Videographic Books
Videographic Books: Film and Media Scholarship in Sound and Image
Series editor: Jason Mittell (Middlebury College)
Combining the possibilities of digital scholarship with the long-standing strengths of the print monograph, this series strives to publish works that convey ideas and expand knowledge via the digital rhetoric of videographic criticism. Videographic Books will resemble traditional print books as accessed via an online e-reader, but use embedded video and audio to convey ideas through the distinct form of videographic criticism. The published works will explore a wide-range of topics and approaches concerning film, television, videogames, and other media, but be united through a commitment to born-digital publishing as structured through the stable, archivable, and library-optimized open-access Fulcrum platform, and the use of audiovisual media as core components of intellectual expression, not just illustrations or examples.
About the Series
The rise of videographic criticism has been one of the most significant transformations in film and media studies during the 21st century, leading to the emergence of video essays as a legitimate and commonplace form of scholarship. Academic videographic criticism analyzes films using the same media that it seeks to analyze: sound and moving images. At its best, videographic criticism is not just the presentation of traditional film analysis in video form, but functions as a distinctive research method, pursuing distinct modes of discovery, analysis, experimentation, and expression. Videographic practices can reveal otherwise hidden facets of media, with videographic works exploring experimental, poetic, affective, and aesthetic dimensions more widely than in typical written scholarship. Such videos can convey ideas and experiences in unique and unprecedented ways, reaching broad audiences both within and outside academia.
While the parallels between video essays and journal articles are inexact, a videographic essay typically functions at roughly the same scope of a written article—but what would the videographic parallel be to an academic book? Film and media studies is a discipline that prioritizes monographs and edited anthologies over journal articles, and videographic criticism is not yet actively publishing work that is operating at that larger scope. This series of open-access, born-digital audiovisual books seeks to provide that venue.
Combining the possibilities of digital scholarship with the long-standing strengths of the print monograph, this series strives to publish works that convey ideas and expand knowledge via the digital rhetorics of audiovisual expression. The books in this series, either as single-authored monographs or focused collections of videographic chapters, seek to expand the possibilities of film and media studies via long-form audiovisual argumentation. Works will present analytical and critical videos alongside contextualizing prose, hosted and published on the stable, archivable, and library-optimized open-access Fulcrum platform. While specific topics and approaches may range widely, the goal of the series is to expand the possibilities of film and media scholarship, and continue the development of videographic criticism as a vibrant mode of academic practice.
This series is open to featuring projects that consist of a mix of original and already released works, including recontextualizing previously published videos within new written frameworks and adjoining works. There is no prescribed “length” for either written text nor audiovisual material, as books will likely range in both length and the relative ratio between writing and videographic expression; the expectation is that projects will have the scope and significance comparable to the norms of academic books. Proposals for projects should follow Lever Press’s guidelines, with the expectation that some sample videographic work would be part of the submission.
Publish with Videographic Books
If you have a project that might be a good fit for the Videographic Books series, please reach out to the series editor, Jason Mittell (jmittell@middlebury.edu), and to Lever Press's acquiring editor, Sean Guynes (sean@leverpress.org), to describe your project.