Exploring the Selfie

Julia Eckel is Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. Jens Ruchatz is Professor of audiovisual transfer processes at the Institute of Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. Sabine Wirth is Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany.

“The chapters in this volume clearly point out that exploring selfies and selfie culture requires an interdisciplinary approach. The book therefore gathers contributions from the fields of Media Studies, Art History, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Sociology, and Ethnography, providing an overview of the different positions between the two main approaches of selfie research … and attempts to reconcile them.” (Scriptable, rtreview.org, Issue 28, August, 2018)

• 1.The Selfie as Image (and) Practice – Approaching Digital Self-Photography.- 2. The Consecration of the Selfie. A Cultural History.- 3. Selfie-Reflexivity. Pictures of People Taking Photographs.- 4. Locating the ‘Selfie’ Within Photography’s History – and Beyond.- 5. The Selfie as Feedback: Video, Narcissism, and the Closed-Circuit Video Installation.- 6. The Selfie and the Face.- 7. Selfies & Authorship – On the Displayed Authorship and the Author Function of the Selfie.- 8. Competitive Photography and the Presentation of the Self.- 9. Of Duckfaces and Cat-beards: Why Do Selfies Need Genres?.- 10. Interfacing the Self – Smartphone Snaps and the Temporality of the Selfie.- 11.The Video Selfie as Act and Artefact of Recording.- 12. Be a Hero – Self-Shoots at the Edge of the Abyss.- 13. Strike a Pose: Robot Selfies.- 14. Selfies and Purikura as Affective, Aesthetic Labour.- 15.The Kid Selfie as Self-Inscription: Re-Inventing an Emerging Media Practice.- 16.“Machos” and “Top Girls”: Photographic Self-Images of Berlin Hauptschüler.-