We are calling for book chapter contributions to an edited volume on censorship and visual culture, conceived following the successful delivery of the two-day workshop Censorship & Visual Culture, hosted in 2022 by De Montfort University, UK.

The edited book seeks to explore the impact that censorship, with its multiple forms and apparatuses, has exerted on the development and manifestation of visual culture worldwide. Since the age of the first societies in human history, pictures and images have played, and are still playing, an essential role in the creation, organisation and perpetuation of social and political orders. Together with other non-textual products, they shape the sphere of visual culture, through which ideas are often introduced and conveyed. For this reason, political powers have commonly sought to legitimise themselves and to strengthen their standings through visual culture. Yet, visual culture has often also challenged political powers through the introduction and circulation of other images of contradictory character, foregrounding certain conditions or realities that states, governments and political groups may prefer to conceal.

Censorship has been one strategy that such and other political powers have employed to confront the unwanted appearance of certain materials in the visual sphere. Often understood as the centralised assessment of material and the enforcement of restrictions vis-à-vis the circulation of those deemed inappropriate for one reason or another, censorship is commonly perceived as a well-organised mechanism geared towards suppressing the communication of certain types of information. However, the way it operates may be much more complex and indirect for at least two key reasons. Firstly, because censorship relies on the interpretation and judgement of specific institutions and individual censors. Secondly, because censorship tends to trigger informal layers of suppressive systems and assessment mechanisms, such as cultural conventions, grassroots censorship, and self-censorship. In our time, these also include state, corporate, and private forms of algorithm engineering, further dissociating censorship from any of the tangible powers invested in controlling visual culture.

In seeking to explore how censorship has affected the development and manifestation of visual culture worldwide, the editors propose to put together a peer-reviewed, academic volume for scholars from a wide range of fields and disciplines to experiment with an underused research paradigm. Indeed, more traditionally, the study of visual censorship has revolved around the questions of what, why, and how visual materials have been excluded from a given visible sphere, and what practices have developed to share them within restricted social circles, nevertheless.

While still interested in elaborating understandings about these issues as well, the edited book is even more eager to consider two additional complementary questions: The first of these asks What representational conventions and image-production practices have emerged precisely due to censorship restrictions? The second inquires How have subsequently these representational conventions and image-production practices continued to shape the historical and more recent visual cultures familiar to us today?

The edited volume wishes to investigate these and related issues in connection with examples and case studies from any historical period. But we are particularly keen to expand the knowledge base about the conception, implementation, and operation of visual censorship against the background of the explosion of image-production and communications technologies that occurred between the late modern period and our time (i.e., between the mid-eighteenth to the early twenty-first centuries).

To this end, we invite proposals for book chapters of 8,500 words (including notes and references) from scholars working in research areas such as, visual culture, media and communications studies, cultural history, film studies, visual sociology and anthropology, cultural studies, history of art, photographic history, and any other related fields of research. Proposals are expected to speak to questions connected with the ones raised above, and specific topics and contexts of interest may include, but are not limited to:

• censorship in TV, film and cinema;

• censorship in professional and vernacular visual culture;

• censorship in digital visual culture; 

• the politics of visual censorship in democratic states;

• visual censorship in dictatorships;

• censorship in digital visual culture;

• liberal and/vs libertarian uses of visual censorship;

• cultural hegemony and visual censorship;

• grassroots visual censorship;

• censorship and the development of visual culture.

Chapter proposals should be submitted in English and include:

1. chapter synopsis (not shorter than 420 words and not longer than 450 words);

2. chapter title (main title and subtitle);

3. author's biographical note (not shorter than 90 words and not longer than 120 words);

4. five keywords that do not repeat any of the words already included in the chapter title or subtitle;

5. author's institutional affiliation (when applicable);

6. author's contact email address.

Chapter proposals should be submitted as Word or PDF documents to visualcensorship@gmail.com, by 20 April 2023.

We will discuss the chapter submission deadline with the author following acceptance of their proposal. But, generally speaking, we intend to have all chapters by the end of 2023 and we would also like all applicants to keep in mind that, each author will be able to feature in their contribution no more than 7 images.

BOOK KEY FEATURES

• Academic publication

• Fully peer reviewed (two expert reviewers)

• International scope

• Interdisciplinary contributions

• Authors from all career levels (PhD students to well-established specialists)

• Leading academic publisher

BOOK EDITORS

• Claudio Monopoli |  PhD Candidate in Historical, Geographical, Anthropological Studies, University of Padua, Italy

• Gil Pasternak |  Professor of Photographic Cultures and Heritage, De Montfort University, UK

If you like to learn more about the origin of the initiative and the papers presented during the original workshop event, we invite you to check the event programme page and download the PDF programme.