Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 08:07:14 -0800
From: Thresholds <thresholds-AT-sscf.ucsb.edu>
Subject: SPOON-ANN: CFP - Prisons (T:vc volume 12)


 [Spoon-Announcements is a moderated list for distributing info of
 wide enough interest without cross-posting.  To unsub, send the message
 "unsubscribe spoon-announcements" to majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]

PLEASE POST, ANNOUNCE AND DISTRIBUTE

CALL FOR PAPERS, MULTI-MEDIA SUBMISSIONS AND ART on *PRISONS*
(deadline July 1, 1998)

 T H R E S H O L D S:  v i e w i n g  c u l t u r e
  an annual anthology of art & cultural criticism
  in print and electronic media
  from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    thresholds-AT-sscf.ucsb.edu
    http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~tvc

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ PRISONS +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Since their creation in the early nineteenth century, modern prisons
have been a scene of both brutal judicial overkill and far-reaching
experiments in social engineering.  If this theater of cruelty and
excess is any indication of the current conditions of possibility for
social and cultural freedom, then the vision it reveals of today's
massive and still growing culture of incarceration is horrifying.

Prison system growth in the United States has been most dramatic during
the last 20 years of conservative backlash against the 1960s passage of
civil rights legislation.  The war on drugs and the accelerated
criminalization of poverty have placed an alarmingly disproportional
burden of this reaction on Black and Latino populations.  These factors,
along with increasing prison privatization and labor exploitation, are
dangerous signals that popular rhetorics of rehabilitation and public
safety are concealing the effects of an expanding prison industrial
complex.  THRESHOLDS questions the legitimacy of an institutional system
that produces such destructive injustice, and  we seek to participate in
a collective effort to expose, understand, and transform it.

THRESHOLDS' intent in examining PRISONS begins with the recognition that
radical systemic judicial and prison reform is both necessary and
immanent.  Too many lives are immediately at stake and too much future
individual and social potential is jeopardized by the current state of
affairs.  Articles of particular interest will focus on exposing the
excesses and weaknesses of the present system, analyzing and comparing
historical cases of institutional reform, and theorizing the
possibilities for direct political action.

THRESHOLDS takes exceptional interest in art that thematizes cultural
and social practices, and this volume seeks to both explore and question
the potential roles of art in prison experience and in the political,
labor, and popular cultures which legitimize and potentially destabilize
the vast prison industrial phenomenon.

THRESHOLDS is now accepting submissions which bear  witness to the
tragedy of the modern punishment industry and question the values
inherent in the social policies that support it. Possible forms of
submission include: --critical essays, reviews, interviews and/or
first-hand accounts --visual work such as original art and photographic
documentation --all manner of digital work formatted for the WWW (HTML,
sound, video,  animation, etc.)


   SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES:

Manuscript submissions should be typed or word-processed, double spaced
(maximum 20 pages), and single-sided.  Submit 3 stapled copies and
include a title page on each copy that provides the name, address,
telephone number, and e-mail address of the author.  References should
be kept to a minimum and should take the form of endnotes rather than
footnotes or in-text citations; endnotes should follow MLA format for
Works Cited lists, followed by a page number where appropriate. Please
send submissions to:

   THRESHOLDS: viewing culture
      volume 12 - Prisons
   2607 SOUTH HALL
   UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA
   SANTA BARBARA, CA 93106

Submissions must be received by July 1st, 1998.

For further submission guidelines, infomation regarding web-based
submissions, or general information, please e-mail us at:

   thresholds-AT-sscf.ucsb.edu

Visit us on the web at:

   http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~tvc


Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

   - The Thresholds Editorial Board
      T:vc 1996 (ISSN: 1069-6776)