*CFP* "THE MEDIATION OF SUSTAINABILITY: THE UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE", BOOK CHAPTER

This CFC emerges from recent conferences held by the MDC in 2019 and 2020, in Jakarta and the UK. In 2015 the United Nations set out an audacious plan - under UN Resolution 70/1 - to promote health, life, equality, and the environment. In order to achieve this ambition, it created seventeen separate development goals, to be met over a fifteen-year period.

The Sustainable Development Goals include: ending Poverty and Hunger; promoting Health and Well-being; providing Quality Education; the pursuit of Gender and Racial Equality; Clean Water and Sanitation; Affordable and Clean Energy; Decent Work and Economic Growth; Developing Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; Responsible Consumption and Production; creating Sustainable Cities; protecting Life Below Water and on Land; and the pursuit of Peace and Justice through forming Strong Institutions. In response to the UN’s SDG programme, this edited volume explores the way in which Sustainability narratives are disseminated in public discourse. The project examines how the UN SDGs are envisaged, articulated and then enacted by state and non-state actors, and how the outcomes are communicated to audiences throughout the world. The volume welcomes contributions that investigate unique or novel responses to the UN’s ambitions by NGOs, charitable organisations, and by grass roots campaigners, and seeks to document the substantial work being done by numerous public agencies.

*CFP* "DIFFICULT DEATH: CHALLENGING CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS OF DEATH, DYING AND THE DEAD IN MEDIA AND CULTURE", EDITED COLLECTION

You are invited to submit 300-word abstracts for the forthcoming edited collection provisionally titled Difficult Death: Challenging Cultural Representations of Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture. The interdisciplinary collection seeks to examine a range of representations of and engagement with death and dying across different media and cultural forms including film, television, new media, journalism, performing arts and literature. With a media and cultural studies focus, the collection will examine some of the difficulties and challenges of representing death, dying and the dead whilst also exploring ‘difficult’ and ‘challenging’ representations of these subjects as important objects of analysis in themselves. We welcome contributions from all disciplines and approaches and from those working within and beyond academia.

 

Context

Death and dying are difficult to avoid both in the global media and in popular culture. At times the representation of death, dying and the dead can be especially challenging for viewers. Yet at other times it can offer solace, escapism, or provoke engagement with mortality. Penfold-Mounce (2018) has examined how different popular cultural texts can promote both ‘safe’ and ‘provocative’ morbid spaces for engagement with death and the dead. For those who create cultural texts, ranging from novels to journalism to film and television, how to engage with and represent death, dying and the dead also represents particular challenges. 

*CFP* "SECONDHAND CULTURES AND UNSETTLED TIMES", INTERDISCIPLINARY VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM

Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times

Interdisciplinary Virtual Symposium

School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University

15-16 June 2021

 

Secondhand cultures and practices, from reselling sites to charity shops and thrift stores to waste picking, have expanded and transformed over recent decades, with profound social, political, and environmental implications. Despite vibrant and growing research into secondhand worlds, opportunities to share and discuss this research across interdisciplinary boundaries have been rare. Further, secondhand cultures have been unsettled by the global pandemic in ways that are not yet well understood.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, NEXT ISSUE, FOLIA TORUNIENSIA JOURNAL

On behalf of the editorial office of the scientific journal 'Folia Toruniensia' (pISSN 1641–3792, eISSN 2657-4837, DOI 10.12775/FT), I would like to invite you to cooperate.

FT is a scientific periodical publication of the Provincial Public Library – the Copernicus Library in Toruń, published in cooperation with the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. The journal contains articles devoted to archival studies, library, and information sciences. The journal's mission is to serve as a forum where the international scholars and scientists present their research since the 16th volume (2016) has been published in the formula Open Access, non-exclusive license Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0).

The Editorial Team of 'Folia Toruniensia' currently collects materials for the subsequent volumes. We are asking you to consider preparing articles for publication in our journal. Presently the publishing process is carried out using the Academic Platform of Journals content management system. Therefore, please report texts by APJ. Furthermore, we would like to inform you that by the commitments made, we are planning to close the 21st volume by the end of April 2021.

*CFP* "TELEVISION HISTORIES IN DEVELOPMENT", TWO-DAY ACADEMIC CONFERENCE

Call for papers for a two-day academic conference hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, the Netherlands on Thursday 30 September and Friday 1 October 2021, organised by Professor Huub Wijfjes and Dr Josette Wolthuis.

On 2 October 2021 we will celebrate 70 years of television in the Netherlands. While this is a milestone worth celebrating, it also offers an opportunity to look back at the medium’s rich international histories. Television has survived its many predicted deaths and adapted constantly to changing social, cultural and technological trends and demands. We now invite scholars to respond to the call for papers below and contribute to a two-day international conference to further existing debates and reflect on the academic study of television history so far.

This conference will offer opportunities to share ideas and exchange research on the medium’s international histories. Scholars of all backgrounds and disciplines are invited to think about the question what role and influence television has had over the last seventy years. The conference seeks to address how television has created its own media logic that has influenced other cultural practices like journalism, sport, politics, theatre and drama, entertainment, youth cultures and education. We invite papers based on academic, preferably historic research about these perspectives. During the conference, we will encourage discussion on the development of the academic discipline of Television Studies from the 1950s until now.

*CFP* "THE ALLURE OF OBSOLESCENCE", INAUGURAL ISSUE, ARTIFACT & APPARATUS: JOURNAL OF MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY

We are excited to announce the launch of and call for papers for a new peer-reviewed, open-access online journal, Artifact & Apparatus: Journal of Media Archaeology. We invite scholars, curators, and practitioners from art history, film and media studies, library and information science, science and technology studies, and related fields to contribute articles on the history, theory, aesthetics, and practice of media objects, broadly conceived. From digital information networks to early electrical communications tools; from closed-circuit video surveillance systems to mechanical typewriters; and from pre-cinematic optical toys to virtual reality artworks, we invite contributors to reconsider the material objects that record, store, transmit, and reproduce texts, images, sounds, and information.

Why "artifact and apparatus"? We want to harness these words' multiple meanings to encourage a revision of media history grounded in its material artifacts and technological apparatuses—both physical and virtual objects (lantern slides, video files, wax cylinders, newsprint) and the traces of their mediation and marks of their materiality (signal loss, bit-rot, deterioration, decomposition), as well as the instruments, machines, devices, and equipment (computers, cameras, cables, projectors) and their functions and dispositifs.

*CFP* "HELL-BENT FOR LEATHER: SEX & SEXUALITY IN THE WEIRD WESTERN. VOL. II", CRITICAL COLLECTION

From Brett Harte’s forbidden 19th century interracial love stories to the homoerotics of Star Trek and other space westerns, from the gender-queer romances in China Miéville’s fantasy western Iron Council to the human-cyborg couplings of West World, from the tight pants and BDSM-inflected camp of The Wild, Wild West to the cross-dressing protagonist in Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturism western Parable of the Sower, as weird westerns weird other genre conventions they also frequently weird sex and sexuality. This follow-up to Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) will explore the myriad ways sex, sexuality, and gender expression and identity are imagined in weird westerns--a hybrid genre form that mixes western themes, iconography, settings, or conventions with elements drawn from horror, fantasy, futurism, supernatural, or science fiction genres.

We are interested in submissions that explore both how the weird western challenges the representation of sex and sexuality in the conventional western and how the weird western can serve as a way to reinforce existing sexual and gender paradigms in the genre. We welcome submissions that consider how weird westerns portray gender identity, in particular texts that highlight gender queer and trans positionalities.

*CFP* "STANLEY CAVELL: A RETROSPRECTIVE", CONFERENCE

Stanley Cavell: A Retrospective 

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan

September 23-24, 2021

 

Two years have passed since his death, and Stanley Cavell’s figure keeps growing in stature for philosophy, the humanities and the humanistic social sciences of our time. Courses and conferences devoted to his work have been and are being held regularly in universities all over the globe, while the amount of scholarly work on him shows no sign of diminishing. It is not only that few recent thinkers can count within their oeuvre masterworks of the importance of The Claim of Reason and The World Viewed. It is not even just the breadth of his research interests – encompassing topics as varied as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Shakespeare, film, democracy, education and literature, to name just a few – that makes Cavell’s production so significant. It is his capacity to delve deeply into the technical debates of academic philosophy and humanities whilst, at the same time, attaining a truly distinctive voice. His prominence is due not only to his work as a scholar, but also as a writer and intellectual. For such reasons, Cavell invites us to problematize and reinvent philosophy in a manner important to our academic institutions as well as our society at large.

*CFP* "DESIGN", SPECIAL ISSUE, M/C JOURNAL

Between its broader sense of intent and that of making a drawing or plan, design appears to be expanding in both meaning and its application. Design is well understood when related to our material culture, where the medium often bears the imprint of the designer/s. Design has moved relatively seamlessly from the physical into the digital world. It makes sense that someone designs the applications that we use and that digital content, just as much as a poster, requires design. Design activities are rarely inseparable from a market economy, but the language of design has infiltrated business more broadly. Design processes are used in seemingly novel ways across business and governments seeking to improve their digital and real-world services. New usage related to users, perhaps unknowingly, replicates the interests of designers in the 1960s who sought a more equitable solutions to social problems experienced in the physical world. What loosely unites these disparate design disciplines diachronically and today is a shared sense that design improves the world we live in. But even with the best intentions, design does not inevitably lead to a better world. Our desire for stuff, and the social status this might bring, has helped to elevate designers into celebrities, but also heightened distinctions between the copy and the original. Design, either analogue or digital, has unintended consequences. These include, among other examples, the environmental degradation that emerges from design consumption through to the carbon footprint of the digital world.

*CFP* "ADAPTING BRIDGERTON", BOOK CHAPTER

If Jane Austen and the history books present one version of the regency, Bridgerton shows a far different one. While the series had many surprises for viewers, it’s less clear what’s responsible. Does this come from being a 2020 show? From Netflix's style? From the romance novels source material? Let’s consider and also weigh what worked and what didn’t.

Length will depend on how many submissions arrive. They will be in MLA format, secondary sources welcome, scholarly be approachable and fun for fans. These will be published in a scholarly collection--McFarland is interested.

Abstracts Due May 1, essays due August 1.

Please send to valerie@calithwain.com with a subject of Bridgerton.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following:

*CFP* "GIALLO! THE LONG HISTORY OF ITALIAN TELEVISION CRIME DRAMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF ITALIAN CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES

Most of the Italian television drama able to circulate internationally belongs to the multifaceted crime genre, both in some sparse examples from the past and in growing contemporary productions (from premium channels and digital platforms to public service and commercial broadcasters). However, for many decades, only a limited range of titles has been given scholarly attention, drawing a useful yet partial account of an otherwise dense and multi-layered history. Moreover, exceptions have often been studied far more than the most conventional crime series in the ‘giallo’ spectrum: most police procedurals are deemed too formulaic, or too popular, to be distinguished. Therefore, this special issue intends to overcome these limits by focusing on the historical evolution of the crime genre inside the development of Italian television, from the early stages to the latest mainstream and niche successes, and by highlighting the many crime titles that have become familiar to large Italian audiences.

Through the Italian crime drama and its evolution over the decades, an original history of Italian television and media can be easily outlined, where ‘giallo’ would often mark changes of pace, innovations, successes and failures. Already in the first twenty years of the so-called paleo-television and monopoly period, crime drama was facilitating the Italian ‘sceneggiato’’s turn towards a medium-long seriality: the investigations of ‘tenente’ Sheridan (from 1959 to 1972, first with Giallo club. Invito al poliziesco and later with Ritorna il tenente Sheridan, Sheridan squadra omicidi and Le donne del tenente Sheridan) or Le inchieste del commissario Maigret (1964-1972), starring Gino Cervi; or Nero Wolfe (1969-1971). 

*CFP* "STEVE MCQUEEN: 'I WANT THE BURDEN'", 14TH ANNUAL CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORS SYMPOSIUM

Steve McQueen: “I want the burden”

14th Annual Contemporary Directors Symposium

University of Sussex, online, Friday 24 Sept. 2021

 

Working across a range of formats, from video art and gallery installations to Hollywood to BBC1 with his recent Small Axe pentalogy, Steve McQueen’s prodigious output has been marked by formal ambition and political urgency, engaging most notably, but not exclusively, with black experience in racialised settings. This symposium interrogates his body of work, its political, aesthetic and institutional dimensions, and the interfaces between them.

Proposed papers are especially welcome on, but not limited to, the following topics:

*CFP* "GLOCAL STREET ART. PLACES, IDENTITIES, NARRATIVES", INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

"Glocal Street Art. Places, Identities, Narratives" International Symposium. The University of Rennes 2 (France) will hold the international symposium on February 24, 25 and 26, 2022. A special session for young scholars will take place on February 24. We invite proposals for paper presentations in English or French (duration: 20 minutes). No payment from the authors will be required.

Unauthorized works of art in the public space are often ephemeral and changing. The transience of such works is primarily the consequence of their underground nature, exposing them to be torn apart or removed by the legal owners of the space. The transient character of this art is also related to its exposure to passers-by and to harsh weather conditions, causing peeling and fading. While most works are created for a given location and can then be considered site-specific, their photographic images–spread widely on the Internet or social media by artists and aficionados–are off-site. This phenomenon has benefited from fast-developing virtual data storage (blogs, websites and social media) and the continuing evolution of camera technology in smartphones. It is certainly reinforced by the drive for conservation and the sense of heritage which both characterize contemporaneity, as Jean Michel Tobelem claimed when he noted that the growth of museums is a “major trait of our times”. Yet, the pictures of the works are not the works and that is even truer in the case of street art, which is characterized by its transient, fragile nature. The way pictures of street art are stored in new virtual museums is thus problematic. 

*CFP* "CORONAVIRUS, CRISIS AND CULTURE: POLICING, PROTEST AND THE MEDIATION OF DISSENT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC", BOOK CHAPTER

Global restrictions on protest

In May 2020, the Bonavero Centre for Human Rights published an analysis of twelve nations’ response to the pandemic: the authors identified ‘a global rise in autocratic populism’ accompanied by ‘Covid 19 emergency measures’ that ‘risk becoming a foundation for greater consolidation of executive power’ (3). A month later, Amnesty International produced Policing the Pandemic, which drew attention to ‘systemic human rights concerns regarding institutional racism, discrimination in law enforcement and lack of accountability regarding allegations of unlawful use of force by law enforcement officials’ (4). In March 2021, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace identified over 230 anti-government protests in some 110 countries, with 25 significant protests aimed specifically at coronavirus restrictions.

This Call for Chapters from the Media Discourse Centre emerges in response to the worldwide limits placed on public protest during the last twelve months, and the social movements that have continued to mobilise in the face of these conditions. Contributors can discuss new manifestations of dissent, the adaptation of existing movements to political/pandemic restrictions, live and mediated events, and the online reconfiguration of the protest tradition (see below).  

*CFP* "LA NO FICCIÓN LATINOAMERICANA: DEL DOCUMENTAL INTERACTIVO AL DOCUMENTAL TRANSMEDIA", NÚMERO 23 (NOVIEMBRE 2021, REVISTA HIPERTEXT.NET

En las últimas décadas, diversos procesos de convergencia digital y tecnológica hicieron posible la mutación de los formatos narrativos y la aparición de nuevas especies en el campo de la comunicación. Las narrativas de no ficción no resultaron ajenas a estas transformaciones. Muy por el contrario, muchos proyectos documentales y periodísticos comenzaron a asumir formas interactivas y transmediales, experimentando con múltiples lenguajes, desarrollando estrategias participativas e historias que se expanden en diversas plataformas y soportes.

En Latinoamérica, el campo de la no ficción exhibe profundas raíces, sostenidas en la pluma de sus grandes cronistas y en las producciones audiovisuales de sus escuelas de documental político y social. Esta huella de identidad puede rastrearse igualmente en los formatos interactivos, en ocasiones mencionados como webdocs, idocs, documentales multimedia interactivos e incluso en proyectos transmedia, de corte documental o periodístico.

*CFP* "#RUMORS", SPECIAL ISSUE, NECSUS JOURNAL

Did you hear? Rumor has it that the Spring 2022 issue of NECSUS will be devoted to the topic of gossip as a prolific yet contested form of media discourse. Spread the word!

As Mladen Dolar has recently argued, rumors are undignified in the history of philosophy, falling under the ancient Greek category of doxa (belief, opinion) rather than episteme (knowledge, logos). Concerning people who are absent or at a remove, rumors are often authorless and unfounded, and yet they can gain enormous traction, authority, and staying power. In this regard, they play a significant and highly complex role in what Erving Goffman called ‘impression management’ as part of the dramaturgy of everyday social interaction.

This special section invites consideration of the non-traditional sources of knowledge that have gained increasing currency in film and media studies, challenging the empirical standards of evidence that informed the discipline’s ‘historical turn’. We encourage topics and modes of engagement that might be deemed speculative, unsubstantiated, or otherwise unscientific, confronting elisions and erasures in the archive. Of particular interest is work in Black, feminist, queer, and trans media studies as well as scholarship on celebrity, fandom, and counterpublics.

*CFP* "THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL SEMIOTICS OF COMICS AND CARTOONS", VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2, PUNCTUM-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS

We are pleased to announce the publication of the Volume 6, Issue 2 (2020) of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, the online, open-access journal of the Hellenic Semiotic Society. This issue is devoted to "Semiotics of Political Communication", edited by Gregory Paschalidis. The articles, as well as the whole of the issue, can be accessed/downloaded at the journal’s website. We also bring you the new the new call for papers for the Volume 7, Issue 2 of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, devoted to ''The Social, Political and Ideological Semiotics of Comics and Cartoons'', edited by Stephan Packard and Lukas R.A. Wilde.

What more can semiotics do for comics? As early as the 1960s and through to the first decades of the 21st century, comics studies have attracted a large and perhaps disproportionate amount of attention from analytical semiotic approaches that foreground description and theory building: Their combination of pictures and text offering a challenge to any attempt towards a systematic theory of signs, and their experimental treatment of their semiotic inventory as well as the genres, imageries, and conventions of other media and art forms inviting descriptive scrutiny as well as playful engagement. Scott McCloud’s famous Understanding Comics (1993), both praised and criticized for its essentially semiotic approach, provided the foundation for the rise of sequential comics studies. Even the relatively more practice-based earlier work of Will Eisner (Comics & Sequential Art, 1985), on which McCloud built his own, focuses on a description of formal semiotic and semantic relationships. 

*CFP* "CULTURAL INTERTEXTS", VOL. 11/2021, JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE STUDIES

We hereby invite proposals of original articles related to the general theme of Cultural Intertexts, an academic journal of Literature and Cultural Studies, ISSN 2393-0624, E-ISSN 2393-1078.

The editors will consider for publication papers which tackle strategies of representation and of (inter)textual construction emerging from the dialogic relation between:

• literature and the historical and cultural context of text production; 
• distribution and consumption; 
• literature and other arts (music, film, visual arts, etc.) or sciences (linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, history, sociology and political sciences, internet and new technologies, etc.); 
• creation and creator (autobiographic elements, metafictions, etc.).

 

Deadline for proposal (title, abstract and five keywords): 30 April 2021

*CFP* "NEW MEDIA, INTERACTIVE AUDIENCES, AND THE VIRTUAL. NEXT GENERATION NARRATIVES", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF THE NEW TECHNO HUMANITIES

This new journal targets at the creative aspect of the humanities still to be fully recognized in the established classification and methodology of disciplines. By embracing the practical extension of the latest scientific and technological methods, the journal aims to provide a forum for transdisciplinary discussion and in-depth analysis on the nature and development of humanities, as well as the latter's interface with other disciplines.

The journal welcomes contributions from the pragmatic and experimental approaches by employing new technological methodologies, such as computational methods, visualization, data archives, processing and interaction, or surveys. The journal also welcomes philosophical, hermeneutic, critical, rhetorical, and historical approaches to interpretations of scientific and technological phenomena, focusing on their ontologies, nature, histories, methodologies and prospect of development. New Techno Humanities will publish original research articles, review articles and book reviews on the topics including, but not limited to Methodology, Authorship attribution/ stylometry/ stylistics, Modelling, digital visualization, Digital cultural heritage, Digital cultural heritage, Data visualization, statistical analysis, big data, Semantic web technology, network theory, Translation studies with technological methods, Corpus analysis, and Textual analysis.

*CFP* "LOBBYING FOR (IN)ACTION: CLIMATE EMERGENCE, INTEREST GROUPS AND DENIAL", THINKCLIMA VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

THINKClima Virtual Conference

"Lobbying for (in)action: Climate Emergence, Interest Groups and Denial"

26th & 27th of May, 2021

Organized by Pompeu Fabra University, Spain

 

Despite the climate crisis emergency, humans are still not acting with the urgency events demand. Climate inaction – i.e., the absence of effective reaction to mitigate or stop contributing to global warming – is a recurrent, historical and very present reality. We are nowhere near fulfilling the Paris agreement. By some measures, Paris could be judged as a failure: emissions actually rose in 2019 compared to when the agreement was signed in 2015. And although the worldwide pandemic in 2020 produced a relevant fall in carbon output due to coronavirus lockdowns, the data also revealed an uncomfortable truth: even when transport and commerce are dramatically reduced, the majority of emissions remain intact. Far greater systemic change is needed.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, FIAT/IFTA MEDIA STUDY GRANTS 2021

The Media Studies Commission of the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) is dedicated to fostering collaboration between research and archive communities and mediating the growth of scholarly expertise that adds value to audiovisual archives by means of innovative research. To this purpose, the Media Studies Commission has set up the Media Studies Grant as a way to promote and ensure the valorization of academic knowledge for archival practice. It is a programme that offers support for research carried out at FIAT/IFTA member archives or is of direct relevance to one or more of our member archives. Priority is given to projects that are relevant for the history of member archive institutions, or promise innovative insights into (digital) media historiography or archival practice in general.

 

2021 Call for Projects

In 2021, FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission is looking to commission research that adds value to and helps us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a shifting, converging media environment.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, DECEMBER 2021 ISSUE, FAFNIR: NORDIC JOURNAL OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY RESEARCH

Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research invites authors to submit papers for issue 2/2021. Research into any and all aspects of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres is welcome from a range of disciplines.

Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research is a peer- reviewed academic journal published online twice a year. Fafnir is a publication of the Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (FINFAR). Fafnir publishes various texts ranging from peer-reviewed research articles to short overviews and book reviews in the field of science fiction and fantasy research.

The submissions must be original works written in English, Finnish, or Scandinavian languages. Manuscripts for research articles should be between 20,000 and 40,000 characters in length. The journal uses the most recent edition of the MLA Style Manual (MLA 8). The manuscripts for research articles will be subjected to a double-blind peer-review. Please note that as Fafnir is designed to be of interest to readers with varying backgrounds, essays and other texts should be as accessibly written as possible. Also, if English is not your first language, please have your article proofread by an English-language editor. Please ensure your submission conforms to our journal’s submission guidelines.

*CFP* "COMMENTS, HATE SPEECH, DISINFORMATION, AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION REGULATION", INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Comments, hate speech, disinformation, and public communication regulation

Zagreb, Croatia, Sheraton hotel, 

16 and 17 September 2021

 

Technological development has brought rapid and simple spread of speech in professional and civic communication. Digital public space is a space of democratic freedoms for each individual, but it is often a space of numerous disinformation and fake news, concerning offensive speech and discriminatory speech targeting ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, immigrants, and various vulnerable groups. Readers’ comments can be an important form of argumentative civic debate, but they are also a way for citizens to express aggressive, inciting, or offensive attitudes toward others or use hate speech. Both media and other business entities on the internet encounter this phenomenon of digital communication and try to resist it in different ways. In the issues between freedom of speech and censorship of public speech, there is a daily intellectual struggle for the right to information, media freedom, internet neutrality. How should our legislation participate in this, what are the experiences of different national legal regulations? What does the struggle against disinformation and hate speech involve, is this fight a multidimensional task in the age of digital communication, which strategies are acceptable, which stakeholders should be involved and which place belongs to self-regulation and which to the regulatory system?

*CFP* "FROM CELLULOID TO STREAMING: CONSERVATION AND CIRCULATION OF SMALL CINEMAS", 12TH EDITION OF THE SMALL CINEMAS CONFERENCE

12th edition of the Small Cinemas Conference

From Celluloid to Streaming: Conservation and Circulation of Small Cinemas

October 28th-29th, 2021

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

 

The flow of globalization has renewed the debate on center-periphery inequalities. The irruption of new technologies for distributing, consuming and archiving cinema pose a challenge to small cinemas already fighting for a place in traditional screening venues and events. Small cinema products are now part of the Video on Demand gigantic catalogues. The so-called algorithm culture perpetuates the unbalance between big and small industries.

 

In this conference, we propose to analyze if the algorithm could be a death sentence for small cinemas or could instead bring new opportunities. Should small cinemas look for visibility by using tags related to popular genres or use smallness or periphery as tags themselves are relevant questions for the survival of small productions.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, GENERAL THEME, CULTURAL INTERTEXTS JOURNAL

We hereby invite proposals of original articles related to the general theme of Cultural Intertexts, an academic journal of Literature and Cultural Studies, ISSN 2393-0624, E-ISSN 2393-1078.

The editors will consider for publication papers which tackle strategies of representation and of (inter)textual construction emerging from the dialogic relation between:

• literature and the historical and cultural context of text production; 
• distribution and consumption; 
• literature and other arts (music, film, visual arts, etc.) or sciences (linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, history, sociology and political sciences, internet and new technologies, etc.); 
• creation and creator (autobiographic elements, metafictions, etc.).

 

Deadline for proposal (title, abstract and five keywords): 30 April 2021

*CFP* "DOCUMENTARY FILM IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: THEORY AND PRACTICE", BOOK CHAPTER

This interdisciplinary edited volume seeks to illuminate theoretical and practical perspectives on the production, reception, and analysis of ethnographic and documentary film across the global south (broadly conceived). We invite scholars, critics, filmmakers, and other interested authors to submit proposals as outlined below. The volume is somewhat centered on the uses of music/sound within ethnographic and documentary film, though proposals unrelated to this topic are indeed welcome.

While there is a substantial and growing literature on narrative films of the global south, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the theoretical and practical issues of making, producing, distributing, and watching documentary and ethnographic films within the region. Such work is long overdue given the increasing number of high-quality documentary and ethnographic films that continue to emerge from and about the region and its myriad diasporas. Therefore, this edited volume represents an important step toward thinking about issues relevant to the production and analysis of documentary and ethnographic film across the global south.

Topics for essays could include, but are not limited to, considerations of

*CFP* "MEDIA EDUCATION IN AN UNCERTAIN AND POLARIZED WORLD", RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Research Conference on Media Education in an Uncertain and Polarized World

June 13th-14th, 2021

UIC campus in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China (possibility to attend online)

 

The advent and impact of COVID-19 has highlighted dramatic uncertainties in a more polarized world. Existing literature on the consequences of COVID-19 has confirmed the intensification of divergences of views and behaviours on various social and political issues, e.g. perceived risks associated with the novel coronavirus, concerns with the lifting of restrictions imposed by the governments and the use of news media for providing information about the pandemic (de Bruin, Saw & Goldman, 2020). 

The uncertainties which persist and characterize the COVID-19 Era have brought massive challenges to the practices of higher education as a result of deepened polarizations. Such challenges are even more pressing to media education. On the one hand, the delivery of media education, which involves both the training and use of media technologies, has to address the academic effectiveness of distant learning and its social and ethical implications in a context of instability. On the other hand, COVID-19 has put media education under magnifying lenses highlighting how lack of inclusion and diversity persists in the university sector.

*CFP* "SINGING OUT: THE MUSICAL VOICE IN AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA", EDITED COLLECTION

From the musical numbers of The Jazz Singer and the reality drama of BBC 2’s The Choir, through to the playback stars of commercial Hindi cinema and the competitive performance of karaoke video games, singing has and continues to play a central and special role in multimedia. The act of singing emphasises the gendered, raced, aged, and classed body, and the identifying markers of the voice itself. It draws attention to vocal production in a way that is not only sonically compelling, but also often emotionally acute. It can heighten communication, act as an aid to memory and product placement, and invite judgement from both professional and armchair critics – something the TV talent show has commodified as entertainment in itself. Singing both demarcates and breaks down textual and conceptual boundaries: between narrative and number; professional and amateur; transparency and manipulation; authenticity and the performative; and pathos and camp. As Laing (2000) argues, song ‘transfigures’ speech: it offers both performers and listeners an intensity of experience, of emotion, of being that gives it a special status both on the soundtrack and in the circulation of musical texts outside it.

The collection will explore a broad range of singing voices and sung moments, from lavish musical sequences to the ‘artless’ singing discussed by Gorbman (2011), and from television and cinema through to videogames, online and mobile platforms, advertising, and multimedia installation work.

*CFP* "GLOCAL REACTIONS AND RESPONSES", VENTANA III: A CONFERENCE ON LATIN AMERICAN

Ventana III: A conference on Latin American

Glocal Reactions and Responses

7-8-9 June 2021, An online three-day summit of talks, activities and workshops

 

In this edition, Ventana III aims to continue developing a critical discussion about Latin America and its relation to the rest of the world. This year, the organisation committee proposes to focus on the Glocal to reflect on the tensions between the local and external agents in Latin America.

The adjective Glocal is a multivalent term which is observed in various disciplines, contexts and systems. It can be concisely defined as “thinking global acting local”. Glocal has become a key concept usually employed by social sciences and humanities to think about the relation between the global and the local in a globalised world. Likewise, the Glocal is a fundamental notion for post-colonial theories so that its connection with Latin America is manifest and pertinent. For Diana Brydon, “the trend toward the local can represent a turn towards an intense engagement with the particular as retaining some autonomy from global currents, or it can mark a renewed awareness of how local and global are now intermeshed in ways we are still struggling to understand”.

*CFP* "THE FROZEN PHENOMENON", EDITED ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION

The record-breaking release of Frozen in 2013 marked a shift in the American animation industry and the Walt Disney Company as a whole. The film has been elevated as a catalyst for the third “golden age” for Walt Disney Animation Studios, restoring the company’s brand identity and ushering it into a new phase. It has also been praised for its pedagogical promise of change and reform of the Disney princess franchise, marking the start of an era characterized by strong, independent female leads that evolve around “richer, more complex stories” (Harris, 2016). Popular critics have lauded the film for improving Disney’s gender role portrayal and for providing role models that are more empowering and realistic for young women – or what American educational scholar Cole Reilly has labelled “an encouraging evolution among the Disney Princesses” (2016, 60). 

The exchange of the traditional heterosexual fairy-tale romance for sisterly love was at the time unprecedented. Finally, from a business perspective, Frozen has set new standards for branding and merchandizing of the film's universe, music and popular characters. As the 10th anniversary of the film's premiere approaches, Frozen remains one of the most loved, recognizable, and marketed Disney films to date. Its enormous exposure and popularity calls for an exploration of its influence on mainstream animation and on contemporary popular culture and society as a whole.

*CFP* "INDIAN CINEMA", I CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL CINEMA (COICI 2021)

I Conference on International Cinema (CoICi 2021)

Topic of this edition: Indian Cinema

11-12 May 2021, Online

 

The CoICi 2021 invites abstracts on research on Indian Cinema (Bollywood or other Indian film industries). It is an excellent platform for researchers, teachers, professionals, as well as doctoral and master degree students to present, share, discuss and publish their research work.

The I Conference on International Cinema will be held, from 11 to 12 May 2021, at University Complutense of Madrid (Spain), one of the most prestigious universities in Spain and the Hispanic world.

*CFP* "THE COMEDY OF RICKY GERVAIS: CRITICAL ESSAYS", EDITED ANTHOLOGY

For over twenty years, Ricky Gervais has entertained audiences with a brand of comedy all his own. The groundbreaking sitcom The Office pioneered the mockumentary genre and has influenced countless programs. Subsequent projects have continued to propel comedy into new directions, forms, and platforms.

The editor of the forthcoming anthology, The Comedy of Ricky Gervais: Critical Essays, is currently soliciting chapters that analyze any aspect of Gervais’ career: as comedian, as actor, and as writer-director.  Essays may examine a single work by Gervais or take a comparative, thematic approach. This work is wide-reaching and hopes to survey as much of Gervais’ work as possible.  This includes the television programs The Office, Extras, The Ricky Gervais Show, An Idiot Abroad, Life’s Too Short, Derek, and Afterlife; films, including The Invention of Lying, Cemetery Junction, Special Correspondents, and David Brent: Life on the Road; and his stand-up comedy specials, including Animals, Science and Humanity. Although this collection focuses film, television, and stand-up comedy, the editor also seeks original essays that address Gervais’ music, Flanimals book series, radio shows / podcasts, and social media presence.

*CFP* "MUSIC", VOLUME 8, Nº 1 (MARCH, 2022), CONCENTRIC: LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

In William Blake’s “Introduction” to Songs of Innocence, the poet is also a musician, converting his piping into writing at the instigation of an angelic child. This originary link between music and literature—reflective of the (pre)historical oral transmission of myths and tales—continues unbroken to the present, as evidenced by the many musical interpretations of Blake’s poems, from American composer David Axelrod to the rock band U2.

This issue of Concentric seeks to explore the mutual influence between music and literature and to cultivate new methodological (and pedagogical) approaches to this relationship. While Vincent Barletta’s recent Rhythm: Form and Dispossession (2020) provides a transhistorical, ontological account of the primordial power of music, other scholars have examined its role in specific texts or cultural traditions: for instance, Elizabeth K. Helsinger’s Poetry and the Thought of Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2015) and Brent Hayes Edwards’s Epistrophes: Jazz and the Literary Imagination (2017). Edwards’s title plays on the incorporation into jazz of epistrophes, a literary device where words are repeated at the end of successive clauses. Such translation also works in the opposite direction, as in the musical leitmotif or idée fixe (as famously given in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, for example), later used to describe literary leitmotifs. Thus, literary elements and structures are incorporated into such wide-ranging musical forms as Romantic orchestral music (e.g., the program notes to Symphonie fantastique), jazz, and—as Elizabeth Hoffman suggests in “‘I’-Tunes: Multiple Subjectivities and Narrative Method in Computer Music” (2012)—computer music. 

*CFP* "THE PROGRESSIVE AGE OF THE SUPERHERO", THE SUPERHERO PROJECT: 5TH GLOBAL MEETING

The Superhero Project: 5th Global Meeting

Friday 10th to Sunday 12th September 2021

Die Wolfsburg, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen, Germany

 

“This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle - broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would... But I am a man of thirty - of twenty - again. The rain on my chest is a baptism… I’m born again.”

The Dark Knight Returns (1986)

Thirty-five years ago, DC Comics published The Dark Knight Returns, bestowing the superhero genre with one of the most singularly revolutionary and influential works in its history. Written and drawn by firebrand artist Frank Miller, this operatic and determinedly hard-edged Batman tale – replete with a startling, pointedly cynical Establishment vision of Superman – triggered not only seismic change within the comics industry but also ushered in the era of so-called “grim and gritty” superheroes. The pervasive influence of this continues to this day in presentations of the superhero across all media.

17ª SESIÓN SEMINARIO DOIMECO, "LAS AUTORREPRESENTATIONES DEL HIYAB EN YOUTUBE"

*CFP* "REFRAMING THE NATION: RACIALIZED & QUEER DIASPORIC WOMEN OF COLOUR AND QUEER INDIGENOUS CANADIAN INDEPENDENT WOMEN FILMMAKERS 1990-2020", EDITED COLLECTION

Reframing the Nation is the first critical film anthology from an intersectional Canadian context that is dedicated to a close engagement with impactful films produced by racialized diasporic, indigenous, and Queer BIPOC independent women filmmakers in Canada. This collection charts the cinematic visions and perspectives of first and second generation diasporic and indigenous filmmakers and Queer BIack, Indigenous, Women of Colour Canadian Independent Women Filmmakers working from 1990-2020. Works considered can be shorts or features that are independent Canadian productions. Independent films tend to reflect artistic practices that are rooted in personal, political, aesthetic, cultural, philosophical, and social justice concerns, they are typically arts council funded and/or co-produced with other agencies. A vital component of independent film is that the filmmaker maintains artistic/editorial control over their work. Comparative papers between Canadian productions and international productions are welcome.

Please Submit Abstracts (300 words) & short bio (125 words) up until April 15, 2021

Notification of acceptance: within three weeks of receipt of the abstract.

*CFP* "'THE CINEMATOGRAPHIC STARDOM IN SPAIN': ACTRESSES UNDER FRANCOISM", I INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS

I International Congress

"The cinematographic stardom in Spain": Actresses under Francoism

Online edition, May 25 - 27th 2021

 

The I International Congress "The cinematographic stardom in Spain": Actresses under Francoism intends to open a way of thinking upon the cinematographic star-system in Spain, and, particularly, upon the actresses' role during Franco's dictatorship. This initiative is part of the research project Representations of Female Desire in Spanish Cinema during Francoism: The Gestural Evolution of the Actress under Censorship (Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, REF: CSO2017-83083-P). To this extent, the aim is to gather specialists in Spanish cinema history and the Star Studies methodologies to think about the role of the female stars during Francoism concerning the behaviours that the regime had established for women. We are interested in the normative models, as much as possible contradictions, transgressions, and alternatives inside the industry itself generated by the actresses on and off the screen. Moreover, we are interested, mainly, in the possible elements of creative subjectivity that actresses played in the configuration of their roles as stars and constructing the characters they played.

*CFP* "NEW NARRATIVES, RACIALIZATION, GLOBAL CRISES, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT", INTERACTIVE FILM AND MEDIA CONFERENCE 2021

IFM Conf 2021, Interactive Film and Media Conference 2021

New Narratives, Racialization, Global Crises, and Social Engagement

Ryerson University (Canada), The Glasgow School of Art (Scotland), University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), The University of Texas at Dallas (USA)

(virtual) August 5-7, 2021

 

This virtual edition of the Interactive Film and Media conference on ‘new narratives, racialization, global crises, and social engagement’ is dedicated to the development, analysis, and research processing of the digital experience that is transforming our contemporary world vision through the immense range of storytelling practices, including visual arts, cinema, digital/graphic/interactive narratives, virtual reality, games, etc. The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners working in diverse disciplinary areas to establish an interdisciplinary framework for research on contemporary narratives, including case studies of the multimodal narratives across media and cultures.

*CFP* "MIGRATIONS, CITIZENSHIPS, INCLUSION. NARRATIVES OF PLURAL ITALY, BETWEEN IMAGINARY AND DIVERSITY POLITICS", XXVI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF FILM STUDIES

Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion. Narratives of Plural Italy, between Imaginary and Diversity Politics

XXVI International Conference of Film Studies

Rome, May 6-8, 2021

 

Please note that, with the number of infections rising up again in Italy as elsewhere in Europe, we were forced to reschedule our XXVI International Conference of Film Studies (Rome, May 6-8, 2021) as an online event.

We remind you that the issue of this year is Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion. Narratives of Plural Italy, between Imaginary and Diversity Politics and the deadline for the proposal of abstracts is March 31st 2021. Below you find again our call for papers.

*CFP* "LGBT+ VISUAL ARTS AND POLITICS IN ROMANIAN CINEMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EAST EUROPEAN FILM BULLETIN

With a penal code (article 200) inherited from the Ceausescu regime, which criminalized same-sex relationships, and which was only repealed in 2001 as a way for the country to enter the European Union, Romania remains a largely traditional society regarding LGBT+ rights. However, customs and mores are slowly changing thanks to political, legal as well as artistic fights. Audiovisual art has substantially contributed to this change. Films such as Mungiu's Beyond the Hills (2012) or Olteanu’s Several Conversations about a very Tall Girl (2018); installation and video art, pioneered by artists such as Sorin Oncu, are prime examples of Romania’s emerging queer art. Showing such films in Romania often causes quite a stir. Campillo’s 120 Beats Per Minute had one of its screenings interrupted by a Romanian Orthodox movement in Bucharest, exemplifying a divided society struggling with its communist past and the state of capitalist democracy. This also poses the question of what type of LGBT+ culture Romania can put at the forefront, whether through western European/American films, or domestic productions.

‘In an increasingly less tolerant context which led to the recent ban of gender studies in Romanian universities, such an issue is more than warranted.

*CFP* "INTERACTIVE FILM AND MEDIA", CONFERENCE 2021

This virtual edition of the Interactive Film and Media conference on ‘new narratives, racialization, global crises, and social engagement’ is dedicated to the development, analysis, and research processing of the digital experience that is transforming our contemporary world vision through the immense range of storytelling practices, including visual arts, cinema, digital/graphic/interactive narratives, virtual reality, games, etc. The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners working in diverse disciplinary areas to establish an interdisciplinary framework for research on contemporary narratives, including case studies of the multimodal narratives across media and cultures. 

The conference will convene entirely online and will be hosted by several universities. The organizers believe that now is the right moment to evaluate the saturation and fragmentation of media during the pandemic experience of the last year, as well as to discuss new online media interactivities in a virtual environment. In the wake of the death of George Floyd, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has gone viral across the world raising many concerns about the media’s role in our society. Today, it is not enough for the media to not be racist: it must actively be anti-racist. It would not be an overestimation to say that the participation of media in discourses other than those centered on racism is also paramount: it played a decisive role in many recent social and political events, including the pandemic crisis. Therefore, this conference is proposing to examine how media around the world are dealing with the aftermath of these developments. 

*CFP* "TRANSFORMATION OF NEWSROOMS WITH THE ADVENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE JOURNALISM", CYBER CONFERENCE

Cyber conference organized by Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague

“Transformation of Newsrooms with the Advent of Artificial Intelligence Journalism”

May 13, 2021

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered newsrooms around the globe during the last decade. The era of sophisticated algorithms, machine learning tools, and full automation from early simple solutions began. AI tools play an important role on many levels of the process of making and distributing news. AI assists journalists in their work, whether it is the fully automated production of news stories or the partial use of machine learning. The integration of AI-based tools into the journalism process also places huge demands for journalists, technical staff and lead editors. 

*CFP* "BEING MARGINAL-PERFORMING RACED AND GENDERED LABOUR", A SYMPOSIUM BY IAMCR'S GENDER AND COMMUNICATION SECTION

"Being Marginal- Performing Raced and Gendered Labour"

A Symposium by IAMCR's Gender and Communication Section

Saturday 3 July, 2021 (online)

 

With a focus on intersectionality, simultaneity, and reflexivity about the self in context, confrontation of issues of power even within marginal groups, the symposium "Being Marginal- Performing Raced and Gendered Labour", to be held online on Saturday 3 July, 2021, sponsored by the Gender and Communication Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), aims to engage with the layers of being a marginal woman, asking the question of what intersectionality looks like in academia with special reference to the field of Communication. We want to turn the feminist lenses we work with back on ourselves, our practices, our contexts, our lives.

*CFP* "VOICES AT THE MARGINS. CULTURAL MEMORY THEORY AND METHODOLOGY SUMMER SCHOOL", CENTRE FOR MEMORY, NARRATIVE AND HISTORIES SUMMER SCHOOL FOR PHD RESEARCHERS

Voices at the Margins. Cultural Memory Theory and Methodology Summer School

20th to 24th September 2021

Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories. University of Brighton

A burgeoning, cross-disciplinary “memory boom” has highlighted the significance of memories of the past for the present and future. In this context, this interdisciplinary, workshop-based summer school explores the timely, yet under-addressed themes of memories and histories ‘at the margins’ and specifically focuses on the theoretical and methodological challenges associated with research that engages with such ‘marginal’ voices. We invite PhD researchers from all disciplines working with such memories, voices and histories ‘at the margins’ to apply for the “Voices at the Margins?” summer school, which is taking place from 20 to 24 September 2021 at the University of Brighton.

‘At the margins’ is a phrase we have adopted here to refer to the multifarious forms of experiences and spaces that have traditionally remained at the periphery of public and scholarly attention. Such ‘margins’ can be the result of power dynamics that under-recognise, marginalise, exclude, silence and/or oppress specific groups or members of society.

*CFP* "MEMORY, AFFECTS AND EMOTIONS", INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY ONLINE CONFERENCE

Affects, emotions and perceptions have always been at the center of philosophical discussion. Yet the so called “Affective turn” in social studies and humanities is relatively a new phenomenon inspired by Deleuze and Guattari´s influential works among others. Affective turn challenges the still dominant representational approach in semiotics, discourse analysis and text analyses of all kind. Its goal is to overcome human exceptionalism together with the domination of the word-based language over the other forms of expression in the process of creating meaning and knowledge altogether. Brian Massumi in The Politics of Affect (2015) defines affect as “being right where you are – more intensely” based on the bodily experiences of the relations with the world.

He compares affect with hope that can motivate one´s contribution to formation of a just and more inclusive society, the urgent transformation that has to start with the changes in ontology. The aim of the present conference is to create an academically challenging and productive space for discussion of affect based research practices throughout disciplines. We are particularly interested in exploring the potential of affective turn in the memory studies. As an interdisciplinary conference, we consider it important to discuss possible differences and similarities in the definitions of the affects as well as in the approaches to their studies and their application in research practice.

*CFP* "TRANSMEDIALIZACIÓN Y CROWDSOURCING EN LA CULTURA MEDIÁTICA CONTEMPORÁNEA", SEMINARIO INTERNACIONAL

Seminario Internacional 

“Transmedialización y crowdsourcing en la cultura mediática contemporánea”

16, 17 y 18 de junio de 2021, Granada (España)

 

Se abre el plazo de presentación de comunicaciones para el Seminario Internacional Transmedialización y crowdsourcing audiovisual en la cultura mediática contemporánea, organizado por el Proyecto Transmedialización y crowdsourcing en las narrativas de ficción y no ficción audiovisuales, periodísticas, dramáticas y literarias (Ref. CSO2017-85965-P), los Grupos de Investigación “Teoría de la literatura y sus aplicaciones” (PAIDI HUM-363) y “Procesos de Creación, Producción y Postproducción Audiovisual y Multimedia” (PAIDI SEJ-585), con la colaboración de la Facultad de Comunicación y Documentación, la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, el Departamento de Lingüística General y Teoría de la Literatura, y el Departamento de Información y Comunicación de la Universidad de Granada.

*CFP* "DISCOURSES ON THE FUTURE OF FOOD", THE 2ND BIENNIAL CONFERENCE ON FOOD & COMMUNICATION

The 2nd Biennial Conference on Food & Communication

Discourses on the Future of Food

Ljubljana, 15-17 September 2021

(due to Covid-19 postponed from 23-25 September 2020)

 

We kindly ask participants that submitted their abstracts last year, when the conference was cancelled due to Covid-19 pandemic, to resubmit.

Food is a key means through which we construct and represent ourselves discursively. Food features as a powerful cultural signifier, often evoking associations with issues of gender, class, race and identity. Food-related activities, such as grocery shopping, meal preparation and eating, along with the public and private spaces in which these activities occur, provide the basis for many of our complex daily communicative practices. Food also is located at the core of many of the most challenging social issues of our time, often manifested in oppressive relations of inequality, and in the placement of food at the center of calls for social justice.

*CFP* "COSMOPOLITAN ASPIRATIONS IN ENGLISH-SPEAKING CINEMA AND TELEVISION", 26TH ANNUAL SERCIA CONFERENCE

Cosmopolitan Aspirations in English-Speaking Cinema and Television

26th Annual SERCIA Conference

Universidadde Zaragoza, Spain

September 8-10, 2021

 

It has become almost mandatory to start any piece on cosmopolitanism with a reference to Diogenes the Cynic (412-323 BC) and his famous claim “I am a citizen of the world”. Alluring as the phrase may sound to our 21st century ears, when uttered by Diogenes, it was an invitation to be a social outsider: the allegiance to humanity as a whole implied becoming an exile from the comforts of one’s place of birth and social group (Nussbaum 1994). Two thousand years later, Immanuel Kant considered that the achievement of a cosmopolitan order was a must “if the human race was not to consume itself in wars between nations and if the power of nation-states was not to overwhelm the freedom of individual” (Fine and Cohen 2002). 

*CFP* "DRAGONS IN LITERATURE, FILM AND POP CULTURE", A SERIES OF EDITED VOLUMES

As the popularity of mythical creatures in films and literature grows, there is one creature that remains prominent: the dragon. Dragons have become most visible recently in the cinematic versions of The Hobbit and in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones Series). However, there are other films, such as Dragonslayer (1981), Reign of Fire (2002), Dragonheart (1996), and the How to Train Your Dragon series (2010-2019), and numerous adult and children’s literature series that feature dragons.

This call for papers will result in several themed volumes under each of these main headings:

Dragons in Children’s Literature [picture books through young adult] and Graphic Novels

Working Title: Wings, Wonders, and Warriors: Dragons in Children’s Literature (due to the number of essays already received, this volume will be first) I still need 7-8 essays to round out the collection, but those received are appropriate to the volume.

*CFP* "RE-WRITING / RE-IMAGINING THE PAST", THE 22ND ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

The 22nd Annual International Conference of the English Department

Re-writing / Re-imagining the Past

University of Bucharest

To be held online, 3–5 June 2021

 

The English Department of the University of Bucharest invites proposals for the Literature and Cultural Studies section of its 22nd Annual International Conference:

“I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new one makes the old bottles explode.”

Angela Carter in “Notes from the Front Line”

*CFP* "THE FILMS OF WILLIAM WYLER", ESSAY COLLECTION

In 1925, William Wyler was the youngest director at Universal.  His final film was in 1970.  This forty-five-year career not only spanned the silent to the sound era, but also connected classic Hollywood to “new Hollywood.”  The range of his films also traverses a wide spectrum of genres: from westerns, The Westerner (1940) to adaptations of classic literature, Wuthering Heights (1939); from crime thrillers, The Desperate Hours (1955) to rom-coms, Roman Holiday (1953); from controversial topics, The Children’s Hour (1961) to musicals, Funny Girl (1968), a body of work capped by his three Best Picture/Best Director efforts: Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and the big-screen epic Ben-Hur (1959). 

His three Oscars for Best Director are an achievement surpassed only by John Ford.  Wyler also garnered awards for those he worked with, steering five actresses and two actors to Academy Awards in leading roles, as well as seven acting Oscars in supporting roles.  The range of his work and his role in the studio system make Wyler an interesting, if not enigmatic, study in “auteurship.”  His life experience as one of Hollywood’s early immigrant artists also speaks to the foreign influence on classic Hollywood.  These are just a few of the areas in which this collection of scholarly essays seeks to contextualize and theorize his entire canon and his relationship to American cinematic history and American culture.

*CFP* IV PREMIO ALBERTO ELENA DE INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE CINES PERIFÉRICOS

El grupo de investigación TECMERIN (Televisión y Cine: Memoria Representación e Industria) de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid y Secuencias. Revista de Historia del Cine de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid convocan el IV PREMIO ALBERTO ELENA DE INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE CINES PERIFÉRICOS. Esta cuarta convocatoria continúa con la vocación de premiar el trabajo en castellano en torno al concepto de "cines periféricos" y, en general, a una hipotética periferia audiovisual, con la intención de animar así la que fuera una de las líneas principales en el trabajo como investigador del profesor Alberto Elena.

Si bien la convocatoria está abierta a toda propuesta de investigación relacionada con un área geopolítica periférica o del Sur (como prefirió referirse a estas áreas de producción y consumo cinematográfico Alberto Elena en sus más recientes trabajos) y cualquier tipo de propuesta audiovisual, el título de este premio pone en valor la idea de cierta producción audiovisual obviada de manera sistemática por determinadas corrientes historiográficas. Aunque superada la terminología inicial (sea cine del Tercer Mundo, sea Cine Periférico), lo cierto es que la idea de "cine periférico" rescató para la investigación audiovisual en castellano toda un área geopolítica aún pendiente de ser integrada plenamente en la historiografía mundial.

*CFP* "REVISITING TEACHING AND GAMES", SPECIAL ISSUE, GAMEVIRONMENTS JOURNAL

Games educate us, challenge us, and generate novelty in how we relate to ourselves and each other. They help us learn that failure can be fun and encourage us to explore. Yet, it is worth asking ourselves: when we think about the potential of gameplay for teaching, how can we better consider the ecosystem of unique relationships between players, creators, and those who try to facilitate spaces for meaningful play? If we hope for games to reach their most meaningful potential in - and as - educational environments, starting an authentic and open dialogue of intentionality and failure is crucial. As a community, we need stories, models, practices, and theories of teaching to map out the complex ecosystem of learning.

Like teaching, gameplay is environmental. The social and cultural setting, the ambitions (and biases) of designers, educators and players, and the technologies used all influence the colors, moments, stories, and characters we ultimately experience on our screens. Gameplay is at its most meaningful when we intentionally put play and its environment in dialogue, making space for learning, exploration, and engagement. However, understanding the living, complex, and dynamic intertwining between the inhabitants of this ecosystem and the actualizing of meaningful teaching has proven difficult. It is often the "thingness" of the game, not the persons involved, which captures our attention – flashy visuals and impressive technologies overshadow the unique qualities of those who gather around the screens, who create experiential environments of gaming hardware, and who code and curate the pixelating properties of gameplay.

*CFP* "RECONFIGURATIONS. NEW NARRATIVE CHALLENGES OF THE MOVING IMAGE", 6TH EDITION OF THE CONFERENCE NARRATIVE, MEDIA AND COGNITION

The 6th edition of the conference Narrative, Media and Cognition aims to combine narrative, as an artistic and social phenomenon, with the artistic and technical media that convey it and with the cognition that produces it and gives it meaning. The 2021 edition of the conference is hosted by the Theatre and Film School of the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, in Portugal, in association with the WG of the Audiovisual Narratives of AIM - The Moving Image Association in Portugal. It will take place on the 14th and 16th of October 2021, via Zoom. 

Upon entering a new decade of the twenty first century the artistic landscape is increasingly hybrid and veering from the norms; a growing blend of forms, contents and genres is taking place. Therefore, it is imperative to reflect on the interrelation of the three main topics of the conference – narrative, media/arts, and cognition – and to contribute with academic theorization that allows for a broadening of reflection upon the nature and role of narrative as the binding element of a new audiovisual praxis. In this sense, the current edition of the conference focuses on the multiple challenges of artistic contemporaneity, seeking to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue. There will be a publication with selected, peer-reviewed articles issuing from this conference.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: 

*CFP* "REWORLDING", UPCOMING ISSUE, TBA: JOURNAL OF ART, MEDIA AND VISUAL CULTURE

tba is an annual peer-reviewed journal organized by graduate students of the Visual Arts Department at Western University in London, Ontario. It provides an interdisciplinary forum for emerging and independent artists and scholars by bringing together studio, art history, cultural studies, theory and criticism, gender studies, and related fields. It encourages experimentation and risk.

 

Reworlding

“A dark bewitched commitment to the lure of Progress (and its polar opposite) lashes us to endless infernal alternatives, as if we had no other ways to reworld, reimagine, relive, and reconnect with each other, in multispecies well-being. This explication does not excuse us from doing many important things better; quite the opposite.” 

Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 51. 

*CFP* "HISTORICAL TRACES OF EUROPEAN RADIO ARCHIVES, 1930-1960", WORKSHOP

"Historical Traces of European Radio Archives, 1930-1960"

28-29 October 2021

University of Amsterdam and / or online

 

Bringing critical perspectives to bear on radio archives is the main departure point for this international workshop, which explores broadcasting, archives and the historical data they have co-produced. This two-day workshop brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars and practitioners invested in theoretically-informed, connective histories about radio archives. It takes up a historical-geographical focus on radio archival collections in Europe that were affected by war and political transformations between 1930 and 1960, including case studies for Axis, as well as Allied, countries during and after World War II.

*CFP* "ECOFICTIONS FOR AN ENDANGERED WORLD: THE LEGITIMACY OF HOPE", SPECIAL ISSUE, HUNGARIAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

Over the last few years, discourses on eco-social crises in the wake of the sixth mass extinction, on the extensive human appropriation of the ecosphere leading to ocean acidification, soil contamination and deadly zoonotic spillovers—such as the current Covid-19 pandemic—have duly been couched in dire terms of systemic collapse. Cultural images of the demise of modernity (be that second or third modernity, based on fossil fuel growth economies) abound, yet obsession with growth is invariably and universally hailed alike by capitalists, socialists or fascists (Daly 8). Sustainability professionals apprehend near-term, climate-induced social collapse, so Jem Bendell provides us a map of deep adaptation “to navigate this extremely difficult issue.” Historians (such as the contributors to The Ends of the Earth) address the intertwined destiny of humans and the environment within a contracting world, in which the earth has been turned into a factory, even a toy we could quickly blow up (Worster 17, 20). The environmental crisis signifies the concatenation of several other crises, those of society, culture, and the individual (Eckersley 7-32). In the aggregate, we seem to have every reason to plunge into gloom and despair.

Yet, at the same time, we live in an age of inevitable hope even if it evolves from crisis and loss. Indeed, the legitimacy of hope is exactly what the editors of the prospective special section of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS) seek to address here. In accordance with this goal, we invite ecocritical contributions to the special section which elaborate on the theme of Ecofictions for an Endangered World. 

*CFP* "DIGITAL ACTIVISM AND PARTICIPATION: AFFECT, FEELINGS AND POLITICS", SPECIAL ISSUE, MEDIEKULTUR: JOURNAL OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

In the shape of likes, comments, photos, videos or texts, digital media have generated a public audience and response to individual experience, personal feeling or political attitudes - consequently blurring the lines between digital sociality and digital activism - between the individual and the collective. The various ways that digital media have come to shape, constitute and reconfigure our everyday lives and practices, thus call for an investigation of existing notions of activism, social and political engagement. The aim of this special issue is, thus, to create a space for reflection on the role of digital media in participatory movements as new possibilities for politicizing personal and intimate lives emerge. We are specifically interested in movements that do not necessarily take a conventional activist form, and furthermore how affect and feelings shape these movements.

In the 1970s, the feminist catchphrase ‘The personal is political and the political is personal’ reinforced an understanding of private and public domains as mutually constitutive and inextricably connected. In recent years, affect theory further developed this perspective by arguing that feelings are inherently political (e.g. Ahmed 2004, Papacharissi 2015, Wahl-Jorgensen 2019). Indeed, they do things. Held together, these perspectives highlight how ‘personal’ feelings and affect can be drivers for political change and for the creation of communities of both in- and exclusion. Digital media furthermore has the ability to connect and create communities of spatially and socially dispersed individuals, offering a space for affective and ‘private’ connections to become public and political.