Camera Obscura is a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering feminism, culture, and media studies. It has operated as a feminist editorial collective out of the University of California since the 1970s and is currently published by Duke University Press.
Overview
The journal provides a forum for scholarship and debate on feminism, culture, and media studies. It encourages contributions in areas such as the conjunctions of gender, race, class, and sexuality with audiovisual culture; new histories and theories of film, television, video, and digital media; and politically engaged approaches to a range of media practices.
Publication Details
- Discipline: Media studies
- Language: English
- Edited by: Lalitha Gopalan, Lynne Joyrich, Homay King, Constance Penley, Tess Takahashi, Patricia White, Sharon Willis
- Publisher: Duke University Press (United States)
- Frequency: Triannual (three issues per year)
- History: 1976–present
- ISSN: 0270-5346 (print), 1529-1510 (web)
- LCCN: 86642435
- OCLC: 983213062
History
Camera Obscura was established in 1976 by four graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Janet Bergstrom, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Elisabeth Lyon, and Constance Penley. The four had previously contributed to Women & Film magazine but departed to create a collectively edited journal that engaged with contemporary critical theory. According to Penley, their intention was based on the view that the "analytical tools of structuralism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis could help us give a better description and explanation of the cinematic system that we wanted to counter."
Abstracting and Indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in the following databases:
- Arts and Humanities Citation Index
- Current Contents/Arts & Humanities
- DIALNET
- EBSCO databases
- Index Islamicus
- International Bibliography of Periodical Literature
- Modern Language Association Database
- ProQuest databases
- Scopus
Scope
Since its inception, Camera Obscura has devoted itself to providing feminist perspectives on film, television, and visual media. While remaining faithful to its feminist focus, the journal has also expanded to explore feminist work in relation to race studies, postcolonial studies, and queer studies. It has developed a reputation for introducing emerging writers to the field.
