Special issue of "medien&zeit" [Media and Time]

"medien&zeit" is an interdisciplinary journal which welcomes contributions
addressing theories, methods and issues of communication history. Four
issues are published per year. Number 2/2009 will focus on journalism as a
profession for women. We invite submissions of abstracts and manuscripts
reporting recent developments in the field of gender and journalism
history.

CfP "Journalism as a female profession - historical perspectives"
The number of female journalists has grown continuously. Today, about a
third of all journalists in Western democracies are women. When
reconstructing the history of female journalists a remarkable
contradiction becomes apparent. While standard works on the history of
journalism and census figures suggest that the rise of Western journalism
in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century took place
without the participation of women journalists, contemporary media sources
indicate that female authors contributed a reasonable part to published
articles. Female journalists must have existed, but presumably their
cultural, social and work-related position differed from that of male
journalists. So far, research on historical journalism has rarely focused
on female journalists. Although there are a few biographies on spectacular
and exceptional female journalists - mostly deriving from the field of
gender history and literature - our knowledge of women in early journalism
is still fragmented.

The special issue of "medien&zeit" - journalism as a female profession:
historical perspectives - intends to give a critical review of current
research on early female journalists and wants to show new perspectives
that might expand our insight into the gendered structure of (historical)
journalism.

Therefore the question should be raised why and how women were
systematically removed from journalism history. Submissions are invited
that analyse the prevailing patterns in journalism history and deconstruct
their androcentric bias by reflecting the sources, criteria of analysis
and current results of research dealing with journalism as a profession.
Moreover we encourage collective biographies that reconstruct social
position, occupational roles and occupational fields for certain groups of
female journalists. Here comparative research is welcome that highlights
contexts and constellations that have proven to be influential on the
daily work and careers of women journalists.

And finally biographical essays are of interest that portrait average
women journalists who might not have been in the focus of biographical
research so far, but can highlight how daily routines were experienced by
female journalists.

Authors who would like to make a contribution to the special issue of
"medien&zeit", please first submit an extended abstract (in English or
German, max. 800 words) by November, 30, 2008. Our goal is to review these
proposals and inform authors about their abstract(s) within two weeks of
receipt. Authors whose proposals are accepted will be asked to submit full
papers by March, 15, 2009. The submitted papers may be written in English
or in German, must describe original research and should not be published
or be under review in other journals. The paper length should not exceed
30 double-spaced pages including figures and references. All papers will
go through a peer-review process.'

Abstracts should be submitted electronically via email in Microsoft Word
or PDF attachments and should include a cover sheet containing
corresponding author's name, paper title, affiliation, mailing address,
phone, fax number and email address etc.

Would-be authors should send their manuscript to:
susanne.kinnebrock@univie.ac.at (Prof. Dr. Susanne Kinnebrock, Department
of Communication, University of Vienna/Austria).