The Velvet Light Trap, University of Texas Press

VLT is collectively edited by graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and The University of Texas at Austin, with the support of media scholars at those institutions and throughout the country. Each issue provokes debate about critical, theoretical, and historical topics relating to a particular theme.

The Velvet Light Trap is indexed and/or abstracted in Communication Abstracts, Film Literature Index, International Index to Film Periodicals, Sociological Abstracts, America: History and Life, and Historical Abstracts.

#68, Fall 2011 – Comedy and Humor
#67, Spring 2011 - Seeing Race: The Enduring Dilemma
#66, Fall 2010 - New Media in the Majority World
#65, Spring 2010 - Celebrity!
#64, Fall 2009 - Failures, Flops, and False Starts
#63, Spring 2009 - Censorship and Regulation
#62, Fall 2008 - Media Spaces and Architectures
#61, Spring 2008 - Remakes and Adaptations
Archives

#68, Fall 2011 – Comedy and Humor

Recombinant Comedy, Transmedial Mobility, and Viral Video: David Gurney
“The Missing Link Moment”: Web Comedy in New Media Industries: Nick Marx
Laughing Together? TV Comedy Audiences and the Laugh Track: Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore
“Have Women a Sense of Humor?” Comedy and Femininity in Early Twentieth-Century Film: Kristen Anderson Wagner
Parodying the Nation: Cross-Dressing and Vietnamese American Comedy: Lan Duong

Book Reviews

CSI by Derek Kompare: Reviewed by Myles McNutt
Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media by Isabel Molina-Guzmán: Reviewed by Eleanor Seitz
Jacques Rivette by Douglas Morrey and Alison Smith: Reviewed by Eric Dienstfrey
Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Filmby Tamar Jeffers McDonald: Reviewed by Kyra Hunting

#67, Spring 2011 - Seeing Race: The Enduring Dilemma

Sincere Fictions: The Production Cultures of Whiteness in Late 1960s Hollywood: Eithne Quinn
Alabama Constitutional Reform in Black and White: Gina Caison
Black Man/White Machine: Will Smith Crosses Over: Lorrie Palmer
Beyond Tokenism and Tricksterism: Bobby Lee, MADtv, and the De(con)structive Impulse of Korean American Comedy: David Scott Diffrient
Revisiting Sunday Morning Apartheid: The Politics of Of Color Blindness and Racial Formation in the Harry Reid Controversy: Doug E. Julien
The Racial Politics of Disaster and Dystopia in I Am Legend: Sean Brayton

Book Reviews

#66, Fall 2010 - New Media in the Majority World

Hard Questions: Public Goods and the Political Economy of the New Palestinian Televisual Public Sphere: Matt Seinkiewicz
Video Games for the "Next Billion": The Launch of the Zeebo Console: Ben Aslinger
Auto-Motivations: Digital Cinema and Kiarostami's Relational Aesthetics: Scott Krzych
Korean TV Serials in the English-Language Diaspora: Translating Difference Online and Making It Racial: Brian Hu
The New Navajo Cinema: Cinema and Nation in the Indigenous Southwest: Randolph Lewis

Book Reviews

#65, Spring 2010 - Celebrity!

Reclaiming the Freak: Michael Jackson and the Spectacle of Identity: Racquel J. Gates
Hannah Montana's Bare, Unprotected Back: Miley Cyrus's Vanity Fair Outing: James Kincaid
Stardom, Celebrity, and the Money Form: Barry King
Underexposed Overexposure: One Night in Paris: Minette Hillyer
Slumdog Celebrities: Priya Jaikumar
Star Testing: The Emerging Politics of Celebrity Gossip: Julie A. Wilson
Toxic: The Implosion of Britney Spears's Star Image: Moya Luckett
Tom Cruise, the "Couch Incident," and the Limits of Public Elation: Michael DeAngelis
Populist Celebrity in the Election Campaigns of Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger: A. Freya Thimsen
Dragging Oscar: Fernando Delgado
Brangelina: The Fertile Valley of Celebrity: Diane Negra
Death on Display: Reifying Stardom through Hollywood's Dark Tourism: Linda Levitt
Rihanna's Closed Eyes: Sarah Projansky
Dreaming a Dream: Susan Boyle and Celebrity Culture: Su Holmes
The Pregnant Man: Judith Halberstam

Book Reviews

#64, Fall 2009 - Failures, Flops, and False Starts

Claiming the Found: Archive Footage and Documentary Practice: (preface by Vance Kepley, Jr.)
Hollywood Party, Jimmy Durante, and the Cultural Politics of Coherence: Allen Larson
A Virtual Failure: Evaluating the Success of Nintendo's Virtual Boy: Steven Boyer
Convergent Consortia: Format Battles in High Definition: Bryan Sebok
StarCraft Fan Craft: Game Mods, Ownership, and Totally Incomplete Conversions: Derek Johnson
Public Service Broadcasting and the Failure of Political Representation: Kyle Conway
Dossier: Perspectives on Failure: The Editors

#63, Spring 2009 - Censorship and Regulation

Media Effects and the Subjectification of Film Regulation: Theresa Cronin
The Hindu Right and the Politics of Censorship: Three Case Studies of Policing Hindi Cinema, 1992-2002: Nandana Bose
Exemplary Consumer-Citizens and Protective State Stewards: How Reformers Shaped Censorship Outcomes Regarding The Untouchables: Laura Cook Kenna
Slashings and Subtitles: Romanian Media Piracy, Censorship, and Translation: Tessa Dwyer and Ioana Uricaru
Censorship, Regulation, and Media Policy in the Twenty-First Century: A Roundtable on Critical Approaches: The Editors

Book Reviews

#62, Fall 2008 - Media Spaces and Architectures

Film in Air: Airspace, In-Flight Entertainment, and NonTheatrical Distribution: Stephen Groening
Your Favorite Stars, Live On Our Screens: Media Culture, Queer Publics, and Commercial Space: Hollis Griffin
In the Flesh: Space and Embodiment in the Pornographic Peep Show Arcade: Amy Herzog
Photo Essay: Urban Iconography and the Technological Grotesque: Anna McCarthy
The Good Side of the Ghetto: Visualizing Black Brooklyn 1968–1971: Devorah Heitner
Dossier: Media Space in Perspective: The Editors
An Interview with Emily Thompson: Nick Marx and Danny Kimball

#61, Spring 2008 - Remakes and Adaptations

"Beam Me up, Omer": Transnational Media Flow and the Cultural Politics of the Turkish Star Trek Remake: Iain Robert Smith
Remaking and the Film Trilogy: Whit Stillman's Authorial Triptych: Claire Perkins
Somewhere in Time: Utopia and the Return of Superman: Matt Yockey
The Concessions of Nat Turner: by Christopher Sieving
An Interview with Richard Linklater

VLT Archives

Submission Guidelines

The Velvet Light Trap is a journal devoted to investigating historical questions that illuminate the understanding of film, television, and other media. It publishes articles and interviews written with the highest scholarly standards yet accessible to a broad range of readers. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographic approaches from the humanities and social sciences. The journal welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism. While the Velvet Light Trap maintains its traditional commitment to the study of American film, it also expands its scope to television and other media, to adjacent institutions, and to other nations' media. The journal encourages both approaches and objects of study that have been neglected or excluded in past scholarship.

The Velvet Light Trap issues calls for papers based on specific themes. Send three copies to the university issuing the call. Essays not suitable for issues in preparation at one university will be forwarded to the other for consideration. Submissions should be printed in letter-quality type. The format should follow the 1985 edition of the MLA Style Manual. The entire essay, including block quotations and notes, should be double spaced. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Photocopies of illustrations are sufficient for initial review, but authors should be prepared to supply camera-ready photographs on request. Illustrations will be sized by the publisher. Permissions are the responsibility of the author.