and art-languages. Under the scope of semiotics of space, we invite our colleagues around the world to submit manuscripts into theoretical and applied semiotics that prove how recent material culture becomes an extension of our spatial perceptions of world and society.

On the one hand, we welcome reflections that, in the light of current times, review semiotic categories which have provided theoretical frameworks under which space can be approached as a generator of semiosis (representation, modeling system, iconicity, chronotope, semiosphere, boundary, etc.). It is then proposed the active recovery not only of long-term traditions such as aesthetic, structuralism, narratology or Russian formalism, but also new developments that are built on the frontiers of knowledge, intersecting with disciplines such as cognitive sciences, critical geography, performance studies, and mathematics, among other paradigms.

We also encourage the development of empirical perspectives that envision creative hypotheses on how spatiality is handled today in cinema, videogames, TV series, comics, graphic narratives, virtual and augmented reality, volumetric filmaking and any other forms of traditional or emerging media. The chapters proposed can also present case studies that focus on different aspects of form and content in narrative and spatial dimensions. We welcome proposals related, but not limited, to topics such as: the relevance of space in genres traditions and their hybridizations, the scene montage in theatre and drama, the field vision of the camera in cinema, the new range of multimodal storytelling, the recurrence utopian and dystopian imaginaries, the repetition of multiverses in narrative worlds, the representation of cultural topography with its centers and peripheries, the shift from 2D to 3D, and the permanent collision between real and unreal spaces, which accompanies the explosion of interactive narratives (from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch to Heavy Rain), or the emergency of immersive developments (virtual reality, augmented reality, holographic media).

Manuscript relevant topics

As the academic focuses of our research are placed on all the above-mentioned questions, our book welcome original manuscript relevant topics as follows:

· Relevance of space in genres traditions and their hybridizations

· Scene montage in theatre and drama, the field vision of the camera in cinema

· New range of multimodal storytelling, the recurrence utopian and dystopian imaginaries

· Repetition of multiverses in narrative worlds

· Representation of cultural topography with its centers and peripheries, the shift from 2D to 3D.

· The permanent collision between real and unreal spaces, which accompanies the explosion of interactive narratives (from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch to Heavy Rain)

· Emergence of immersive developments (virtual reality, augmented reality, holographic media).

Author’s micro curriculum vitae

Each participant must submit a micro-curriculum vitae with a maximum length of 800 characters in which the following information must be recorded:

– Minimum outline of the academic career of the author of the book.

– Current record of employment and/or academic links with educational and/or research centers.

– Last educational qualification and the institution that awarded the qualification.

– Institutional – personal e-mail address.

Style of manuscript submission proposals

For the development of your chapter proposal, we kindly ask you to consider the following stylistic aspects.

– This book will only receive manuscripts in English language.

– Creative title that invites specialist and non-specialist audiences to receive a basic illustration of a work focused on knowledge or reflection on central aspects of your current research.

– Compliance with APA 7.0. or the most recent version (spring – summer of 2023).

– Summary of the chapter no longer than 250 words.

– Indicate, as far as possible, if the text to be submitted to this call has served as a basis for other publications that make it a reference in the discipline.

– The structure of the manuscript should be title, abstract, keywords, introduction, development of the theoretical approach and methodological design, results, conclusions and bibliographical references.

– The five key words should be consulted in the UNESCO Thesaurus: https://vocabularies.unesco.org/browser/thesaurus/   

– The manuscript is unpublished: it has not been published or accepted for publication in another journal.

– The manuscript must not be simultaneously submitted to another journal and, during the time it remains under evaluation by this editorial project, it will not be submitted for consideration in another journal, nor subsequently, if accepted.

– The contents are the direct intellectual production of the authors and the data and texts taken from published documents are duly referenced in citations highlighted as such and indicated in the references at the end of the document.

– As author(s) you take responsibility for the content of the manuscript.

– The publication of a previous version as a working paper (or grey literature) or on a website has not been reported and that, if accepted for publication, it will be removed from the websites and only the title, abstract, keywords and hyperlink will be left.

– Bibliography used for the manuscript must be cited in the standards and the seventh version of the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association APA.

– For authors who speak a second language (other than the language of this book), the text should be submitted in its original language and the abstract in English.

– Proposals should be sent in Word or RTF format to the following e-mail addresses: damientomaselli@gmail.com and arielgomezponce@unc.edu.ar

Length of each manuscript as a book chapter and of the book in general.

Each manuscript must have a minimum of 7000 words and a maximum of 8000 words including bibliography. Each page, understood as a page, must have margins in the proportion 4-3-3-3-3, 1.5 line spacing and in Times Roman 11 font or, failing that, a legible font according to the language of this book.

The length of the book will be 10 to 12 chapters -approximately 150 to 160 pages- plus a preliminary study -preface, introduction and micro curriculum vitae of the authors. The books will be produced in digital and printed versions. Each author will have access to the digital version and a printed copy of the book.

Audience of the book

It is aimed at teachers, master’s students, doctoral students and postdoctoral trainees who are interested in the historical changes that Semiotic Studies propose in the theoretical and methodological approach to the Remodelling Narrative Spaces: Semiotic Insights.

Editorial project timeline

2023

Receipt of manuscripts
March – May 2023
First evaluation of manuscripts (by guest editors)
June 2023
Submission of acceptance or rejection of manuscript
June 2023
Construction of the book (by guest editors)
June – August 2023
Book assessment (by the publishing house of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Colombia and the International Association for Semiotic Studies IASS – AIS)
September – October 2023
Receipt of book assessment from academic judges of Association for Semiotic Studies IASS – AIS
October 2023
Sending of assessments of the book to the authors (by the guest editors)
October 2023
Receipt of manuscript with adjustments and changes suggested by academic judges (by authors to the guest editors)
November 2023

2024

Proofreading of the book (by the publishing house of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Colombia)
December 2023 – January 2024
Sending of style adjustments to authors (by guest editors)
February 2024
Receipt of manuscript with style adjustments (by authors)
March 2024
Design and layout of the book (by the publishing house of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Colombia)
March – May 2024
Sending of contact details and publishing licenses (address and telephone number of residence and/or work) for future administrative procedures of the publishing house
May 2024
Publication of the book, together with the editorial series
July 2024
Launching and dissemination of the editorial series (World Congress of Semiotics in Warsaw – Poland)
September 2024

2025

Launching and dissemination of the editorial series (in Bogotá – Colombia)
February 2025

Guest Editors

Dr Damien R. Tomaselli (South Africa)

Postdoctoral fellow at the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD), based at the University of Johannesburg. He is a transmedia storyteller with a background ranging from theatre, film, photo manipulation and more recently, the emerging media of virtual reality, mixed reality, motion book technology producing content of ‘spatial storytelling’. He is a fellow in the International Communicology Institute (ICI) and representative of the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS) emerging scholars. He was a guest editor for the Elsevier journal publication New Techno-Humanities (2022). His thesis is entitled Cosmology of the Relativistic Multi-Modal Chronotope. A metaphysical lens on how creators may rhetorically embed fictional spacetime into various story-world configurations for dramatic narratives. He has recently launched an augmented reality enhanced, photo-manipulated comic book at 2022 ComicCon Africa and Rage Gaming Expo.

E-mail. damient@duck.com

Dr. Ariel Gómez Ponce (Argentina)

PhD in Semiotics, and he is a Research Assistant at the National Research Council (CONICET), based on the Center for Research and Studies on Culture and Society (CIECS), Argentina. He´s also Professor in Spanish as a Mother Language and a Foreign Language, and has a postdoctoral degree in Social Sciences (National University of Córdoba, Argentina). He is Academic Coordinator of the PhD in International Studies and professor in the careers of Political Sciences and Sociology (Faculty of Social Sciences, UNC). He focuses on the analysis of television series from the perspective of the semiotics of culture (Lotman, Bakhtin) and critical studies of culture (Jameson), problematizing the way in which these fictions, in the context of late capitalism, question identities and cultural feelings.

E-mail. arielgomezponce@unc.edu.ar