A thematic issue of the journal: Intermédialités: Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques / Intermediality, history and Theory of the Arts, Literature, and technologies; Issue editors: Luc Gwiazdzinski (Université Joseph Fourier), Will Straw (McGill University)

The last decade has seen a significant number of scholarly works dealing with the urban night. Broad histories such as those of Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Simon Delattre and Joachim Schlör have been followed by more specialized studies from within such disciplines as urban policy, geography, lighting design, entertainment history and cultural studies. City governments throughout the world are moving to devise policies to control or open up the night. Activists have moved explicitly to produce “manifestos” or other interventions aimed at the status of the urban night. Colloquium and other scholarly meetings, often in collaboration with community groups or city governments, have proliferated.

Amidst this flurry of activity, the status of the urban night in relation to media forms remains undeveloped as an object of investigation. Histories of the urban night will stress the role of electrification in transforming the spaces of nocturnal labour, interaction and culture, but the place of these transformations within shifting economies of information and cultural expression remains under-examined.

Although the great media forms of the 20th century (cinema, radio, television and the mass-circulation newspaper) occupied particular intervals within the 24-hour cycle, this aspect of their social-industrial life invites further analysis. So, too, does the effect on the 24-hour cycle of the disengagement of media from punctual parts of that cycle, through the rise of content-on-demand systems and the generalization of the Internet.

In what ways, this issue will ask, is the urban night implicated within medial forms. The night has been conceptualized, within poetic and scholarly works, as territory, parenthesis, substance and scène: Likewise, the night has inspired distinctive categories of artistic expression, from the musical and visual nocturne through the film noir. Recently, cartographies of the urban night offer increasingly complex ways of rendering that night in visual or audiovisual terms. All of these treatments of the night are engaged, explicitly or implicitly, in defining a broader expressive economy of the night.

Habiter (la nuit) / Inhabiting (the night) will bring together texts which examine the variety of ways in which the urban night is marked by those media which map, structure, represent and transform it.

Intermédialités/Intermediality is a biannual internationally renowned peer-reviewed journal. It publishes articles both in French and English.

Abstracts of proposals (up to 300 words) in English or French should be sent to the issue editors:

  • Luc Gwiazdzinski - lucmarcg[at]gmail.com
  • Will Straw - william.straw[at]mcgill.ca
  • Authors are requested to follow the protocol1 for submitted manuscripts
  • 1. Available at http://cri.histart.umontreal.ca/cri/fr/intermedialites/protocole-de-redaction.pdf