*CFP* "JESUITS IN SCIENCE FICTION: THE CLASH OF REASON AND REVELATION ON OTHER WORLDS", CHAPTER BOOK

Science fiction authors have long drawn deep upon philosophy, theology, history, science and various other disciplines. In the early 20th century a distinct sub-genre of science fiction emerged and continues today; it deals with Jesuits (and the like) exploring and experiencing the clash of reason and revelation within in alien cultures and future societies.  Classic writers such as Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Arthur C. Clarke and Walter Miller Jr. come to mind followed by contemporary writers such as Mary Dorion Russell and Dan Simmons—to name but a few.

Philosophers have long engaged in thought experiments to tease out underpinnings and implications of concepts.  Science fiction writers do the same.  Characters as Jesuits or modelled on Jesuits are readily found in this literature.  

 Novels and short stories provide a rich context for thought experiments regarding the foundations of metaphysics, morality, science, broader issues in theology and, of course, science fiction’s staple: social critique and critical satire.

*CFP* "MEN AND MASCULINITIES", POTENTIAL SPECIAL ISSUE, MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES JOURNAL

MEL (Middle Eastern Literatures) is willing to consider a potential special issue on men and masculinities to discuss the changing social construction of masculinities in Middle Eastern literatures, and to elaborate on how literature as a field can contribute to the theorization of masculinities. This special issue is intended to explore masculinities as dynamic and multifaceted phenomena emerging within contradictory cultural, material and discursive contexts of the Middle East. The aim is to locate and dislocate masculinities, along the line of thought presented by Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne in Dislocating Masculinity (1994). Cornwall and Lindisfarne punctuated the importance of considering the various ways people understand masculinities in particular settings, so that it becomes possible to explore how masculinities are defined and redefined in social interaction.

The joint effort for theorizing masculinities has globally thrived since 1990s, and this special issue is planned as a contribution to understand transformations associated with masculinity in the Middle East, following the array of recent critical studies on men and masculinities. The scope is not limited to cis-gender and heterosexual men and masculinities, but perspectives on queer and transgender masculinities are also invited. In this special issue, the aim is to discuss how literature treats/questions masculinity as a metaphor of power; to interrogate the plurality of masculinities in a wide range of alternatives from hegemonic masculinities to subordinated/marginalized masculinities; to analyze the negotiation of masculinities around social and economic problems and political turmoils; and to strengthen the efforts to theorize the study of masculinities in the Middle East.

*CFP* "REPRESENTATIONS OF DISABILITY IN SCIENCE FICTION", CHAPTER BOOK

Vernon Press invites book chapter proposals for a forthcoming scholarly volume on representations of disability in science fiction, a peer-reviewed collection of essays that will examine how disability identity and experience have been shaped through the science fiction genre. Science fiction texts—defined broadly to include written text as well as newer media—typically grapple with concepts such as transhumanism, embodiment, and autonomy more directly than do those of other genres, and in doing so, they raise significant questions about the experience of disability. More broadly, they often convey the place of disability in not only the future but also the world of today. This volume will seek to explore what science fiction texts convey about the value of disability, whether it be through disabled characters, biotechnologies, or, more broadly, conceptions of an idealized future.

The volume will consider all categories and types of disability as they are depicted in science fiction. Discussions may include, but are not limited to, physical, cognitive, sensory, or psychological disability. Along with this, analyses of various types of science fiction texts are encouraged, from traditional literature to film, television, comics, graphic novels, narrative-based video games, etc. Contributors are invited to consider not only those examples from science fiction that advance disability representation but also those which may compromise or discount it.

*CFP* "AI FICTIONS/ IA FICTIONS", INTERNATIONAL 2021 CONFERENCE

AI fictions/ IA fictions

International Conference

3-5 June 2021

University Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris

This is the first conference ever organized on the theme of Artificial Intelligence in fiction (literature, series, films, comics, video games): the focus will be on representations of AI and their meanings, as well as the creative uses of AI to produce and understand fiction.

A road trip entirely written by an artificial intelligence embedded in a car, Ross Goodwin's the road has joined at the start of the 2019 literary season a whole series of texts whose common point was to stage and act out a dream of automation and artificialization of literary language, whose genealogy goes back at least to the first automatic writings of Oulipo: artificial intelligence is no longer just a fiction but a tool for producing fiction. Hito Steyerl revisits the narrative power of documentary film using deep learning algorithms to better question its ability to shape reality; Second Earth by Gregory Chatonsky takes us into a new world whose automatically generated images already tell the story, while by associating two images to a logical connector he shows the power of an algorithm to create a small story (If... then, 2009).

*CFP* "ANARCHISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF RADICALISM

JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism is interested in articles for an issue that explores the history of anarchism, including recent history of anarchist movements, groups, and individuals. We are also interested in related currents, which include Black bloc, antifa, and the creation of autonomous zones, as well as ecological movements or groups like Extinction Rebellion.

We seek articles on transnational subjects as well as on lesser-known examples of radicalism, as well as in articles that include theoretical and methodological considerations. We are interested in articles on radicalism in a wide range of contexts and areas, and encourage articles from humanities and social science perspectives. The Journal for the Study of Radicalism engages in serious, scholarly exploration of the forms, representations, meanings, and historical influences of radical social movements. With sensitivity and openness to historical and cultural contexts of the term, we loosely define “radical,” as distinguished from “reformers,” to mean groups who seek revolutionary alternatives to hegemonic social and political institutions, and who seek the sudden dramatic transformation of society through violent or non-violent means. The journal is eclectic, without dogma or strict political agenda, and ranges broadly across social and political groups worldwide, whether typically defined as “left” or “right.” We expect contributors to come from a wide range of fields and disciplines. We especially welcome articles that reconceptualize definitions and theories of radicalism, feature underrepresented radical groups, and introduce new topics and methods of study.

*CFP* "BABYLON BERLIN", EDITED VOLUME

Touted as the most expensive German series ever made, Babylon Berlin (created by Achim von Borries, Henk Handloegten, and Tom Tykwer) has reached audiences throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas since its inception in 2017. Set in Berlin during the final years of the Weimar Republic, the series offers viewers a panoramic take on politics, culture, gender, and sexual relations in the German capital.

We seek proposals for an edited volume that explores the unique contribution of Babylon Berlin to contemporary visual culture. Focusing especially on the intermedial and transhistorical dimensions of the series, the volume will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine various facets of the show, including its aesthetic form and citational style, its representation of the history and politics of the late Weimar Republic, and its exemplary status as a blockbuster production of neoliberal media culture. Our goal is to create a cohesive volume of analytical essays that can act as a foundational resource for those who view, teach, and/or study the series.

*CFP* "THE LABORS OF LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND HISTORY IN NORTH AMERICA", EDITED VOLUME

Although the corresponding SANAS conference is postponed until fall 2021, the organizers are moving ahead with preparations for the volume Work: The Labors of Language, Culture, and History in North America. The conference cfp also serves as the volume cfp (see below). The volume will be published in the series Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature (Narr/ Francke/ Attempto).

When the speaker in Philip Levine’s poem “What Work Is” says that everyone old enough to read a poem knows about work, he means that work is a universal condition. Some people work more often than others, or under more desirable circumstances, or for better pay, but we all do it. You’re probably working right now. If you’re reading a call for papers, you know what work is.

Yet like all fundamental categories, work becomes ever more complex as we examine it more closely. As Raymond Williams and Andrea Komlosy have shown, the terms “work,” “labor,” “job,” “employment,” “occupation,” “profession,” “vocation,” “task,” “toil,” “effort,” “pursuit,” and “calling” form a dense web of overlapping and contrasting meanings. Language must labor to grasp the connections between cooking a Big Mac and writing a novel, lifting a box in a warehouse and making beds at a hotel, professing and caring for children, hammering and tweeting. 

*CFP* "DIGITAL INNOVATIONS, BUSINESS AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA", BOOK CHAPTERS

Can you name at least five popular African digital innovations, digital enterprises, digital entrepreneurs or digital platforms? Barely not many can answer this question, even with some thought. So why can’t many answer the question. The simple answer is that we don’t have a comprehensive reference telling Africa’s story in the digital economy or its response to new and emerging technologies. Apart from the success of mobile money, especially in East Africa, where are the other success stories? How do we replicate such success stories without knowing them?

For African enterprises, entrepreneurs and governments to take full advantage of new digital opportunities, we need a shared strategic understanding of what where we are, what we have and what we may need to have for the future. This book presents this shared strategic vision to guide future coordinated actions of African enterprises, entrepreneurs, consumers/citizens and governments in using new and emerging digital technologies.

*CFP* "EMOTIONS, POPULISM AND POLARISATION", SECOND HELSINKI CONFERENCE

First call for papers for the Second Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation

The first CfP for our HEPP2 conference 6-8 May 2021 is out. Please consider filling the webform to submit your abstract.

The Second Helsinki Emotions Populism and Polarisation Conference: Call for Papers

After the success of our conference in August 2019, the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation and its associated projects, Mainstreaming Populism in the 21st Century (MaPo) and Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (WhiKnow), invite proposals for papers for the Second Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation, to be held both in person and online from 6 to 8 May 2021.

*CFP* "ART AND AESTHETICS IN PANDEMIC TIME", Nº 61, (2/2021), THE POLISH JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS

The crisis situation related to the advent of the pandemic has directly affected the world of culture, as broadly understood. This sphere of human activity reacted quickly and effectively to changes taking place in the social space, adapting itself to the current situation. The contemporary development of technology enables various artistic activities to be undertaken and presented in an attractive form of communication, drawing the attention of a mass audience. Art emerging in this way retains the ability to stimulate and strengthen the experiences and emotions of the audience, affecting its group sensitivity. It turns out that the relationship between art and contemporary communication techniques and technologies is of great interactive and integrative significance in the social dimension, shaping the culture-forming aspect of “participatory society.” The syntopia of social activity being realized here enables the implementation of a sympathetic model of thinking and understanding the world. The synoptic attitude, as the active meeting of many subjects, leads to the reintegration of their individual identities and their expansion into a group dimension, thus including individuals in a community of subjects similarly isolated in the crumbling world with which they are familiar.

*CFP* "THE GOTHIC AGE OF TELEVISION", EDITED COLLECTION

The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of Gothic television programs. Some provide a platform for the Gothic’s most fantastic mode of expression, with vampires, werewolves, and zombies invading our screens. Closer to home but decidedly unheimlich, domestic spaces are haunted by uncanny secrets in programs from Twin Peaks to Top of The Lake. Still other programs, like Game of Thrones and Black Mirror, capture the Gothic’s obsession with barbaric pasts and threatening futures. Subtle elements of Gothic emerge in a wide range of non-Gothic programming, such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad, revealing the true extent of the genre’s influence.

Perhaps, just as Black Mirror’s techno-mediated future reflects – and reflects upon – the present moment, this Gothic resurgence responds to the transformations and uncertainties of our time.  In other words, we might read the Gothic, as it repeatedly has been, as a genre that re-emerges at times of cultural anxiety. The screens, and the streaming services that play this Gothic programming might, then, themselves be read as “Gothic devices,” even more transformative than the technologies that that have inspired and shaped the Gothic narratives of past centuries.

*CFP* "OPENING THE VAULT: MEDIA INDUSTRY STUDIES AND ITS ARCHIVES", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE SPECTATOR

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous scholars have been unable to physically access archival records, locked away for an indefinite period of time. In the present, various media industries—studios, streaming services, talent agencies, and more —have continued to announce deals, make public statements, and present a digital front that veils the story underneath. With continued conglomeration and corporate security practices winnowing access to materials, even smaller stakes questions—even the amount of eyes on any particular work on digital platforms—are becoming increasingly impossible to uncover without records.

This moment of “pause” for many archival documents thus calls us to both reflect and think creatively. Thomas Schatz notes in The Genius of the System, “Hollywood left its legacy not only on celluloid but also on paper.” Contracts, correspondence, policy memos, audits, balance sheets, and more have all been used to generate new insights into day-to-day operations of moving image production and its political, economic, and social consequences. What does the archive, as a collection of documents, a set of practices, and an institution, reveal about the formation and continued domination of industries? What can those attempting to speak truth to power without records do in their absence? 

*CFP* LLAMADA A VÍDEO-ENSAYOS, NÚMERO 6, TECMERIN: REVISTA DE ENSAYOS AUDIOVISUALES

Tecmerin: Revista de Ensayos Audiovisuales lanza su sexta convocatoria para la publicación de vídeo ensayos. Es una publicación semestral, con revisión por pares, que además lanza un monográfico anual. La revista se enmarca en las actividades del grupo de investigación Tecmerin (Televisión, Cine, Memoria, Representación e Industria) de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Departamento de Periodismo y Comunicación Audiovisual).

En el número 6 planteamos una convocatoria abierta, con un interés especial, aunque no exclusivo, en la producción audiovisual de España y Latinoamérica. Por consiguiente, y de una manera amplia, se invita a mandar propuestas focalizadas en la producción, consumo, circulación e intercambio cultural en estas áreas geográficas.

Instrucciones de Envío:

Los investigadores y creadores audiovisuales pueden mandar sus propuestas a una de estas dos secciones:

• Vídeo-Ensayos: ensayos audiovisuales que proporcionen una visión crítica sobre aspectos del cine, la televisión o la cultura popular de manera más amplia. 
• Creadores: propuestas de cariz experimental o documental que se aproximan a un ámbito cultural específico.

*CFP* "TRUE CRIME IN AMERICAN MEDIA", CHAPTER BOOK

A new edited collection on true crime in 21st century American visual and audio media invites proposals for chapters. 

This new book seeks to present original scholarship on the structure, themes and consumption of true crime in today’s visual/audio media landscape.

From sober documentary film through ‘binge-worthy’ streaming of podcasts and television series, true crime appears in a wide variety of styles and attracts an equally varied array of responses.  This book hopes to reflect as many approaches as possible.

While the central focus will be on American films and series of the 21st century, the collection would also benefit from discussions on the global reach and/or influences of such media, so proposals on such topics are welcomed.

*CFP* "GENDER AND EMBODIMENT IN NARRATIVES OF DISPLACEMENT", SPECIAL ISSUE, FEMINIST ENCOUNTERS

According to the United Nations, more than 70 million people have been displaced worldwide. The UN monitors statistics on internally displaced persons, refugees, and asylum-seekers, and within those groups there are nuanced experiences of displacement based on gender, race, sexual expression, class, religion, and ability. Experience of forced displacement—whether because of civil unrest, natural disaster, government-induced development, or climate change—is more and more a shared experience, and the narratives of these experiences can both bring together and challenge us. The recent global Coronavirus pandemic affects us all, and yet it exacerbates the inequities in medical care, services, and ability to adhere to stay-at-home mandates. Forced in-placement is another form of bodily control highlighting the ways vulnerable populations are disproportionately affected by crises.

For this special issue of Feminist Encounters, we focus on interdisciplinary approaches to displacement, mobility, migration, and resettlement, and the embodied narratives produced around these issues. The body often serves as the site where discourses of identity and discourses of power overlap and intersect. With an understanding that displacement involves the movement of actual bodies across space, place, and time, we seek essays and other creative works that address the complexities of embodied displacement from interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches.

*CFP* "THE CINEMA OF APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL", CHAPTER BOOK

One of the several elements with which Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul indulges himself, is the notion of the body—the various adventures and misadventures of bodilyness, the bliss, the pangs, the illnesses and the suffering. As memory (or the lack of it)takes the centre-stage in his oeuvre, bodies—young and old, male and female, rural and urban, real and ethereal— are often forgotten, remembered and re-remembered in quick succession. Such embodied characters, in their varied entanglements with mnemonic and topographical occupations, haunt and are haunted by the setting. More often, the rural Thailand features as the backdrop of Weerasethakul's films with its multitudes of life: the daily interactions, the humdrum affairs, the tedious tasks, the necessary rituals and customs. And all these reverberate with a distinct south-east Asian palette. On the surface, there are these local images of Isaan, the livelihood of villagers and the continuing migration: some of the recurring subjects of his films that give his works a “national” character, enabling a global audience to explore the society, culture, politics and practices of both rural and urban population of Thailand. While on the greater curve, his films unearth concerns that are universal and complex. As Matthew Barrington observes, “When Weerasethakul uses his camera to focus on Isaan and the exploration of the voiceless Thai inhabitants it becomes useful to place Weerasethakul as a transnational filmmaker whose films provide an international audience for the documenting of the marginalised individuals who populate Isaan”.

*CFP* "SUGAR AND SPICE AND THE NOT SO NICE: COMICS PICTURING GIRLHOOD", INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

Sugar and Spice and the Not So Nice: Comics Picturing Girlhood

22nd-23rd April 2021

Ghent University, Belgium

Comics have long relied on reinforcing reader identity formation whether through interest, age group or hobbies. Constructed and largely mythical notions of gendered readership consequently became one of the most defining aspects of many of these comics. As gendered products, comics have constructed feminine role models and identities to which girls have replied with both rebellion and conformity. The aim of this symposium is to inspire and promote discourse around comparative constructions of girlhood. This exploration will consider relationships between and influences on European comics on girls in the twentieth and twenty-first century. 

We invite paper proposals under four key areas which can include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

*CFP* "CRISIS SOCIAL Y COMUNICACIÓN POLÍTICA EN LA ERA DE LA PANDEMIA", Nº 4, URU: REVISTA DE COMUNICACIÓN Y CULTURA

América Latina vive momentos críticos: las protestas ciudadanas y los reclamos al poder han sido la tónica del último trimestre del año 2019, a lo que se suman los devastadores efectos sanitarios y sociales de la pandemia originada por el COVID-19, que comenzó a inicios del 2020 y no solo mostró la debilidad del sistema de salud sino que desnudó la falta de capacidad de muchos gobiernos para responder adecuadamente a la pandemia, a nivel nacional y local, salvo algunas excepciones. La gobernabilidad democrática, en suma, se ha visto golpeada y cuestionada a fondo, y muchos analistas e investigadores han tratado de explicar lo ocurrido, desde reflexiones sobre los límites del sistema democrático y la potencialidad de la reacción ciudadana. En este ambiente, la comunicación ha sido un eje importante, tanto para los gobiernos, como para los movimientos sociales y ciudadanos en general. Los actores políticos y sociales en disputa, han hecho uso no solo de medios y estrategias tradicionales de comunicación, sino de nuevos mecanismos de relacionamiento e interacción social, particularmente de herramientas digitales marcados por datos y algoritmos que inciden fuertemente en la opinión pública a nivel local como global. La comunicación política, en este sentido, juega un papel esencial en estos procesos y en la reflexión de la democracia no meramente representativa, electoralista y formal sino realmente deliberativa y fuertemente participativa

*CFP* "VIRTUALIZING MATERIAL GAMES", VIRTUAL PANEL, THE SCMS CONFERENCE 2021

SCMS Online Conference

Virtualizing Material Games Panel

17-21st March, 2021

To be held online

Even before worldwide quarantines added impetus, material gaming had already become increasingly enacted in virtual spaces.  Rather than virtual play replacing the material, as some speculated in the early days of videogames, material play has become increasingly entangled with virtuality.  These increasingly complementary modes of play offer a rich space for exploring the multifaceted embodied and conceptual activity of play, the blending of material and virtual that in many ways defines games.   

This panel aims to explore the paradoxical yet generative spaces where materiality and virtuality intersect in gaming.  Preference will be given to interdisciplinary papers that explore the tensions and complementarity between analog game studies and videogame studies. 

*CFP* "CINEMATIC BODIES", 15.1 ISSUE, CINEPHILE JOURNAL

The body on the screen and the body of the screen have always formed a compelling and productive pairing. From apparatus theory to production and exhibition histories, these two conceptualizations of cinematic bodies remain valuable avenues for reflecting on the use of images, their visibility, materiality, and presentation. As cinema continues to fracture and expand across our cell phones and living spaces, the screen is increasingly tangible, mobile, and ubiquitous. Like the mobile toys and popular illusions preceding modern cinema, these forms of new media present particular bodies on particular screens. 

The unifying darkness of the movie theatre is being replaced by a brighter multiplicity of global media objects, at once scattered and reconciled through social media, streaming platforms, and the internet in general. Even as borders and nations are re-entrenched, international connections are being forged. Though research on the body of the screen (in exhibition histories, affect theory, and tactility) and on the body on the screen (in critical theory on the making of race and gender) has proliferated in recent years, bringing the two together will produce a more nuanced consideration of how and who we are watching today.

*CFP* "REPRESENTATIONS AS WEAPONS: CULT FILM AND THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE", THE 14TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND FESTIVAL ON GLOBAL CULT FILM TRADITIONS

Cine-Excess: The 14th International Conference and Festival on Global Cult Film Traditions

Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance. 

5th- 7th November 2020 

(Online).

Cine-Excess 14, in association with Birmingham City University and the Black Sands Educational Project, features an online academic conference, alongside film industry panels and a streamed film festival season of related UK premieres and retrospectives. A Panel of international filmmakers discussing the theme of ‘Representations as Weapons’ will be announced in late July.

Previous guests of honour attending Cine-Excess have included Jen & Sylvia Soska (American Mary, Rabid [2019]), Norman J. Warren (Prey, Terror), Victoria Price (Author of Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography), Pete Walker (Frightmare and House of the Long Shadows), Catherine Breillat (Romance, Sex is Comedy), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers), Roger Corman (The Masque of the Red Death, The Wild Angels), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, King of the Ants), Brian Yuzna (Society, The Dentist), Dario Argento (Deep Red, Suspiria), Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins), Franco Nero (Django, Keoma, Die Hard II), Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, The Devils), Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, House on the Edge of the Park), Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma, The Inglorious Basts), Sergio Martino (Torso, All the Colours of the Dark), Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) and Pat Mills (Action Magazine, 2000 AD).

*CFP* CALL FOR VIDEO-ESSAYS, ISSUE 6, TECMERIN: JOURNAL OF AUDIOVISUAL ESSAYS

Tecmerin. Journal of Audiovisual Essays launches its CFP for issue 6. It is a biannual, peer-reviewed journal, which also offers a monographic dossier each year. This journal is published by the research group Tecmerin (Television, Cinema, Memory, Representation and Industry) of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Department of Journalism and Media Studies).

The journal focuses on Spanish and Latin American cultural production, although not exclusively. Consequently, we especially invite scholars, researchers and creators to send pieces centered on the production, consumption, circulation and cultural exchange within these geographical areas.

Instructions for authors:

Researchers and creators may send their audiovisual essays to one of the following sections:

• Video-Essays:  audiovisual essays that offer a critical take on diverse aspects of cinema, television and popular culture. 
• Creators:  experimental or documentary pieces that approach a specific cultural topic.

*CFP* "20 YEARS LATER: LOOKING BACK AT 9/11", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

20 Years Later: Looking Back at 9/11, International Conference

October, 7-8, 2021

University of Toulouse, Jean Jaurès, Francia 

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the Universities of Toulouse and Montpellier in the South of France are joining forces to organize an international interdisciplinary conference on these events. Its aim is to analyze, not only the events and their short-term consequences with a two-decade hindsight, but also the many ways in which those events have been perceived, represented, commented upon, co-opted or rewritten along the years. It also invites reflections upon the way in which some of these responses, representations or co-optations have been in their turn received, commented upon and used in this 20-year period. The scope of the conference is interdisciplinary, as it welcomes contributions from scholars specializing in history (contemporary, political, institutional, military), geopolitics, international relations, sociology, psychology, law, economics, media and communication studies, literature, film studies, art, architecture, and popular culture. The conference is meant as a place for fruitful cross reflections on images, discourses, facts that have been seen, heard, told thousands of times, with varied intentions and perspectives. Joint paper proposals by two or three specialists from different fields are particularly welcome. Two interdisciplinary round tables will also be organized. 

*CFP* "TIKTOK AS A CULTURAL FORUM", VOLUME 27, SPECIAL ISSUE, FLOW JOURNAL

Over the past several months, social media platform TikTok has seen an enormous surge in users and popularity while simultaneously becoming the focus of concerns over national and digital security risks. While its users remain skewed to the teenage demographic, the app has disrupted a number of media industries and sparked cultural controversy. In the music industry, going viral on TikTok has become a prerequisite for singles hoping to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 and in television, the app has entered the streaming wars. 

Chinese parent company ByteDance named Kevin Mayer, formerly in charge of streaming at Disney, as CEO of TikTok in June, and Netflix recently refined its quarterly new subscribers forecast in part due to what it perceives as TikTok’s astounding growth. But TikTok is only the latest new media application to affect legacy media industries. TikTok’s rise is replicating changes ushered in to user-generated and professional video content by platforms like YouTube, Vine, and Snapchat. And as a social networking platform, TikTok offers a new avenue for grassroots activism, community formation, and builds seemingly overnight fame for its breakout stars. However, it also exists within a contested digital space, in which concerns have been raised over cultural appropriation, privacy, online toxicity, and racism.

*CFP* "THE VERTICAL IMAGE. POLITICS OF AERIAL VIEWS", ISSUE 6, TRANSBORDEUR JOURNAL

The history of aerial views is closely entangled with the development of aerial means of locomotion which, since the 18th century, have produced new fixed and mobile points of view on the planet. From the first hot-air balloons to contemporary drones, aerial technologies generate an iconography at the crossroads of military, scientific and artistic experimentation. Issue 6 of Transbordeur, coordinated by Claus Gunti and Anne-Katrin Weber, wishes to revisit this history of aerial views by shedding light in particular on its epistemological and political dimension.

We thus use the notion of “vertical image” to underline the power relations that sustain and model it. The vertical image represents and materializes colonial and imperialist domination or military surveillance; it produces knowledge that forges these relations and makes them possible. Conversely, as part of activist resistance, it provides evidence allowing to expose and denounce the violence and illegality of police work. Thus, we would like to use the vertical image to think about the current context marked both by the massive surveillance of populations due to the COVID-19 pandemic and by the recent international demonstrations in the name of Black Lives Matter. The events of the past few months have produced countless vertical images, from thermal imaging surveillance cameras to recordings of demonstrators documenting police repression from “below”.

*CFP* "EL VIRUS A LA VISTA: LA CULTURA VISUAL ANTE LAS PANDEMIAS DEL SIGLO XX", VOL. 7, Nº 1, REVISTA INTERNACIONAL DE CULTURA VISUAL

La gran metáfora de las epidemias y las pandemias es aquella que las resume como “el enemigo invisible”. Sin embargo, tanto la que nos ha tocado vivir, la COVID-19, como otras, más allá de los miedos y las inquietudes, las vemos a través de relatos visuales. Por ende, no es tan invisible a la vista de las personas. 

Todos los días, a la largo de la historia, se ha sentido el acecho de las pandemias por medios de los síntomas que observamos en aquellos contagiados. En los últimos años, por cierto, los imaginarios que generan la televisión, la internet, el cine, la fotografía, las redes sociales y otros medios ya de uso más popular como el graffiti y el meme, ensanchan más nuestras pupilas.

Aunque el brote de la COVID-19 es la base para este número especial de la Revista Internacional de Cultura Visual, refiriéndose al Volumen 7, Número 1, y que se espera lanzar en la primavera de 2021, pretendemos abordar, en un sentido más amplio el papel de las epidemias y las pandemias durante el siglo XX, desde los siguientes enfoques, a saber:

*CFP* "AMERICAN VAMPIRES", THE 5TH VAMPIRE ACADEMIC CONFERENCE

The 5th Vampire Academic Conference

American Vampires

Virtually Hosted

October 30th 2020 9:00 am- 7:00 p.m. 

October 31st 10:00 am- 3:00 p.m. 

Eastern Standard Time

Main themes: This conference will focus on the American Vampire and how they are represented. There is a vast amount of literature and film representing American vampires such as Salem’s Lot, Anne Rice and her chronicles, Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade, Twilight and of course Bela Lugosi’s classic Dracula. 

The State College of Florida’s Literary Guild, in conjunction, with The University of South Wales, and IVFAF, call for papers by scholars interested in presenting their researched essays on vampire literature, film, folklore, theatre, games, graphic novels, lifestyle, fashion, music and wider art in the 5th annual Vampire Academic Conference (VAC).

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, VOL. 21, Nº 2, THE WINNERS JOURNAL

The Winners is an open-access semiannual journal, published in March and September. The Winners focuses on various issues spanning in economics, business, management, and information system through this scientific journal.

The Winners has been accredited by RistekDIKTI under the decree number 34/E/KPT/2018 and has been indexed by Science and Technology Index (SINTA 3), Google Scholar, and Indonesian Research Repository (Neliti).

Free for international authors.

Please read the author guideline and use our template.

Submissions link.

*CFP* "GENDER AND SEXUALITY: MASCULINITIES AND FEMINITIES", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS JOURNAL

The inception of postmodernism influenced and reformed the approach of scholars towards gender studies by accentuating the differences that existed amongst women and amongst men. Postmodern theorists denied the concept of traditional essentialist practices that identified the common condition of ‘being a man’ or ‘being a woman’ and established the notion of identities to be regularly in the process of formation and hence plural and fragmented, thereby rejecting the modernist claims of coherent, unified self. The dissolution of identity as something stable and fixed shifted the focus of gender critics from construction of femininity to construction of gender broadening the perspective from objective to subjective study. It led to recognizing of differences, inviting views from everywhere, welcoming multiple truths and plural identities over the notion of a single truth or stable identity.

Therefore, culturally constructed gender identity is proved not an essence, rather incessantly changing, shifting and always in the process of becoming. To precisely sum up gendering is explained to be the process where subjectivities are formed in relation to the meaning that people have available to them. This is an open process, susceptible to change and development, and never without contradiction; the process of becoming gendered cannot be separated from other aspects of becoming. Thus ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are understood as both empty and overflowing with meanings. Butler argued that both sex and gender are products of discourse constructed by reiterative performances in culture and society.

*CFP* "DISINFORMATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST", SPECIAL ISSUE, OPEN INFORMATION SCIENCE JOURNAL

De Gruyter’s Open Information Science journal has a call for papers for a special issue on disinformation in the Middle East.

Similar to other regions around the world, the Middle East has witnessed the widespread of misinformation in relation to different issues like politics, health, and armed conflicts. This is, indeed, not a recent phenomenon as the region has been plagued by infodemics for many decades. For example, disinformation campaigns were used by the US and other countries to assist in the wars on Iraq in 1990 and 2003. Also, the Syrian conflict provides ample evidence on the use of disinformation around attacks targeting innocent civilians to further the strategic interests of the Russian and Syrian governments. Recent reports and data releases by Facebook and Twitter show that there are several systematic and coordinated activities that occur in the Middle East in order to support regional players like Saudi Arabia and the UAE in enhancing their political influence in the region. There is a need to study infodemics in some specific geographical contexts like the Middle East due to the evolving nature of this phenomenon, and this special issue is focused on the examination of recent case studies involving the spread of misinformation and disinformation. We welcome studies that are focused on the empirical investigation of infodemics targeting the Middle East and/or originating from the region.

*CFP* "GREATER ATLANTA: AFRICAN AMERICAN SATIRE SINCE OBAMA", ESSAYS COLLECTION

Recent years have witnessed an explosion in both the volume and scope of scholarship on satirical work produced by African American artists in various media. After something of a lull in the wake of three groundbreaking studies – Darryl Dickson-Carr’s African American Satire: The Sacredly Profane Novel (Missouri, 2001), Bambi Haggins’s Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (Rutgers, 2007), and Glenda Carpio’s Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (Oxford, 2008) – the last seven years have not only featured dozens of dissertations, scholarly articles, book chapters, and conference presentations that examine black satirical expression, but also a wave of book-length publication on the topic, including:

• Derek C. Maus and James J. Donahue’s edited collection Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights (Mississippi, 2014)
• Darryl Dickson Carr’s Spoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance (South Carolina, 2015)
• Terrence T. Tucker’s Furiously Funny: Comic Rage from Ralph Ellison to Chris Rock (Florida, 2018)
• Jiří Šalamoun’s The Satire of Ishmael Reed: From Non-standard Sexuality to Argumentation (Masaryk, 2019)
• Derek C. Maus’s Jesting in Earnest: Percival Everett and Menippean Satire (South Carolina, 2019)
• Lisa A. Guerrero’s Crazy Funny: Popular Black Satire and the Method of Madness (Routledge, 2019)
• Danielle Fuentes Morgan’s Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty-first Century (Illinois, 2020).

*CFP* "UNDERSTANDING HEALTH CRISES AND THEIR IN-PRINT ON JOURNALISM AND MEDIA DISCOURSES IN AFRICA", BOOK CHAPTER

When the COVID-19 broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the close of 2019, no one imagined its rapid global spread and devastating impact – especially on the African media ecology. By the end of June, there were over 10 million confirmed global cases and over 500,000 confirmed deaths in 215 countries (WHO Situation Report July 2020). Declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organisation on 30 January 2020, countries around the world embarked on public health measures to curb the spread. Lock-downs of different proportions and motives have been instituted in most countries and with numerous consequences.

Media and public (health and crisis) communication has been at the core of the fight against COVID-19 underscoring its role in providing quick, accurate and preventive information to combat fear, re-store calm and order and save lives by causing adherence to recommended behaviour change in critical times of crisis. But the implication goes far beyond the need for timely information. Reporters without Border (Tracker 19) and UNESCO recently highlighted the new dangers journalists and media face during COVID-19 including: misinformation, draconian bills/legislation, harassment/intimidation, arrests and jail, withheld advertising, murder of journalists, among others.

*CFP* "COMMUNICATION HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS AND NGOS. QUESTIONS, RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES, TOPICS", ANNUAL ZEMKI CONFERENCE

Communication History of International Organisations and NGOs. Questions, Research Perspectives, Topics

Annual Conference

22nd-23rd April, 2021

ZeMKI, Bremen, 2021

Keynote speakers 

Prof. Dr. Madeleine Herren-Oesch (University of Basel) 

Dr. Torsten Kahlert (Aarhus University).

The International ZeMKI Conference 2021 will focus on a topic that has thus far received little attention from historians of communication and media: the communication history of international organizations. Since the second half of the 19th century, for numerous and diverse areas of social life, globally active international organizations of varying degrees of institutionalization and scope, both non-governmental and intergovernmental, have been founded and have dedicated themselves to the global challenges of the first modern age. The most famous of these is certainly the League of Nations, which was established in 1919 as the predecessor institution of the UN.

*CFP* "MEDIA REPORTING OF COVID-19 AND THE CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT", VOL. 14, Nº 1, THE JOURNAL OF ARAB & MUSLIM MEDIA RESEARCH

The Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research (JAMMR) is an international academic refereed journal published by Intellect in the UK and specializes in the study of Arab and Middle Eastern media and society. Principal Editor: Noureddine Miladi.

The speedy developments in online media, satellite TV and social media platforms have brought up significant ethical challenges around the world. The unprecedented widespread of the COVID19 pandemic have been turned into a global media event. The 24 hours rolling news coverage of this global phenomenon has also raised serious questions in relation to the politicization of how the media of each country represents the pandemic locally and beyond. The impact of social networks as tools for communication have further brought up concerns relating to fake news about how each country have been successful or not in fighting the disease.

This special issue of JAMMR aims at enriching the debate on media ethics especially relating to fake news and the pandemic. We seek to critically address this growing area of enquiry and welcome contributions based on empirical studies or original theoretical approaches regarding (and not necessarily limited to) the following themes:

*CFP* "ETERNAL SADNESS: REPRESENTATIONS OF DEATH IN VISUAL CULTURE FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT TIME", VOL 10 (2021), THE EIKON IMAGO JOURNAL

The idea of ​​death has been present, since its inception, in visual culture and in the art of different times and spaces. The awareness of the end and the expiration of life have led to reflections of the human being on death and the meaning of existence that have been reflected in images of various forms and materials. The relationships between death and the image have been very fruitful throughout history and have been concretized in themes, ideas, and notions that unfold in the different possibilities of visual culture from Antiquity to the contemporary world.

From the representations and personifications of this to the reflections on the passage of time and the fleetingness of the life of the thought of the vanitas, death is a subject treated from different perspectives and sensibilities in the culture that has even been introduced on the web 2.0 and the internet.

The purpose of this call for papers is therefore to study the representations of death in visual culture from an interdisciplinary perspective.

*CFP* "MEDIA, RELIGION AND RELIGIOSITIES IN THE AGE OF DIGITALIZATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, TROPOS: COMUNICAÇÃO, CULTURA E SOCIEDADE

The Journal Tropos: Comunicação, Cultura e Sociedade in partnership with the academic site Mídia, Religião e Sociedade announces the Call for papers for the special issue “Media, religion and religiosities in the Age of Digitalization”.

Guest editors: Dr. Marco Túlio de Sousa (UEMG, Brazil), Dra. Mihaela Alexandra Tudor (CORHIS-UPVMIII, France) and Dra. Giulia Evolvi (EUR, The Netherlands)

Suggested title for the call: “Media, religion and religiosity in the digital age”

The religious world has always been connected with the media. Historically, the emergence of new media has always implied transformations in the relationship between religious sphere and society, changes in how the followers and faithful of a religion profess it and institutions carry out their practices and position themselves in the public sphere (Horsfield, 2015).

*CFP* "SCIENCE IN A TIME OF CRISIS: COMMUNICATION, ENGAGEMENT AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC", SPECIAL RESEARCH TOPIC, JOURNAL FRONTIERS IN COMMUNICATION: SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION

Fearon, Götz, and Good titled an April 2020 post in Nature, “Pivotal moment for trust in science – don’t waste it.” They along with other scientists note that experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic has led numerous people who had previously paid little or no attention to science and science policy to look to scientists for guidance. Despite being a global health emergency, the pandemic provides an array of opportunities to encourage a revival of public support for and engagement with science during a global crisis. Along with these opportunities, however come threats.

Scholars of science communication and public engagement are uniquely positioned to identify, catalogue and analyze these opportunities and threats, to analyze the impact of communicative strategies on scientific knowledge and to evaluate the contemporary influence of media on public beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

This Research Topic contributes to the emerging literature on the social dimensions of COVID-19 by examining how communication relates to attitudes, practices and values that the pandemic has placed in harsh relief. We are particularly interested in explorations such as the following:

*CFP* "THE JOURNEYS OF CARY GRANT: AN AUDIOVISUAL CELEBRATION", VIDEO ESSAYS, CARY COMES HOME AND THE VIDEO ESSAY PODCAST

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Cary Grant’s journey to the United States and international stardom, his hometown’s festival is seeking video essays exploring journeys of many types. This year marks the centenary of Archie Leach’s first transatlantic voyage, the beginning of his incredible journey to becoming Cary Grant. Born in Bristol, UK in 1904 as Archibald Leach, Archie ran away from school with a troupe of acrobats and later sailed to America on the RMS Olympic on 21 July 1920 on, arriving in New York on 28 July. Archie lived in New York for over 10 years developing his craft, first in vaudeville, then in a music hall on the Broadway stage, before setting off in a yellow open-top Packard in November 1931 for Hollywood, where he changed his name and the rest is history. Journeys also feature in many of his films, from the 2000-mile chase of North by Northwest to the cruise ship romance in An Affair to Remember.

We are interested in exploring the idea of the journey, not only in terms of geography, place, space and physical travels (both real life and on film), but also in terms of psychological journeys: voyages of identity, self-discovery and self-invention. We are open to all kinds of journeys, including fan journeys, star pilgrimage, set-jetting, movie location tours and rephotography and all forms of audio-visual criticism, including video essays, fanvids, and any kind of video that reappropriates footage of Cary Grant. 

*CFP* "COMPUTER VISION", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE ANTHROVISION JOURNAL

The AnthroVision Journal special issue on “Computer Vision” explores design, co-creation, and labour with image recognition technologies, and the shifting ontologies between knowledge and the senses using new digital tools. What methodological frameworks are there for anthropologists to work alongside engineers, designers and other professionals? We are seeking papers dealing with such issues, as well as, on the conditions of immaterial labour to create training sets.

Based off "Training Humans" by Dr. Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, the current practices for creating training sets for computer vision AI harkens back to the colonial era of anthropology: systems-based interpretations of discrete cultures and the positivistic apparatus of observational film. In particular, people of color, migrants, and low-wage workers are the most vulnerable targets of this visual taxonomy. Furthermore, platforms for training computer vision, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, are exploitative. Workers, based mainly in the global south, have just seconds to analyze each image in order to work at a pace that can profit them. This complicates the multi-sited entanglements of subjugation and exploitation between the observer and observed, laying the ground for examining the interrelations of epistemology, labour and AI bias.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, VOL. 1, Nº 2, JOURNAL OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Papers invited for the Vol. 1, No. 2 regular issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies (JLCS).

All submissions should conform to MLA 7th edition style for documentation and manuscript formatting and should include a 100-150 word abstract and 3-5 keywords.

Submissions must be under 5,000 words for the entire submission package, including the abstract, notes, and works cited. No simultaneous submissions or previously published material. Each essay submitted must carry a declaration that it has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. The cover letter should also include a brief author’s bio.

Please mail your paper, complete with declaration and author’s bio, to Dr. Tanima Shome (shometanima@gmail.com/jlcsjournal@gmail.com), Editor, Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies and Assistant Professor of English, Parul University, Vadodara, Gujarat, India.

*CFP* "SESSION 2: PRESENTATION OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH PROJECTS", CONFERENCE MEDIA (&) LIFE AFTER/DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Session 2: Presentation of media and communication research projects

Conference Media (&) Life After/During Covid-19 Pandemic (online)

26 October 2020

Academia Europaea Wroclaw Knowledge Hub, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Institute of Social Communication and Media Science, University of Wroclaw, Institute of International Studies invite for submissions to the Session 2: Presentation of media and communication research projects during the Conference Media (&) Life After/During Covid-19 Pandemic which will be held online on 26 October 2020.

In view of the situation in which researchers found themselves almost all over the world - cancellation of many academic events and, at the same time, the new challenges posed by the academy and the current epidemic - we decided to meet the current needs and invite media and communication researchers to participate in the discussion on the present and future of communication and media studies in the face of the pandemic.

*CFP* "NATURALIZED INSTITUTIONAL / CULTURAL CENSORSHIP VERSUS FILM / MEDIA THAT ILLUMINATE THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLE", UPCOMING ISSUES, THE PROJECTOR: A JOURNAL ON FILM, MEDIA AND CULTURE

A popular site such as ShortList offers lists of what it presents (without qualification) as the best movies of a decade or genre and the best shows to watch on streaming services. The site was first launched in 2010 as an adjunct to Shortlist, the free British weekly magazine designed for young professional men. After its print edition ended in 2018, shortlist.com ostensibly became a venue no longer aimed at white, upwardly mobile (British) men. Today, it presents itself as providing a “new way of ordering your world and helping you find the best of everything [in] entertainment, tech, style, home, health & fitness and food.”

The Projector is developing a series of issues featuring research articles that will examine the tacit or explicit censorship enacted by institutions and socio-economic groups that regularly engage in the Orwellian project of “ordering your world” and “helping you find the best of everything” in film and media. Research articles in the upcoming issues will also explore and contextualize film-media productions that step outside of naturalized aesthetic and/or cultural norms to illuminate the experiences and perspectives of people historically consigned to the margins of film and media narratives. Case studies will come from U.S. and global film-media.

*CFP* "ILLNESS, NARRATED", ISSUE 11, ON_CULTURE: THE OPEN JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE

In response to debates considering the relationship between illness and narrative, and the extent to which these concepts can be seen as mutually constitutive, this issue of On_Culture seeks to gather new approaches and critical perspectives to the intricate relationship between narrative and illness. We welcome (inter)disciplinary contributions addressing the concepts’ entanglement on an individual, societal, and global level.

Already in 1963, Michel Foucault linked (illness) narration to its discursive conditions in The Birth of the Clinic. Moving away from the politicized view on what narrative does, medical humanities today stresses the importance, and even healing aspect of telling an illness story. In this positive view on the redeeming aspects of illness narration, identity and narrative are understood as inextricably linked. Rita Charon asserts that narrative is a central instance of good medical practice, since “without narrative acts, the patient cannot himself or herself grasp what the events of illness mean” (Charon 2006, Narrative Medicine, 13). In this broad formulation, ‘narrative’ uncritically refers to the act of self-expression as such, without taking into account the conditions that set the parameters for it.

*CFP* "PAPEROLOGY: A READING AND ACTIVITY GROUP ON KNOWING AND BEING WITH PAPER", VIRTUAL SEMINAR

The Paperology Reading and Activity Group will take place during the 2020-2021 academic year. While the most common of everyday materials, paper has received less critical attention than it deserves. The objective for this group is to engage with the emerging research and growing literature on paper as material. In working towards an expansive approach to paper, we are less invested in what is on the page than we are in the page itself (Stamm, 2018). Instead, we want to better understand the material histories, forms, practices, and possibilities of paper. 

Paper has been of interest to artists, art historians, and book historians, but it has been surprisingly under examined as media and technology from the broader perspective of fields such as media and communication studies. The recent surge of publications on paper reflects an effort to fill this gap. This includes research on paper as substrate (Dworkin, 2015; Calhoun, 2020); environmental stories of papermaking through case studies of the pulp and paper mill industry (Baxter, 2020); works interested in the phenomenologies and affective experiences of paper (Michelon, 2016; Barnes, 2017); considerations of artefacts and practices that accompany paper (Garvey, 2013; Robertson, 2019; Senchyne, 2020) —and much more.

*CFP* "BLACKNESS@PLAY: COMMUNITIES, CULTURE, CREATIVITY", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PLAY

Psychologists, educators, cultural theorists, and activists have long-argued that play and playfulness are essential tools of everyday survival that open up pathways for cognition, creativity, criticality, and collective joy. For example, writing in 1897 W.E.B. Du Bois posited that although amusement and play were not commonly framed as central to Black health and wellness, “at all times and in all places, the manner, method, and extent of a people’s recreation is of vast importance to their welfare.” The idea of a Black “people’s recreation”—of “recreation for the people”—remains full of potential. 

Despite this potential, nearly 125 years later scholarly discussions of play in Black communities remains underemphasized, just as play scholarship and theories of play have been plagued by practices of exclusion and racial bias. The politics of play remain real and widespread, as American police have shot and killed Black children who were playing; viral videos have spread on social media of Black pool parties and birthdays interrupted by gatekeeping neighbors making 9-1-1 calls; in schools, where Black children have been detained during playtimes like recess, play can been seen as a luxury of whiteness; Black adults are often harassed and actively excluded from mainstream fan communities and other adult play spaces.

*CFP* "GLOBAL PUNK", PUNK SCHOLARS NETWORK ANNUAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Punk Scholars Network Annual Conference

Global Punk

12tg-19th December

Virtual Conference

A virtual, online, global conference spanning eight days is being brought together by the Punk Scholars Network – be a part of it. Punk is a truly global phenomenon that manifests in myriad ways in different scenes, political regimes, cultural contexts and individual experiences. Punk is many things to many people and seldom remains static over a lifetime. Increased globalisation, changes in connectivity and technology, and shifts in both capitalism and populism have impacted punk for better and worse. International and intranational punk scenes and connections are growing and finding commonality and conflict through music, education, mutual aid, performance, political activism and human behaviours. The global Coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the differences people face accessing resources and how governments respond. How have, and how will, various local punk scenes respond to this crisis, and what does their response tell us about punk as a global phenomenon?

*CFP* "COMMUNITY MEDIA IN THE ERA OF PANDEMICS, PROTESTS, AND POST TRUTHS", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE PROJECTOR: A JOURNAL ON FILM, MEDIA AND CULTURE

This special issue of The Projector seeks submissions focused on contemporary community media as activist and aesthetic practices. In 2005, Kevin Howley described community media as “popular and strategic interventions into contemporary media culture committed to the democratization of media structures, forms, and practices.” (Howley, 2005) In revisiting this definition 15 years later, the holistic aim of this special issue is to interrogate shifts in various community media making environments brought about in the past decade. Importantly, the shifts themselves were heralded by unprecedented conglomerations of both mainstream and alternative media outlets as well as by developments in media technologies that increasingly shrink the perceived distinction between media making and media consuming.

We are particularly interested in submissions that address roles and practices of community media making (U.S. or global) within current crises in global health, media legitimacy, and democratic consensus, as well as within the increased visibility of grassroots engagement with issues of social justice, in general, and Movements for Black Lives, in particular. 

*CFP* "PERHAPS YOU MAY BE ABLE TO HELP SOLVE A MYSTERY", EDITED COLLECTION

Created by John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer, Unsolved Mysteries is an iconic American true-crime documentary series that has—since its initial broadcast as seven standalone specials in 1987—aired in more than thirty-five countries. For nine seasons on NBC (1988-1997), two seasons on CBS (1997-1999), and an additional stint on Lifetime (2001-2002), the show included a variety of segments, such as “Lost Loves” (in which individuals sought to reunite with someone from their past), “Murder” (usually committed by an unknown perpetrator), “Wanted” (known individuals responsible for a crime), “Missing,” and “Legend” (paranormal activity). Following the show’s cancellation, more than one hundred and fifty old episodes were repackaged, edited, and broadcast on Spike TV (2008-2010).  

As a result, Unsolved Mysteries is one of the longest-running programs in television history. Utilizing interviews and reenactments, the show was the first to encourage viewers to help solve a mystery by submitting credible information through a telecenter hotline and, once production of new episodes ceased, a post office box. Owing to the persistence of its creators and the fascination and passion exhibited by its fans,the show’s YouTube page began featuring cases submitted by the public in 2017. Throughout its run, the show has featured more than 1,000 cases; hundreds of these have been cracked at least partially based on viewer tips.

*CFP* "DEAD AND DYING PLATFORMS: THE POETICS, POLITICS, AND PERILS OF INTERNET HISTORY", SPECIAL ISSUE, INTERNET HISTORIES JOURNAL

Muira McCammon and Jessa Lingel at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication are seeking abstracts for a forthcoming co-edited special issue with Internet Histories. Details are below. Please note that if authors' abstracts are accepted and if their papers make it through the peer review process, no payment will be expected; there are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with this special issue.

What follows is a summary of the call, which can also be found at the following link.

Dead and Dying Platforms: The Poetics, Politics, and Perils of Internet History

Muira McCammon & Jessa Lingel (University of Pennsylvania)

Rationale & Motivation

This special issue explores internet histories through the lens of “platform death” as a way of understanding how digital communities grapple with absence, invisibility, and disappearance. Collectively, the contributions in this issue will address the cultural, geopolitical, economic, and socio-legal repercussions of what happens when various corners of the Internet fail, decline, or expire.