Mission Statement

The Media Fields research collective formed at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2007 to advance scholarship on the spatial aspects of a range of media forms, including film, television, radio, and digital media.

“Media Fields” encompasses research on representations of space in media, as well as on spatial and environmental characteristics of media forms and practices. We are interested in critical investigations of the many other dimensions of the term “field,” such as its methodological, disciplinary, and epistemological configurations. The collective convenes a biennial graduate conference held in the spring at UC-Santa Barbara.

Media Fields Journal is a platform for the dissemination of current research on the spatial dimensions of media, opening up new critical directions that account for the changing roles that different media forms play in the world today. “Media Fields” is a conceptual catalyst for rethinking relationships between national, transnational, and global boundaries and flows; language, leisure, and law; theory and practice; space and time; place and space; networks and infrastructures; and the many complicated ways in which various media forms cross paths. Drawing on the unique qualities of an online format, the journal is public and open access, inviting and soliciting submissions from researchers, practitioners, and artists from various fields. It will distribute medium-length scholarly essays on timely and provocative themes, and it will include works that are not typically found in traditional academic print journals, such as photo essays and audio interviews. The journal’s aim is to circulate research on media and space, to function as a testing ground for new disciplinary trajectories, and to facilitate conversations that advance space, spatiality, and critical practice as crucial topics in the field of media studies.


Editorial Collective

  • Bianka Ballina (Coordinating Editor)
  • Trinankur Banerjee 
  • Stephen Borunda
  • Hannah Garibaldi
  • Lisa Han 
  • Brian Huser
  • Aleah Kiley
  • Sarah Lerner
  • Mary Michael
  • Jeremy Moore
  • Tyler Morgenstern
  • Bhargavi Narayanan
  • Charlotte Orzel
  • Miguel Penabella
  • James Steenland
  • Nicole Strobel
  • Amaru Tejeda
  • Assatu Wisseh
  • Xiuhe Zhang

 

Founders

  • Meredith Bak (Rutgers University-Camden)
  • Hye Jean Chung (Kyung Hee University)
  • Joshua Neves (Concordia University)
  • Daniel Reynolds (Emory University)
  • Jeff Scheible (King’s College London)
  • Nicole Starosielski (New York University)

 

Advisory Board

  • Charles Acland (Concordia University)
  • Peter Bloom (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Brown University)
  • Nick Couldry (London School of Economics)
  • Michael Curtin (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Edward Dimendberg (University of California, Irvine)
  • Anna Everett (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Nitin Govil (University of Southern California)
  • Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California)
  • Brian Larkin (Barnard College, Columbia University)
  • Scott MacDonald (Hamilton College)
  • William Mazzarella (University of Chicago)
  • Anna McCarthy (New York University)
  • Lisa Nakamura (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
  • Lisa Parks (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Constance Penley (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Rita Raley (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Bhaskar Sarkar (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Michael Shapiro (University of Hawai’i at Manoa)
  • Cristina Venegas (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Janet Walker (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Haidee Wasson (Concordia University)
  • Charles Wolfe (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Zhang Yingjin (University of California, San Diego)

 

Contact Information

Please address general correspondence to the coordinating editor at editors@mediafieldsjournal.org. Submissions should be directed to submissions@mediafieldsjournal.org as per our submission guidelines.

 

Acknowledgments

Media Fields Journal benefits from the generous support of the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Graduate Division at UC Santa Barbara.