sinecine: Journal of Film Studies

May 2027 Spring Issue Editors: Hasan Akbulut and Aydın Çam

The “Audience” dossier issue of sinecine aims to offer a comprehensive examination of film spectatorship within changing historical, technological, ideological, and economic conditions. Starting from the fact that spectatorship is constructed through films as well as practices of exhibition and distribution, we would like to include studies that bring together perspectives from different disciplines in this special issue. In this context, we welcome studies that seek answers to the following questions: How has the cinema spectator been discussed in theories? Under what conditions is audience taste formed? Through which media and in what ways are films watched within the changing technological context? Where and how do spectators share their feelings and thoughts about films? How are viewing experiences shaped across distinctions such as global-local, rural-urban, adult-child, and woman-man? How does the queer spectator experience cinema, how do they transform this experience into a narrative, and how do they remember it? What is the place of cinema memories in memory? How do technological transformations and changing exhibition practices position the spectator? In addition, issues such as the performance of spectatorship in movie theaters, special screenings, and festivals; how creative industries address the audience; and how the cinephile has been shaped and transformed from past to present also fall within the scope of this special issue.

Some of the topic headings we propose for the special issue on spectatorship can be listed as follows:

1. Theoretical and Historical Approaches

• The spectator in cinema theories
• Early cinema spectatorship
• Historical cinema experience

2. Spaces and Practices

• Going to the cinema
• Spectatorship in movie theaters
• Spectators at open-air screenings and special screenings
• Spatial transformations and spectators
• Festival spectatorship
• Mobile viewing experience
• Pop-up cinema viewing experience
• Different viewing practices
• Going to the cinema and spectatorship during periods of crisis
• Trauma, disaster, and spectatorship

3. Technology and Digitalization

• Technological change and spectatorship
• Digitalization and the spectator
• Platforms and the spectator

4. Identity, Social Distinctions, and Diversity

• Global spectatorship – local spectatorship
• Spectatorship in rural areas
• Child spectators
• Gendered viewing practices: women’s matinees, boarding-school cinemas, viewing experiences during military service, etc.
• The queer spectator, queering the spectator
• Spectatorship in the diaspora
• Spectator communities, collectives emerging from spectatorship
• Cinephilia

5. Genres, Experiences, and the Political Dimension

• Documentary, animation, and experimental cinema spectatorship
• Social movements and political spectatorship
• Cinema spectatorship as an experience

6. Memory, Narrative, and Well-being

• Cinema memory
• Narratives of going to the cinema
• Cinema experience and well-being

Submission Format

For sinecine’s special issue on spectatorship, original research articles, short note essays, and book reviews specific to the issue are expected. Submissions must be original; works that have been accepted for publication elsewhere or previously published will not be considered. Articles, including notes and references, should not exceed ten thousand words; 8,000 words is ideal. Explanatory notes should be numbered within the text and placed at the bottom of the relevant page. A Turkish and English Öz/Abstract of 250–300 words, together with 5 keywords, and an extended English Öz/Abstract of 600–800 words, only for articles written in Turkish, must be included. Texts to be considered for the Değini section may include film reviews, book introductions, or conference/festival reviews of 2,000–4,000 words. Articles should be written in Times New Roman, 12-point font, with 1.5 line spacing; footnotes should be written in 10-point font with single line spacing. For articles, the author’s name, a short biography, the title of the article, the author’s full address, and e-mail address should be written on a separate page. For more information about the article writing format, please see https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/sinecine and https://www.sinecinedergi.org/tr/. In sinecine: Journal of Film Studies, no fee is charged to authors in any way. Submissions must be uploaded to the DergiPark system via https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/sinecine. During submission, it should be stated in the note to the editor that the article is for the “special issue on spectatorship.”

Important Dates

Publication date of sinecine Special Issue on Spectatorship: Spring 2027
Deadline for article submissions: January 5, 2027
Review Process: All articles will undergo a blind peer-review process after evaluation by the editorial board.

sinecine: Journal of Film Studies

sinecine aims to bring different disciplines together around the common ground of cinema and to create a space for research, discussion, criticism, and inquiry within the social sciences, arts, and humanities. sinecine articles are published online. sinecine is a peer-reviewed journal indexed by the FIAF (The International Federation of Film Archives) International Index to Film Periodicals. sinecine publishes articles in Turkish and English.

Special Issue Editors and Contacts

Hasan Akbulut
hasan.akbulut@istanbul.edu.tr

Aydın Çam
aydinaksu@gmail.com

……….. Assistant Editor
………… Assistant Editor

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/sinecine
https://www.sinecinedergi.org/tr/
sinecine@gmail.com