Øyvind Vågnes and Asbjørn Grønstad are currently planning an edited volume on the theme of the semiotics, poetics, and rhetoric of album covers. Working from the assumption that record sleeves may be found to represent a visual genre in its own right, the proposed volume seeks both theoretical and critical contributions that in various ways engage with the analysis of what one might call the pictorial component of recorded music. We encourage submissions which run the whole gamut from close readings of individual covers to more theoretical or philosophical explorations of the aesthetic nature and artistic value of album covers. Welcoming contributions from media scholars, researchers in the field of cultural studies, art historians, literature scholars, musicologists, philosophers, and music journalists, we would essentially like to see the broadest possible array of theoretical perspectives being brought to bear on the subject. Without aiming to be prescriptive, the themes we anticipate covering may include album cover art and:

• the thematic and symbolic significance of album covers
• iconography
• band names, emblems, logos
• liner notes
• the degree to which it may be said to represent an independent art form (separate artistic expression)
• its position in/outside art history
• exhibition (inside/outside the museum)
• genealogy
• its historical evolution
• its canon and canonizers
• discursive textuality
• the politics of looking
• intertextuality/quotation (covering the cover)
• self-referentiality and meta-imagery
• parody and iconoclasm
• genre
• group style
• artists’ oeuvres
• interart traffic (drawing, painting, photography, film posters, television)
• intermedial poetics
• the ekphrastic (i.e. album graphic as visualization of the music)
• remediation
• its recontextualization as live theater (concerts)
• fashion
• the performance of sexuality
• its distribution in the mp3 age
• its changing formats (from lp to cd, etc.)
• hybridity (the complex relationship between the graphic, the musical, and the lyrical)
• synaesthetics (listening, looking, reading)
• the recording artist as a visual artist
• packaging
• advertising
• the political
• censorship (i.e. parental advisory stickers)

We are aiming to put together a proposal to submit to our preferred publisher by June 1, and are presently seeking expressions of interest. We are looking to receive short abstracts (400 words) from interested parties by April 15. Our aim is to produce a cross-disciplinary volume with ample illustration.

Interested parties should send a 400-word abstract either by mail (to Øyvind Vågnes or Asbjørn Grønstad, Department of English, University of Bergen, Sydnesplass 7, 5007 Bergen, Norway) or e-mail (to oyvind.vagnes@eng.uib.no or asbjorn.gronstad@eng.uib.no) by April 15, 2004. We will aim to confirm the final list of contributors by mid-May. Please feel free to circulate this e-mail. Immediate expressions of interest are encouraged and appreciated.