Call for Proposals

Title: Media on the Brain

I invite proposals for a collection of essays on the relationship between recent advances in brain science and media studies. Drawing on the spirit of the C.S. Snow’s Third Culture, this book seeks interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to the production and reception of cinema, television, Internet and other forms of mediated communication that take into account new understandings of how the embodied brain senses and interacts with its symbolic environment. Moreover, as popular media shape perceptions of the promises and limits of brain science, this volume also examines the representation of neuroscience and cognitive psychology in mediated culture.

The book is organized into two sections: the first examines how recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive/social/evolutionary psychology are transforming the fields of communication, media studies, and audience/cultural theory. The second explores how brain science is represented in popular media, and how that representation influences conceptions of the brain, mind, and ontology of the real.

Essays may explore, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Media environment theory and the ecological brain
• Cultivation theory and memory
• Uses and Gratifications theory and evolutionary psychology
• Mediated characters and social psychology
• Developmental psychology and media use
• Network models of communication and neural nets/computational neuroscience
• Ideologies of neuroscience
• Media literacy and brain function
• Fiction television representation of brain disorders and treatment
• News reports on brain science
• Dramatizing brain science in criminal cases
• Representations of the brain in advertizing
• Use of brain imaging popular culture
• Neuroscientists as public intellectuals

Please submit proposals of 300-500 words with a brief biographical statement and contact information via email attachment to Michael Grabowski, Associate Professor of Communication, Manhattan College (michael.grabowski@manhattan.edu) no later than October 15, 2012. Completed essays for accepted proposals will be due by June 15, 2013.