[KineJapan] CFP: Spectator 46.2—The Amateur Reconsidered (Due Dec 1, 2025)

[Wakae Nakane]

Hello all,

I’m circulating the call for papers for Spectator 46.2, “The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics.” If this topic is of interest, please see the description below for details on scope, submission guidelines, and timeline.

Kind regards,
Wakae
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Wakae Nakane (she/her)
Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow
Division of Cinema & Media Studies
University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts
wnakane at usc.edu<mailto:wnakane at usc.edu>


Call for Papers
Spectator Special Issue: The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics
Volume 46.2 Fall 2026
The category of the “amateur” has long been marked by instability. Etymologically linked to love (amator), the amateur historically signified passion and connoisseurship, yet in modern usage it has oscillated between devotion and dilettantism. This semantic tension has shaped how amateur practice has been positioned within aesthetic discourse, labor history, and the formation of the public sphere.
Cinema and media studies has repeatedly returned to amateurism to both dismiss it and laud its critical and creative possibilities. Accounts of home movies and small-gauge film cultures once considered them part of the marginalia of personal or domestic life, but scholarship has since demonstrated their aesthetic, social, and historical significance. Scholarship, including Patricia Zimmermann’s foundational work, has situated amateur media within broader institutional and discursive frameworks, from the formation of aesthetic norms in clubs and contests to the intersections of labor history, expertise, and the public/private divide. Simultaneously, amateur practice has been examined as a counter-aesthetic and an alternative mode of production, as in Maya Deren’s “Amateur Versus Professional” (1959), which framed amateur film as resistant to the industrial logics of Hollywood. Yet amateurism has also been understood as politically mobilized: Soviet avant-garde circles and interwar Japanese movements such as Prokino envisioned the amateur as a figure of collectivism, workers’ culture, and social transformation. These diverse trajectories indicate that amateurism has never been a singular phenomenon, but rather a contested and heterogeneous category that both reflects and unsettles the boundaries of cultural production and consumption.
At a moment when digital platforms both amplify non-professional production and intensify regimes of credentialization, amateurism demands renewed critical scrutiny. How might the consideration of amateur practice illuminate shifting conceptions of authorship, expertise, and creativity? In what ways does amateurism negotiate or contest the professionalization of cultural life? And how might the figure of the amateur reframe our understandings of mediation, publicness, and the politics of work and play? This special issue of Spectator seeks contributions that interrogate amateurism as a theoretical and historical category across media forms and cultural contexts. We welcome essays that draw from diverse archives and methodologies, including studies of amateur film and video, domestic and vernacular media, digital platforms, and transnational amateur practices.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  *   Histories and theories of amateur media
  *   Digital platforms and amateur media
  *   Amateur media in a transnational/global context
  *   The politics of amateurism
  *   The aesthetics of amateur media
  *   Leisure, hobbies, audienceship, and labor
  *   Home movies
  *   Fandom
  *   Preservation and archival practices regarding amateur media
  *   Pedagogical approaches to amateur media
  *   Book reviews of recent scholarship examining amateur media
Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2025
Spectator is a biannual publication by the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Cinema & Media Studies.
Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to:
Issue Editor: Wakae Nakane
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 W. 34th St. Suite 320
Los Angeles, CA-90089
wnakane at usc.edu<mailto:wnakane at usc.edu>
Submissions should be e-mailed directly to the issue editor. Manuscripts should include the title of the contribution, name of author(s), postal address, e-mail address, and a phone number for the author who will work with the editor on revisions. Contributions should not exceed 5,000 words. Please include a brief abstract and author bio for publicity purposes.
Articles submitted should not be under consideration by any other journals.
Book Reviews may vary in length from 300 to 1,000 words. Please include title of book, retail price and ISBN at the beginning of the review.
Additional section contributions can include interviews, works about new archival or research facilities as well as newly developed methods related to the field.
Authors should send copies of their work via e-mail as electronic attachments. Files should be formatted in the latest version of Microsoft Word and endnotes should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style.
Upon acceptance, a detailed format/style sheet will be forwarded to all contributors as to the requirements for the submission of images and text.
Current Board for Spectator
Founding Editor: Marsha Kinder
Managing Editor: TBD
Issue Editor: Wakae Nakane
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