*CFP* "POLITICAL IMAGINATION: RETHINKING OUR VOCABULARY", LEXICAL WORKSHOP

Political Imagination: Rethinking Our Vocabulary Lexical Workshop

Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University

September 29 & 30, 2021

 

 

Political imagination is a concept that can be traced to a 200- year tradition of political thought and has returned to the public discourse in recent years in the context of theoretical artistic and activist conversations. In this workshop we seek to join this conversation by developing lexical concepts to explore Political Imagination and Imagination as Politics. Theories of decolonization, environmental justice discourses and activist groups around the world as Extinction Rebellion, Standing Rock, the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter use a political imagination rhetoric not only to criticize, challenge and oppose political realities but also to offer alternatives for them. At the same time, artists, writers and filmmakers are producing more and more cultural artifacts that engage with questions of futurism, alternative pasts, dystopias and imaginaries.

*CFP* "THE POLITICS OF CASTING IN MEDIA", UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH WALES CONFERENCE (ONLINE)

"The Politics of Casting in Media"

Faculty of Creative Industries

University of South Wales

20-21 November 2021

We invite proposals from academia and industry for 20-minute papers and 80-minute panels to be presented at the international and interdisciplinary two-day online conference The Politics of Casting in Media, hosted by the Faculty of Creative Industries at the University of South Wales.

We particularly welcome proposals from postgraduate students, PhD candidates, early career researchers, industry experts, trade bodies,  guilds, NGOs, and charities. Submissions from a variety of perspectives,  theoretical underpinnings, and methodological approaches that cover all  media – such as film, television, theatre, radio, animation, video games, advertising – are welcome, with possible topics including (but 

not limited to):

• Character representation and identity (such as race, gender,
• sexuality, age, class, and ‘non-normative’ bodies)
• The role of casting director within media productions
• Auditioning processes
• Support for marginalised groups gaining employment
• Marketing, paratextual, and transmedial engagement with casts
• Celebrity, stardom, and performance
• The re-casting of characters
• Media texts centring on casting, such as /Black Hollywood: ‘They
• Gotta Have Us’ /(BBC Two, 2020) and /Disclosure /(Netflix, 2020)
• Colourblind casting
• Casting in bi-lingual/back-to-back productions
• Audience responses to cast choices
• Fan and anti-fan practices
• Toxic audience behaviour
• Casting and Covid-19
• The political economy of casting
• International media collaborations
• Casting and pedagogy
• Casting outside of Hollywood and mainstream media
• Voice acting in radio, video games, animated media, and CGI
• Background actors, non-speaking roles, and extras
• Industry commitments to inclusion and diversity
• Tokenism and the burden of representation
• Histories of castin

For individual papers, please send abstracts (maximum 350 words) and
bios (maximum 150 words) to James Rendell james.rendell@southwales.ac.uk

Submissions should include your name, the title of your paper, and your institutional or professional affiliation (if appropriate; we strongly welcome independent scholars and freelance professionals). We also seek proposals for 80-minute panels. Panel submissions (maximum 1050 words)  should include abstracts, institutional/professional affiliations, and  contact information for all speakers. As an inclusive international online conference, speakers will have the option to present live or submit pre-recorded videos.

Submission Deadline: 31 July 2021

More information

*CFP* "CRISIS SANITARIA Y CRISIS DE LA COMUNICACIÓN EN LA ERA COVID-19", 9ª REUNIÓN DE LA RED DE LAS CÁTEDRAS UNESCO EN COMUNICACIÓN (ORBICOM)

 

Crisis sanitaria y crisis de la comunicación en la era Covid-19

9ª Reunión Anual de la Red de las Cátedras UNESCO en Comunicación (ORBICOM)

3-5 de Septiembre, 2021

 

 

En medio de la pandemia que estamos viviendo creemos que se hace necesario reflexionar sobre los procesos de comunicación generados en torno a la crisis sanitaria, los fenómenos de desinformación y noticias falsas que vivimos día a día, dificultades en las dinámicas de consenso en la opinión pública y retos institucionales y éticos para gestionar la información en la actualidad.

Entre los aspectos a tratar en el evento podrán incluirse, aunque no exclusivamente:

• Conocimientos y experiencias sobre el valor de la investigación en comunicación para el diálogo en sociedades en crisis. 

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF THE DARDENNE BROTHERS", BOOK CHAPTER

The Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) have been  recognised as important filmmakers in European cinema, claiming the Palme d’or at Cannes on more than one occasion. The filmmakers’ names have become shorthand for film production in Belgium (alongside Chantal Akerman and Jaco Van Dormael). They are also perceived as key European auteurs, creating and producing films that comment on relevant issues and debate in contemporary (Western) Europe and its socio-political context(s).

Some themes that would benefit from further scholarly attention include:

• Religion/ Christianity in the Dardenne brothers’ films.
• The ethics of the Dardenne brothers’ films
• The Dardenne brothers as European auteurs
• Collaborative authorship and the Dardenne’s filmmaking team (e.g. Marie-Hélène Dozo)
• The Dardenne brothers’ films and the modes of production, distribution and exhibition
• The representation of childhood in Walloon social realism
• Social Engagements/ Social Justice on screen

*CFP* "SAGAS, REMAKES E INTERMEDIALIDAD", I CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE NARRACIÓN Y MUNDOS DE FICCIÓN EN CINE, TELEVISIÓN Y VIDEOJUEGOS

 I Congreso Internacional de Narración y Mundos de Ficción en Cine, Televisión y Videojuegos

Sagas, remakes e intermedialidad

 

14, 15 y 16 de octubre de 2020

 

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

La evolución el sector del entretenimiento audiovisual y digital ha causado una considerable transformación en la oferta de obras de ficción (filmes, series de televisión y videojuegos). No sólo se ha aumentado el número de producciones ofrecidas a través de las nuevas plataformas de streaming para los tres sectores, sino que se han cambiado la orientación de los contenidos, de productos singulares a sagas, remakes y franquicias ligadas a imaginarios ya consolidados en la memoria del espectador y avalados por éxitos precedentes.  En el sector cinematográfico la proliferación del fenómeno del blockbuster como estrategia para llenar las salas, ha ocasionado que se recurra a valores seguros, lo que lleva a constantes remakes de producciones pasadas (el caso de Disney volviendo a producir sus grandes éxitos de animación en imagen real, filmes de éxito de décadas pasadas como Blade Runner o IT) o a la explotación hasta la extenuación de sagas como Star Wars o las adaptaciones del comic de super héroes de Marvel. 

*CFP* "SOUNDS OF MIGRATION", 2021 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

"Sounds of Migration" 2021 Annual Conference

Pennsylvania State University (hybrid or virtual conference format – TBD)

November 4-6, 2021

 

The growing flow and circulation of migrants and refugees across the world introduces unfamiliar voices and sounds into new environments. This conference will examine the diverse expressions and echoes of what we call the sounds of migration. Drawing from Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) definition of technoscapes, we conceptualize “the sounds of migration” as encapsulating the fluid nature of sounds, bodies, and cultural elements coming together to construct imagined worlds, as seen in a globalized space. We invite a broad range of submissions that explore various aspects of the oral and aural dynamics related to migrations, displacements, refugees, and diasporas. How do minority voices emerge? What impact do experiences of migration have on everyday life, both from those relocating and the receiving society? How is literature, language, music, and/or other forms of culture and artistic expression created? How do languages in contact influence each other and lead to changes in pronunciation, word formation or sentence structure?

*CFP* "EVOLUCIÓN DE LAS NARRATIVAS DIGITALES PARA LA COMUNICACIÓN Y EL PERIODISMO", NÚMERO 39, REVISTA CONTRATEXTO

El número 39 de Contratexto abordará la temática referida a la evolución de las narrativas digitales para la comunicación y el periodismo en los últimos años. Se propone crear un marco de reflexión a partir de propuestas de investigación en torno al desarrollo de la innovación narrativa que usan particulares, medios, empresas e instituciones sobre temas de actualidad, publicidad, periodismo, comunicación audiovisual o comunicación corporativa, entre otros.

Todo esto, a partir de las intersecciones entre la teoría y la práctica que siempre resulta fundamental para el estudio de la narrativa transmedia; y en un contexto donde las audiencias se segmentan cada vez más, llegando a condicionar los canales y la estructura de los mensajes. Por lo tanto, es necesario precisar si las nuevas narrativas tienen un enfoque específico de cara a nuevas audiencias o simplemente, en muchos casos, solo obedecen a tendencias impuestas por la industria tecnológica, constituyendo así “burbujas” temporales.

Hoy se considera que las audiencias, lejos de mantener la pasividad plateada por iniciales modelos de comunicación unidireccionales, desean participar cada vez más en el mensaje de medios, empresas, instituciones y particulares; y apropiarse y construir otros tipos de espacios de comunicación (Marzal & Casero, 2017), al tiempo que se construyen nuevos espacios de diálogo y nuevas oportunidades laborales (Salaverría, 2016).

*CFP* "REPRESENTACIONES SOCIALES, PÚBLICOS Y CONSUMO EN LA FICCIÓN TELEVISIVA", NUEVO NÚMERO (2022), REVISTA COMUNICACIÓN Y SOCIEDAD

Este número monográfico de Comunicación y Sociedad pretende el diálogo y la interacción entre expertos en la investigación sobre televisión, con el objeto de descubrir y analizar las claves de un proceso complejo que contempla la investigación académica sobre los públicos y las representaciones sociales de la ficción televisiva. En los últimos años la ficción televisiva ha experimentado algunos cambios sin precedentes. Ha obtenido una notable relevancia social y un progresivo ascenso cultural. Las series han pasado de ser ignoradas por la crítica y la academia a ocupar un lugar destacado en la sociedad gracias a una combinación de factores sociales, tecnológicos y económicos. Las plataformas que emiten estos contenidos son diversas, los dispositivos que empleamos para visionar han aumentado, cada vez es más sencillo acceder a contenidos variados y transnacionales y se ha democratizado la creación, producción y difusión de bienes culturales.

La aparición de las plataformas de video bajo demanda, el desarrollo de los canales de exhibición de pago y el cambio de estrategia de las televisiones de emisión en abierto han contribuido a extender este género audiovisual de forma masiva y fragmentada. Las razones se encuentran en la necesidad de rellenar horas de emisión y en la valoración positiva y el seguimiento que la audiencia ha concedido y aún concede a estos relatos. Si en el pasado el objetivo era convocar audiencias masivas, el propósito del presente es satisfacer un público de nicho, fragmentado y heterogéneo.

*CFP* "HAMILTON AND THE POETICS OF AMERICA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES

For those following the course of its reception since its premiere in 2015, there is little doubt that Hamilton: An American Musical is not just theatre. Rather, it is a cultural phenomenon embedded in America’s efforts to make sense of a national selfhood in crisis and an increasingly beleaguered image. The way Hamilton has reflected, fed into and off these efforts does not have to do only with the musical as “self-contained” work of art. Perhaps most importantly, it correlates with how the work has been negotiated in the realm of popular culture and beyond. Hence the main premise of this issue of the European Journal of American Studies: how Hamilton has been talked and written about, the remarkable range of response it has attracted within America, and throughout America’s geocultural ambit, signposts processes of fathoming America’s shifting poetics; that is, the intricate ensemble of meaning-making tools and concepts by which the functioning of contemporary American culture can be accessed and assessed.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creative genius behind the musical, approached Hamilton as a liminal mythic figure, and thus as a cultural text of distributed authorship. Hamilton the work can be construed as an instantiation of Hamilton the myth, a thread woven in the mythic matrix of America’s beginnings. As an instance of reception that has itself been generatively received to the point of becoming a cultural phenomenon, Hamilton arguably betrays more about the context from which it sprang than about the primary mythical material itself. Although it gestures back to the past, it also resonantly speaks to its (our) own present.

*CFP* "THE FRACTURED STATES OF AMERICA", 6 ISSUE, JAM IT!: JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES

The quest to define the true essence of US identity dates back to colonial times, long before the nation itself was formally established. Yet, scholars traditionally situate the first explicit investigation into what constitutes an American citizen in J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The third of the titular letters, aptly named “What is an American,” offers a list of features that de Crèvecœur considered quintessential to Americanness: industry, freedom, individualism, equality, assimilation. All these elements converged in what later became known as American exceptionalism, a doctrine that undergirded (and, to an extent, still undergirds) most, if not all, of US foreign policy.

De Crevecoeur’s essay also introduced the concept of the ‘melting pot’ to describe the yearned-for-homogeneity of a nation aspiring to merge the different cultures informing it, rather than to preserve their differences. Ever since, the United States has strived to present a solid front against the rest of the world, returning time and time again to the defining features of its citizens, and to what sets them apart from their European counterparts. Yet, over the past few decades, it has become evident that internal divisions and differences are increasing, rather than decreasing. While the national narrative of the United States insists on advocating the exceptionality of its people, it is also continuously confronted by the hard truth of their lived experiences (Sieber 2005; Hodgson 2009; Grandin 2019; Spragg 2019).

*CFP* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, NEW GENRE STUDIES ANTHOLOGY

We seek to revitalize discussions of genre in media studies by providing a showcase for some of the most exciting work in the area. In this anthology, we ask the question of whether organizing our field around media was a mistake or not. Would we have been able to better confront and consider the many central debates and dead ends of media studies over the last three decades if we had started by centering on genre rather than media, or at least setting them up as equals. What other potential difficulties and problems may have arisen instead? New media had its moment; now it’s time to consider what new genres can do.

 

We are especially seeking papers on the following or similar topics:

• New Genres across media
• Non-Western Genres
• Genres of the dispossessed
• The culture, politics, and/or economics of genrification
• Forgotten and misunderstood genres
• Genre as embodiment and/or interactivity
• Genres, historicity, and historiography

*CFP* "HORSES IN FILM: 4 VOLUMES BY DECADE", EDITED COLLECTIONS

These edited collections are part of the upcoming series Equine Creations: Imagining Horses in Literature and Film. Now that the mythological equines volumes are nearly full and ready for being finalized, this CFP addresses the next volumes in the process.

The scope of the present call is broad. All topics regarding the themes and impact of horses in film will be considered.

1. Horses in Film Through the 1950s 
2. Horses in Film in the 1960s and 1970s 
3. Horses in Film in the 1980s and 1990s 
4. Horses in Film since 2000

 

Deadline for proposals: July 25, 2021

*CFP* "DISTRIBUTION IN THE STREAMING ERA", SPECIAL ISSUE, VELVET LIGHT TRAP JOURNAL

Over the past decade, the media ecology has been dramatically shifting with the advent of online “overthe-top” streaming services, the streaming wars that followed, and the platformization of the web. As the distance between big tech companies and legacy media players rapidly dwindles, rippling effects can be felt across industries, audience practices, regulatory frameworks, and more. Simultaneously, the rise of streaming services also continues to provoke further theorizations on topics that have concerned media scholars for decades regarding the asymmetrical dynamics of power and influence as it relates to globalization processes, representation, identity, politics, cultural and national mediations, and economic development.

For this issue, we welcome submissions that examine the impact that streaming services have had on the contemporary media environment. Topic areas can include, but are not limited to the shifting industrial practices, labor, audience behaviors and engagement, algorithms, content moderation, formal changes in the text, marketing, transnational/global flows, and regulation. Further, while streaming services may often prioritize rhetorics of disruption and innovation in their marketing parlance, there are also historical continuities that are equally important to emphasize. In what ways have streaming services transformed the way we understand film and television? What kinds of cultural issues continue to persist in spite of these disruptions? In what ways are disparate industries now converging/diverging and how can we understand these changes and analyze them effectively?

*CFP* "CRISIS / REPRESENTING, ENDURING, PROVOKING", 1ST ISSUE, IN VIVO JOURNAL

In Vivo is a bilingual online platform (French and English) specialized in multidisciplinary research on contemporary artistic creation, with an (almost) exclusive preoccupation with Performing Arts (theatre, choreography and dance, circus, performance art, opera) and Cinema.

Given the hybridity of contemporary artistic forms, In Vivo intends to host reflections on the written arts (literature, comics, biographies, etc.) and non-cinematic visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, installations, etc.) notably in their imbrication with the performing scenes and screens.

In Vivo contains 5 clusters, differentiated according to the methodology and the field of expertise to which they are respectively attached: Aesthetic(s), Philo-Performance(s), Humanities, Queerness, Pluralities.

In addition, a special section called Dialogue(s) is exclusively dedicated to interviews with scholars, artists, and practitioners of the Performing Arts and Cinema.

*CFP* "KIMPOSIUM! THE SEQUEL", SYMPOSIUM

Kimposium! The sequel

14 - 16 September 2021

 

In 2015 we held Kimposium! to great success.  Now, as Keeping Up with the Kardashians draws to a close after twenty seasons, we revisit and renew our feminist thinking about these globally famous women.  Renowned and reviled, loved and hated, the Kardashians are quintessential icons of early 21st century celebrity cultures.  But this family represents and embodies so much more.  Indeed, studying the Kardashians and their products leads to consideration of some of the most pressing social and cultural issues of our time.

Dr Meredith Jones, from Brunel University London, says:

“Love them or hate them, the Kardashians are arguably the USA’s new ‘royal’ family, their every move scrutinised. But unlike the British Royals these people invite the public in to observe their everyday lives. In the course of doing this they have redefined reality television and had profound social impacts: Notably, Kim is at the forefront of an international change to what an ‘ideal’ woman’s body is, and Caitlyn has brought trans into the mainstream like nobody before her.”

*CFP* "THE WORKS OF JANE ANDERSON", SCREEN STORYTELLING EDITED VOLUME

This edited volume on the works of Jane Anderson will be the first book in a new series to be published by Bloomsbury Academic. Seeking 250-word abstracts for essays on Anderson’s films, television programs, or plays. Final essays will be 3,000-3,500 words, written for an audience of undergraduate and graduate students, and will be due early 2022.

The Screen Storytelling series is designed for students, professors, and enthusiastic consumers of film, television, and new media who seek information about contemporary and historically significant screenwriters that is both accessible and critically rigorous. The intention with this new series is to bring much-deserved attention to screenwriters who have developed noteworthy films and television series of significant aesthetic or cultural achievement, critical acclaim, or commercial success, and to offer close readings of the films and series from the perspective of story, screenwriting craft, audience reception, and cultural impact. The goal is to help students learn the craft of screen storytelling by critically examining the collected works of great film and television writers.

 

The Works of Jane Anderson

*CFP* "SCREENING LOSS: AN EXPLORATION OF GRIEF IN CONTEMPORARY HORROR CINEMA", BOOK CHAPTER

Horror films have long held a place in cinematic history as an expression of the monstrous, the un-nameable, and the unknown. They are a powerful point of catharsis in which viewers see their deepest fears played out onscreen, whether the threat is fully embodied or less concretely defined. As a result, grief and loss have always figured heavily in this genre.   

This collection addresses horror films’ treatment of loss, specifically grief and how grief shapes, magnifies, and escalates the horrific. Selected films should be from the last twenty years. This contemporary approach will lend the collection a sense of urgency. Moreover, in addition to conventional horror films like Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s remake of Pet Sematary (on which we would prize a chapter), we highly support explorations of less frequently examined films that contain a high degree of complexity in content and aesthetics. A24 films are the perfect example of this. Additionally, examinations of genre-defying films such as David Lowery’s A Ghost Story and Ari Aster’s Hereditary are especially encouraged.   

We value inclusivity and welcome abstracts that focus on international films as well as those who are historically underrepresented.   

*CFP* "PARTICIPATORY CULTURE WARS: CONTROVERSY, CONFLICT AND COMPLICITY IN FANDOM", EDITED COLLECTION

It has become increasingly clear that fandoms and participatory culture are sites of controversy, conflict and even complicity, complicating earlier assessments that sought to celebrate creativity, collegiality, and community. As we continue to make sense of the consequences of web 2.0, the study of fans – the affective bonds, identities, and productive cultures of a highly mediated and networked society – is vital in understanding our current moment, whether expressed in debates about “cancel culture” or ongoing “culture wars”. Fans have had to rethink and reassess their relationships to fan objects, consider their role in reproducing global systems of inequality, and reflect on the meaning of participation in an era that is marked by both moral ambivalence and political earnestness. 

Implicitly and explicitly, fannish practices are involved in a variety of key social, political, and cultural issues across the globe. They can be seen in politics, ranging from QAnon’s role in the storming of the US Capitol building, conspiracy theories relating to the covid pandemic, and the continued expansion of the global reactionary and populist right, from Britain to India to Brazil. They can be seen in new cultural terrains produced by networked movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, #OscarsSoWhite, and the accompanying activism and responses as fans come to terms with the crimes, misdemeanors, and disagreements of former faves, like Xiao Zhan, Joss Whedon, or JK Rowling. They are expressed in the strategies and tactics of inter- and intra-fandom conflicts, whether Meghan Markle and the Royal Family or some Chinese fan responses to BTS talking about the Korean war. And, pressingly, fan tourism, collector culture, and the energy use of digital culture all contribute to the ongoing climate crisis. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, 8TH NEW ZEALAND DISCOURSE CONFERENCE AND COOMUNICATION RESEARCH AND PRACTICE JOURNAL (SPECIAL ISSUE)

8th New Zealand Discourse Conference (NZDC8)

University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand and virtually via Zoom

10-11 December 2021

 

The New Zealand Discourse Conference is a biennial event which brings together scholars working in a range of fields who study some form of discourse or use discourse analysis to understand other phenomena. The conference welcomes contributions that consider discourse and interaction in a variety of contexts, including interpersonal talk, institutional settings, organisational communication, mediated communication, as well as policy, political and cultural lenses on discourse. The conference welcomes diversity in theoretical and analytical approaches. 

Suggested areas of interest include:

• Political discourse 
• Communication in bicultural and multicultural contexts 

*CFP* "MEDIATING KINSHIP, REPRESENTATION AND DIFFERENCE", PALGRAVE BOOK SERIES

This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new technologies which allow for the creation, maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term “family” as a working truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection of technologies including those which allow for family creation, migration, communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and corporeal settings.

Possible book topics include:

• the use of technology and migration and family composition and disjunction; the ways that technologies may both push and pull kin together/apart 
• the range of technology use across literal and figurative space including intersections of geography, race, age, poverty, gender and beyond 

*CFP* "PLATFORMISATION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL LABOUR VIA CHINESE DIGITAL NETWORKS", SPECIAL ISSUE, GLOBAL MEDIA AND CHINA JOURNAL

This special issue, “Platformisation and entrepreneurial labour via Chinese digital networks,” examines entrepreneurial labour and its relationship with the platformisation of Chinese society and economy. As a key feature of our digital economy and lifestyle, powerful digital platforms have transformed how cultural production is carried forward, how services are delivered, how businesses are established, how talents are identified and developed, and how new forms of entrepreneurial activities are regulated and governed. While platformisation has technological, infrastructural, and economic dimensions, its human dimension highlights individual agency and limitations in the platformisation process. We call for papers that examine individuals and groups who have demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit, skills, and thinking in taking advantage of Chinese digital networks, systems and platforms to reinvent themselves, change lives, and influence others and society.

The entrepreneurial individuals and groups include: new media professionals (e.g. wanghong and self-media content producers); platform managers, engineers, and programmers; e-commerce and social commerce operators, agents, and co-ops; product and service brokers, intermediaries, and consultants; government officials and agencies in managing digital and social media platforms, networks, and R&D.

*CFP* "REIMAGINING THE VICTIM IN POST-1970S HORROR MEDIA", EDITED COLLECTION

While the analysis of the horror genre, particularly its contemporary articulations, uncovers a myriad of different topics (new (and old) theoretical paradigms, alternative interpretations of familiar narratives and tentative readings of new ones, as well as the progressive expansion and relocation of the genre within a larger trans and interdisciplinary context), some of its basic premises remain inadequately explored. One such issue, or concept, is the notion of the victim, and its position, as well as function/purpose, within the larger framework of the genre. While being an unavoidable part of the genre narrative from its earliest endeavors, the ambition of the victim is to embody, articulate, and finally project all the fears and anxieties (introduced by the narrator/author) towards its target audience. 

The audience in turn catalyzes and identifies with the projected trauma, while simultaneously enjoying the suspension of disbelief. This dynamic, although simplistic in its nature, functions as an extremely prolific interpretative context confirmed through decades of highly focused research. However, the developed binary system bonding the readers/viewers with the imaginary, but nevertheless doomed victim remains, although logical, a rather “unfair” one, with the analytical focus being placed on the thoughts, experiences, and reactions of the viewers. The (fictitious) victims consequently retain a symbolically blank role, prone to inscriptions of meaning in accordance with a more generalized or overarching narrative.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND THE EU GOVERNANCE. DEMOCRACY, PARTICIPATION, AND INNOVATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, DE EUROPA JOURNAL

While the European Union (EU) has become increasingly crucial for the life and the work of its 450M citizens, the European integration process itself has historically been characterized by cyclical crises. While looking back, it is clear that economic and political tensions have previously opened new opportunities for widening and deepening the EU's integration. The present crisis seems different. A long-term falling trend of public trust in national and EU institutions has been undermining the European integration process and more recently “citizen dissatisfaction with national governments and disaffection from the EU has been on the rise” (Schmidt, 2015, p.57). The EU has had to face a long-lasting economic crisis, accompanied by the rise of populist and anti-EU parties that have been present in the European Parliament since the last two legislatures. Today, and on top of the political crisis described earlier, for the first time in the history of the EU, an unexpected force of disruption, such as the health crisis caused by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to create an unprecedented critical situation for the European Union.

Aware of this epochal conjuncture, European leaders and Policy Makers have called for "The Future of Europe'' conference. This Conference should help to address the crisis openly, enlarge the participation of European citizens in European governance, and ultimately define the fundamental values and principles that have shaped the European communities, whose building “has always been plagued by uncertainty” (Williams, 2009, p.551). Following the delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the debate is now restarting with renewed energies. Recently, the European Commission has launched the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP) to counter disinformation and the rise of extremism and nurture pluralism in the European public space. Media, politics, and Institutions are all involved in contrasting the rise of extremism and reducing the distance between people and politicians, strengthening media freedom, and fighting disinformation. The EDAP tries to connect traditional goals pursued by the institutions over time: citizens’ empowerment and participation, transparency, innovation as institutional tools to improve internal cohesion in the European Public Sphere.

*CFP* "DRACONES IN MUNDO: 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:

 

Full volume(s)

• Wings, Wonders, and Warriors: Dragons in Children’s Literature and Graphic Novels

*CFP* "ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY REPRESENTATION ON ONLINE PLATFORMS", NEW ISSUE 2021, REVISTA ACTA UNIVERSITATIS SAPINETIAE, COMMUNICATIO SERIES

For its 2021 issue, the journal Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Communicatio expects original research articles discussing organizational identities. Editors encourage approaches dealing with the definition of organizational identity, mapping connections and interferences of online and offline identities, the construction and representation of online organizational identity.

 

Under the circumstances of globalization, the economic and social actors are interacting louder than ever, and everyone would like to gain the attention of their environment in the intensifying communication noise. Emphasizing uniquenessand distinctiveness are common ways of capturing attention both for individuals and for organizations. There is a broad array of branding efforts made by organizations and public figures worth exploring. The online platforms offer a supporting space for the intensified multi-directional communication (OECD, 2019); the economic and social actors are striving to represent their identity in order to appear similar to the others and at the same time outstanding, original, and distinctive.

The issue of organizational identity construction and representation has grown opportune again since the spread of online platforms (Horowitz, Freberg, 2016). The online messages of organizational identity are effective forms of communication, and yet defining online identity from the perspective of different target groups, is a territory to be explored. 

DEFENSA DE TESIS "EL IMPACTO DE LA LEGISLACIÓN EN LOS CONTENIDOS DE LA TELEVISIÓN: EL CASO DE ECUADOR Y LA LEY ORGÁNICA DE COMUNICACIONES - 2013"

   Próxima defensa de tesis del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Información de la tesis: 


"El impacto de la legislación en los contenidos de la televisión: El caso de Ecuador y la Ley Orgánica de Comunicaciones - 2013"

Autor/a: MARÍA FERNANDA MONCAYO RACINES

*CFP* "BEYOND THE WHITE HOUSE: THE FIRST LADY IN FILM, FICTION, AND CULTURE", EDITED COLLECTION

This edited collection seeks to explore the representation of the First Lady in a range of different texts and media. The collection aims to examine the President’s wife in a purely cultural context by investigating the ways in which she has been represented, embodied, characterised and commemorated in film, fiction, memoir, photography and portraiture, television, theatre, education, museum studies, fashion, and social media. Beyond the White House is an original work that makes use of cultural interpretation to reconfigure the figure of the First Lady as a culturally authoritative individual possessing the ability to sway, change, inspire, and manipulate public attention and opinion. Moving away from biographies and histories, this is the first volume of its kind to consider the representation of the First Lady figure through the prism of popular culture - and therefore consider her impact upon ‘cultural politics’ - and the first to regard her as a strategically important socio-cultural figure.

Removed from the patriarchal hierarchy of White House politics and expectations, the First Lady emerges as a force of her own; she subtly carves out cultural agency and gender identity despite her (in)visibility in the public eye. Simply by being the ‘First Lady of the United States’ she possesses what MaryAnne Borrelli has labelled the “performance of descriptive representation” (Women and the White House: 229). The relationship between the woman and the office is paramount; the existence of the title ‘First Lady’ permits popular culture to tolerate or reject not only political and cultural manoeuvring, but also issues of gender, race, self, location, fashion, identity, satire, memory, authority, and even pedagogy. The office of the First Lady is what the woman makes it, and Beyond the White House she has become a commanding cultural icon.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, VIRTUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRESS/POLITICS

 "Virtual Conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics"

The International Journal of Press/Politics

13 - 16 September 2021

On 13-16 September 2021, the seventh conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, focused on academic research on the relationship between media and political processes around the world, will be held virtually. Professor Young Mie Kim from the University of Wisconsin will deliver a keynote lecture.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 5 July 2021. Attendees will be notified of acceptance by 12 July 2021. Full papers based on accepted abstracts will be due 1 September 2021. A selection of the best full papers presented at the conference will be published in the journal after peer review.

*CFP* "THE MIGRANT ARCHIVE: STUDIES ON MIGRATION THROUGH FILM ARCHIVES", ISSUE Nº 34, REVISTA L'ATALANTE

Historically, cinema has been associated with migration phenomena since its earliest days, when it became the first form of audiovisual entertainment to transcend boundaries and language barriers and be established as an essentially mobile medium, in terms of both production (from the first Lumière camera operators to the large waves of immigrants working in Hollywood, for example) and consumption (with large numbers of displaced peoples and exiles being among the first regular film-goers around the world, as a form of socialisation through a public event) (Allen, Gomery, 1995). In general, apart from some attention to specific cases (e.g. the massive emigration of German directors and cinematographers to Hollywood during the interwar period), it would not be until the 1990s that film studies would begin focusing on phenomena of human mobility as an essential component for understanding the history of cinema. Research in this area would be associated specifically with multiculturalism and post-colonialism, with particular importance given to studies centred on exile, diaspora and migrant experiences (Shohat, Stam, 1994, 2003; Naficy, 1999, 2001). It was no coincidence that studies like these should begin to appear around the same time as the rise to prominence of work by professional filmmakers creating filmic discourses related to their experience as migrants (or that of their families) in countries with consolidated film industries like the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States. Collectively these filmmakers have developed a set of concepts that are fundamental to the idea of “cinema of mobility” as a political movement, both in terms of access to representations of migrants and at the level of the potential development of alternative modes of production and distribution that can destabilise the hegemony of Hollywood and the big media corporations (Iordanova, Martin-Jones, Vidal, 2010).

*CFP* "DISTANT SHORES: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE AUSTRALIAN NEW WAVE", ONLINE CONFERENCE

Distant Shores: International Perspectives on the Australian New Wave

Online Conference

28-29 October 2021

Menzies Australia Institute (King’s College London)

 

Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of both Wake in Fright (Kotcheff, 1971) and Walkabout (Roeg, 1971) appearing in London cinemas on the same weekend, this two-day online conference seeks to explore the range of international and transnational perspectives that helped shape the Australian New Wave of the 1970s and 80s.

Coming after a prolonged period of production ‘drought’, the Australian New Wave has typically been framed via the rhetoric of cultural nationalism, and celebrated for its articulation of a range of ideas, histories, and narratives about the Australian nation. 

*CFP* "ECO_MEDIA III: EVER-NEWER NORMALS", THIRD ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

Eco_media III: ever-newer normals

Monday 30 August 2021,

RMIT University, Melbourne, and online

 

The eco_media project will run its third annual symposium in 2021. The symposium’s steering panel invites proposals for papers that sit at the nexus of theory, philosophy, empirical research, and creative practice. The aim of the eco_media project is to understand how environmental issues, questions, and concerns are communicated through media forms, and to play at the borders of disciplines including media and environmental studies, philosophy, and communication theory.

With the circulation of vaccines around the world, we are hopefully shifting to a new phase of life after the COVID-19 pandemic. The core concern for eco_media 2021 will thus be: how might attention now refocus on environmental issues, on the ever-present existential threat that predated the chaos of 2020? How has the pandemic changed our approach to or understanding of our world and our place in it? What creative, theoretical, empirical or philosophical approaches might best help us move forward in innovative and responsible ways?

*CFP* "INTERSECTIONALITY AND DIGITAL PLATFORMS", SPECIAL ISSUE, FRONTEIRAS JOURNAL

In recent years, the intersectional perspective has been highlighted in research focused on acknowledge how discrimination articulates by different structures of oppression. The perspective is widely disseminated by the ideas of American black jurist and feminist, Kimberlé Crenshaw, who systematized the concept of “intersectionality” in 1989 in the United States. In Brazil, and a few years earlier but still in the 1980s, Lélia Gonzalez already denounced the effects of the double oppression of sexism and racism over black women. Beyond universities, the concept has been appropriated by social movements. It also circulates in discourses on digital platforms that try to draw attention to the way these oppressions cross and structure the everyday practices of many people. Thus, this configures huge gaps in spaces of power and construction of knowledge. The debate on intersectionality and its effects in everyday lives finds fertile ground in digital platforms for the inclusion of diverse experiences and concrete experiences in view of the particularity of each person.

 

We announce a call for a special issue of Fronteiras Journal, a Brazil-based open access journal, on intersectionality and digital platforms. The special issue encourages submissions that explore one or more of the following issues:

• Intersectionality, citizenship and social media

*CFP* "THE AESTHETICS OF TRAVEL", VOLUME 65 (02/2022), THE POLISH JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS

This upcoming issue of The Polish Journal of Aesthetics calls for submissions focused on the associations between traveling and aesthetics, both understood broadly. There is a necessity for interdisciplinary dialogue between Aesthetics and different fields of research related to traveling. Aesthetics is the study of perceptions, experiences, and speculative developments. The practice of traveling reaches from the importance of nomadism for forming human culture up to the idea of Bildung (moral, intellectual, cultural, and artistic formation). Narratives about travel may come from Western written and oral tradition, such as Homer’s Odyssey, and film genres such as Westerns, Sci-fi, or Road trip cinema. Various types of travel literature could include logbooks and texts that support learning about living in a way that necessarily encompasses alterity. 

Traveling invokes a type of self-knowledge that is dislodged from a homeland and is connected to ritualistic reunions sustained through an oral tradition, the extraordinary adventures of a people. Travel transmits knowledge about the world for future generations. Through the experience of distance and strangeness, traveling creates an authentic space for cosmological and philosophical investigations, exploration, nostalgia, and personal, collective, scientific, or territorial discoveries, above all. In the category of space, fictional and narrative aspects find imaginary projections and territorial explorations from which knowledge emerges, individuating itself by an investigative perspective and observation. A new personality—a new Self and new Selves—appears from unknown space and time. The essential and precise subject matter for this issue is to deal with the representation of traveling and the imaginary, even if trips are objective and documented. Papers should include studies about the bond between the objective and the subjective, the individual and the collective, united with memory, time, and space.

*CFP* "MIS- AND DISINFORMATION ABOUT COVID-19: CHALLENGES FOR HEALTH COMMUNICATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH COMMUNICATION

Millions of lives have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic (World Health Organization [WHO], 2021). However, scientific knowledge on how to effectively respond to COVID-19 outbreaks has also increased considerably in a very short time (Weiner at al., 2020). For example, several research teams have developed promising COVID-19 vaccines, and, as of April 2021, about 732 million vaccination doses have been administered worldwide (WHO, 2021). Further success in reducing the COVID-19 burden relies on the public’s awareness and acceptance of scientific knowledge. Health communication plays an essential role in the complex relationship between scientific knowledge and individuals’ beliefs and behaviours. However, attempts by health communicators to inform and educate individuals about the characteristics of the disease and effective prevention measures compete with persuasive mis- and disinformation, especially online (Lewandowsky et al., 2021). Studies reveal that misinformation about COVID-19 undermines trust in institutions (Pummerer et al., 2020), decreases willingness to undertake effective prevention measures such as vaccination (Loomba et al., 2021) and adds to the overabundance of (mis-)information that makes it difficult for individuals to find trustworthy sources – an overabundance known as an infodemic (WHO, 2020). That is, mis- and disinformation pose major challenges for health communication around the globe.

To master these challenges and prepare for future public health crises, it is vital to understand mis- and disinformation surrounding COVID-19. What kinds of mis- and disinformation do individuals encounter off- and online? What impact do these have on cognition, emotions, attitudes and behaviours? Which groups are specifically susceptible to mis- and disinformation, and how can theory-based interventions be designed to combat mis- and disinformation surrounding COVID-19?

*CFP* "CREATIVITY AND INNOVATIONS IN THEATRE, MEDIA AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION: VISIONS AND VALUES FOR THE FUTURE", CONFERENCE

 "Creativity and Innovations in Theatre, Media and Cultural Production: Visions and Values for the Future"

The Faculty Of Dramatic Arts (Belgrade)

17-19 November 2021

The deadline for submitting proposals is June 30 2021. Please fill the online form for the paper presentations and panel sessions available at this link

 

Conference topics include, but are not limited to:

- Cultural management and policy:

• New organizational models in the field of culture

*CFP* "DISSENT AND COMMUNICATION: VOICES AND DISCOURSES IN THE ERA OF ALTERNATIVE FACTS", MEDIAFLOWS CONFERENCE 2021

 

"Dissent and communication: voices and discourses in the era of alternative facts"

Mediaflows Conference 2021

Universidad de Valencia

27, 28 & 29 October 2021

 

In order to present a paper at the Mediaflows Conference 2021 ‘Dissent and communication: voices and discourses in the era of alternative facts’, a 250-word proposal should be sent through the specific form available at this link until 15 July 2021. The conference accepts papers in Spanish and English.

The conference accepts papers in face-to-face mode (health circumstances permitting) or virtual mode (by sending a video or participating online).

*CFP* "RACISM, NATIONALISM AND XENOFOBIA", 4TH INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

 "Racism, Nationalism and Xenofobia"

4th International Interdisciplinary Conference

InMind Support

26 - 27 July 2021 (Online)

We invite researchers representing various academic disciplines: history, politics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, law, literary studies, theatre studies, film studies, fine arts, design, memory studies, migration studies, consciousness studies, dream studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, medical sciences, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, cognitive sciences et al.

​Different forms of presentations are encouraged, including case studies, theoretical investigations, problem-oriented arguments, and comparative analyses.

*CFP* "CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HULU'S 'CASTLE ROCK'", HULU SERIES

The Hulu series Castle Rock (2018 – 2019) occupies a unique textual space that both builds upon and transcends traditional notions of adaptation in its approach to Stephen King’s canon, engaging with the significance of place, intersecting narratives, and multiple worlds. As stated in the opening credits, Castle Rock is ‘based on characters and settings by Stephen King’, but it uses those established elements to create something original, telling new stories, building on iconic characters and creating compelling tales for new ones, situated within one of King’s signature Maine towns. Through this positioning, Castle Rock is able to reimagine and expand upon King’s work, world, characters and interconnections, participating in acts of both adaptation and creation, reflecting on King’s influence on the larger landscapes of horror and popular culture.

We are seeking proposals that critically analyze Castle Rock from a range of theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to:

• Castle Rock as adaptation of King 
• Castle Rock’s connection to other adaptations of King’s work

*CFP* "CONTAINING COVID-19, THE MOBILE WAY: A GLOBAL COMPARISON", BOOK CHAPTER

As a sister volume to Containing COVID-19, the Mobile Way: Experience and Expertise from China, this volume concentrates on comparative studies of the global efforts in leveraging mobile to battle the pandemic. As the battle still goes on, it is imperative to compare and learn from each other globally different experiences and expertise in containing the pandemic.

As the central theme of this volume is how mobile has been leveraged to battle the pandemic in different countries, we welcome chapter contributors from around the world to contribute a country-specific chapter to investigate and explore the unique experience and expertise from different countries.

The suggested topics include, not limited to, the following:

• How governments in different countries have leveraged mobile to fight the pandemic
• The public responses via mobile to the pandemic and its related issues
• Mobile learning and mobile teaching during the pandemic

*CFP* "PORNOGRAPHY AS A CULTURE: A LOCAL PERSPECTIVE", SPECIAL ISSUE, GENDER/SEXUALITY/ITALY JOURNAL

This themed section seeks to examine pornography as a nexus of practices, knowledges, institutions, and economies primarily concerned with bodily pleasure. It considers pornography as a rich cultural field: a terrain on which is staged an ongoing struggle over the politics of representation, the social legitimacy, and the cultural visibility of desires, bodies and intimacies. Pornography has long been the object of censorship, surveillance and intense political critique. Once primarily associated with exploitative sexual practices and oppressive ideas about gender roles, it has now become a central sphere of intervention for queer and feminist activists, and for radical political work. Within pornography, consumption practices often intersect with participatory spheres of culture production and community-making dynamics. This intersection tests the thin line between social practice, representation and fantasy within which porn operates as a cultural and media domain.

In Italy, pornography first emerged as a noteworthy cultural phenomenon in the mid-1970s, with the proliferation of adult magazines and the first hard-core films by directors like Joe D’Amato. In the 1980s, Italian media (print, cinema, and intermittently even television) were flooded with sexually explicit images, the production and circulation of pornographic materials paralleling and sometimes exceeding the exploits of North-European countries such as France or Germany. During this time, a significant process of deregulation and legitimization of sexually explicit materials transformed what had largely been seen as a predominantly Catholic country prone to censorship into a libertarian paradise for pornographers and their publics. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, THE 20TH IFIP INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENTERTAINMENT COMPUTING

 "The 20th IFIP International conference on Entertainment computing"

University of Coimbra (Portugal)

November 2 – 5, 2021

The 20th International Federation for Information Processing - International Conference on Entertainment Computing (IFIP-ICEC 2021) will be held in Coimbra, Portugal, on Nov. 2-5, 2021: The conference is organized by the IFIP-ICEC TC14 - Entertainment Computing Technical Committee, and will be hosted by the University of Coimbra (Portugal), in association with the Portuguese Society for the Sciences of Videogames.

 

IFIP TC14 aims to encourage research, development and sharing of innovative ideas, models and practices, on computer applications in entertainment. To enhance computation and use studies in this field, the technical program committee invites original submissions.

*CFP* "ONLINE SPEED-DATING SESSION (LIVE) FOR POSTGRADUATES AND PHD STUDENTS WORKING ON MEDIA DEVELOPMENT", IAMCR PRE-CONFERENCE EVENT

 IAMCR pre-conference event

"online speed-dating session (live) for postgraduates and PhD students working on media development"

Friday, July 9th,2021

Applicants interested in networking with peers should submit a short description (1,000 characters max.) of their research project to michel.leroy@tu-dortmund.de.

 

This year, as part of the IAMCR pre-conference events, the media sector development working group and MEDAS21 invite PhD students working on media development issues to an online “speed-dating session.” By offering emerging scholars the opportunity to present their research in a 3-minute-thesis format and get feedback from their peers and industry professionals, we hope to contribute to intensified exchange and networking and to develop practical coping mechanisms for any difficulties and pressures they face in their research.

*CFP* LLAMADA A PARTICIPACIÓN, II CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE COMUNICACIÓN DEL CAMBIO CLIMÁTICO

II Congreso Internacional de Comunicación del Cambio Climático

13 y 14 de octubre (Presencial y virtual)

Facultad de Ciencias de la Información. Universidad Complutense de Madrid

 

El aumento de la información sobre cambio climático en los medios, de manera más acentuada en el último lustro, va de la mano de un creciente interés académico por analizar la comunicación sobre los que los geólogos denominan la nueva era del antropoceno.

El II Congreso Internacional de Comunicación del Cambio Climático (CCCC 2021) trata de generar un espacio académico donde los distintos agentes implicados en los procesos comunicativos sobre el cambio climático; cooperen e intercambien herramientas, investigaciones y metodologías en este área. El Congreso está coorganizado por el Departamento de Comunicación Aplicada y el Departamento de Periodismo y Nuevos Medios de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Información de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Colaboran el grupo de investigación GECA, el Instituto Universitario de Desarrollo y Cooperación, Complutenses X el Clima y CREAV.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND POPULISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, REVISTA MEDIA & JORNALISMO

The scholarly journal Revista Media & Jornalismo (ICNOVA, Nova University, Lisbon) invite researchers to submit articles that discuss the contemporary populisms for a special issue on “Media and Populism” (Number to be published in 2022).

The “populist” label is almost always used to describe a wide range of individuals, parties, and movements, from left to right, who structure their political strategy around a dualistic and simplifying conception of reality. Concept of multiple semantic variations, depending on historical and political context in which it is employed, populism has been identified as a low-density ideology, quite sophisticated in terms of electoral effectiveness, which considers – in a Manichean perspective -society divided in two antagonistic groups: “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” postulating the people’s unrestricted sovereignty. The populist assumes strategies of communication and rhetoric that value the perception of the existence of a monolithic people, whose identity would be threatened by the action of enemy groups -what some leaders call “Homeland enemies”. In this sense, populism is defined as discourse based on simplistic judgments and easy dichotomies, where the people (the crowd) are told what they hope to hear, polarizing society and dividing citizens between good and bad people.

*CFP* "EL ARCHIVO MIGRANTE: ESTUDIOS SOBRE MIGRACIÓN A TRAVÉS DE LOS ARCHIVOS CINEMATOGRÁFICOS", NÚMERO 34, REVISTA L'ATALANTE

En términos históricos, el cine ha estado relacionado con los fenómenos migratorios desde sus inicios, constituyéndose en la primera forma de entretenimiento audiovisual que trascendió barreras fronterizas e idiomáticas y se erigió en un medio de comunicación fundamentalmente móvil, tanto en términos de producción (desde los primeros operadores Lumière a las amplias capas de emigrantes trabajando en la industria de Hollywood, por ejemplo) como de consumo (con grandes conjuntos de desplazados y exiliados entre los asiduos a las primeras proyecciones cinematográficas en todo el mundo como forma de socialización por la vía del evento público) (Allen, Gomery, 1995). En general, y más allá de la atención a casos puntuales (la emigración masiva de directores y técnicos alemanes a Hollywood en el periodo de entreguerras, por ejemplo), no será hasta los años noventa del siglo pasado cuando los estudios fílmicos hagan hincapié en los fenómenos de la movilidad humana como algo fundamental para entender la historia del cine. En concreto, se trata de trabajos asociados al multiculturalismo y al postcolonialismo, en los que cobran singular relevancia los enfoques centrados en las experiencias exílicas, diaspóricas y migrantes (Shohat, Stam, 1994, 2003; Naficy, 1999, 2001). Estas investigaciones coinciden en el tiempo, no por casualidad, con el ascenso a la primera línea del cine profesional de sujetos que generan discursos fílmicos a partir de su condición migrante (o la de sus familias) en países con cinematografías tan consolidadas como Gran Bretaña, Francia, Alemania y Estados Unidos.  Siembran, entre unos y otros, una serie de conceptos fundamentales para pensar el cine de movilidad con un claro componente político, tanto en términos del acceso a las representaciones de los migrantes, como a nivel del potencial desarrollo de unos modos de producción y circulación alternativos que desestabilicen la hegemonía mediática de Hollywood y los grandes grupos de comunicación (Iordanova, Martin-Jones,Vidal, 2010).

*CFP* "COMUNICACIÓN PÚBLICA DE LA CIENCIA Y LA TECNOLOGÍA EN IBEROAMÉRICA", NÚMERO MAYO 2022, REVISTA CUADERNOS.INFO: COMUNICACIÓN Y MEDIOS EN IBEROAMÉRICA

La comunicación pública de la ciencia y de la tecnología constituye un área de vital importancia para el desarrollo social. La divulgación científica es fundamental para una educación social en ciencias que contribuya a que las personas tomen decisiones y juzguen del modo más objetivo e informado posible (Calvo, 1992). Durante décadas, los científicos, los políticos, los periodistas, conservadores de museos y otras personas a nivel comunitario interesadas en la comunicación pública de la ciencia y la tecnología han trabajado para mejorar su comprensión (Lewenstein, 2003). Nuestra región no está ajena a diversos problemas sociales; algunas áreas principales de conflicto son la salud, el medioambiente y el atraso hacia el desarrollo sustentable. La comunicación del conocimiento científico sería una forma de contribuir a superarlos (Kreimer & Zabala, 2006), considerando también la importancia de que las personas accedan a la información científica, la comprendan y le den un uso adecuado. No obstante, en América Latina el acceso a la comunicación científica está segregado y, por lo tanto, los grupos sociales mejor posicionados tendrían mayor posibilidad de apropiarse de la cultura científica (Polino, 2019).  

En Chile, por ejemplo, un 48,37% de las personas se sentiría poco informada sobre ciencia y 41,51%, poco informada sobre tecnología (Centro de Microdatos Universidad de Chile, 2019). Desde marzo de 2020, la pandemia del coronavirus ha desencadenado un desafío sanitario mundial que involucra a todos los sectores de la sociedad; esta epidemia ha puesto a prueba el tratamiento de la información en los medios de comunicación y en primer plano la relevancia de la comunicación pública de la ciencia y la tecnología en su manejo y relación con la población, no solamente en el ámbito iberoamericano, sino a nivel global. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, BARN VIRTUAL COLLOQUIA

The BARN Virtual Colloquia was established in 2020 to foster an international, virtual community of scholars and practitioners from all disciplines engaged with the study of music and sound in audio-visual media. We now invite proposals for the next series of events, which will take place from October-December 2021.

Submissions may relate to any aspect of music, sound and the moving image, and may take the following formats:

• Standard 20-minute conference papers and Q&A 
• Full themed panels (Two or three 20-minute papers plus, optionally, a session chair) 
• Interviews with industry figures

 

Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis so early submissions are strongly encouraged! (Submissions will close on 1st August 2021 at the very latest).

*CFP* "BEYOND CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY? TECH COMMUNITIES AND ALTERNATIVE IMAGINARIES OF DEEP MEDIATIZATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE INTERNATIONAL JOOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

In their 1996 publication of the same name, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron characterized what they called the “Californian ideology” as a combination of “the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies” (Barbrook & Cameron 1996: 44). At its core, this Californian ideology is defined by the notion of a society characterized simultaneously by libertarian markets, alternative ideas of community and individual freedom—shaped by technology more than other social forces. Such notions were driven by networks such as those that emerged around the Whole Earth Catalog, and later, Wired magazine (Turner 2006), which communicated these ideas far beyond the American West Coast. Many of today’s platforms and digital infrastructures, which drive the current “deep mediatization” (Hepp 2020) of society, were created in the spirit of such an ideology, supported by ideas of “global scalability” of once found "technical solutions”.

At the same time, there were groups early on that seem to be opposed to such ideas. Examples of this are the Hacker, Open Source, or Civic Hacking movements, which are interested in critically questioning tendencies of commercialization. Such groups exert their influence by developing alternative “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff & Sang-Hyun 2015) about possible futures – thus creating a space of possibility. However, if one also looks at emerging communities today such as the Maker, Quantified Self, or Biohacking movements, it becomes evident that many “alternative” imaginaries are closely interwoven with the Californian ideology. On closer inspection, the boundaries do not appear to be so easily drawn; there are manifold connections, fractures, affinities, and differences in the various communities.

*CFP* "ORIGINAL Y COPIA, DEL REMAKE AL MEME: ADAPTACIONES, RÉPLICAS Y RECREACIONES EN LA COMUNICACIÓN", NÚMERO 17, RAEIC: REVISTA DE LA ASOCIACIÓN ESPAÑOLA DE INVESTIGACIÓN DE LA COMUNICACIÓN

La presente propuesta tiene como objetivo abordar algunas tendencias de especial incidencia en la creación y distribución de contenidos: las narrativas contemporáneas basadas en la repetición, versión o reelaboración de mensajes preexistentes. La reutilización de material narrativo no es un fenómeno nuevo y ha sido objeto de interés desde diversos enfoques: desde las reflexiones sobre el original y la copia (Benjamin) y la recreación de mitos, hasta la intertextualidad (Kristeva, Bajtin) o la aportación de Genette, que nos remite a la acertada noción de palimpsesto, o hasta el más reciente interés por los remakes cinematográficos (Gray & Johnson) u otras adaptaciones del audiovisual, sin olvidar la actual vigencia de los relatos transmedia (Jenkins). Las posibilidades tecnológicas del universo digital están provocando, eso sí, una renovación de las lógicas de producción basadas en estas repeticiones o reelaboraciones, que favorecen incluso la participación de los receptores, quienes se reconfiguran como emisores de renovados mensajes partiendo del original (fanfics, memes, etcétera).

Asimismo, el intercambio de estos mensajes desde lugares y culturas remotas, pero con gran inmediatez, o la revisión histórica a través de contenidos del pasado, nos proporcionan un escenario privilegiado para estudiar el panorama de la Comunicación en nuestros días con una gran amplitud. Estos fenómenos de apropiación o reutilización afectan a todo tipo de medios, contenidos, canales y formatos que ofrecen producciones basadas, en todo o en parte, en otras preexistentes. Se da además la circunstancia de que este fenómeno es común a la comunicación informativa, de ficción, comercial, paródica, etcétera.

*CFP* "SCIENCE FICTION: ACTIVISM AND RESISTANCE", VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Science Fiction: Activism and Resistance

Virtual Conference

9-11 September 2021

London Science Fiction Research Community (LSFRC)

 

In an age when Me Too, Black Lives Matter, Decolonise the Curriculum, Refugees Welcome, and movements for global solidarity with oppressed populations have become part of mainstream discourse, it is vital to re-examine the relationship between activism, resistance and the mass imagination vis-a-vis science fiction. As a genre dedicated to imagining alternatives, science fiction is an inherently radical space which allows for diverse explorations of dissent. It is, also, a space that has been rightfully critiqued for its historic inequities favouring white cishet men (as recently addressed by Jeanette Ng during the 2019 Hugo Awards among others). There needs to be reckoning with how precarious bodies engage in activism and resistance in the context of their material realities and restrictions. Therefore, we must deny universalising a single experience as “radical enough” and instead acknowledge how communities in the margins – queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, BIPOC, immigrants and refugees, religious minorities, indigenous populations, casualised workers, the homeless and unemployed – have specific ways of subverting and undermining the system, as well as specific stakes and reasons to do so. It is imperative to not only revisit how science fiction has been a space for activism and resistance, but also resist and challenge the genre’s shortcomings.

*CFP* "CULTURE WARS: STATUES, FLAGS, STREETS AND SQUARES", NEW SPECIAL ISSUE, WESTMINSTER PAPERS IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE

Flags, emblems, monuments, street names, statues are some of the means by which nations and states promote themselves, both to their own citizens and to the world at large; the public face of our imagined communities. But as they seek to unify, such symbols have often been the occasion for contestation, disagreement, violence even. Empires, systems, regimes rise and fall. Societies change, and with such change comes a reassessment of societies’ symbolic life, as yesterday’s heroes become today’s villains, past triumphs a present embarrassment. The past is continually raked over, re-examined and reinterpreted, with each re-examination argued over. Examples abound from across the globe: the toppling of Rhodes’ statue in Cape Town in 2015; in Budapest, Soviet era leaders are gathered together in Memento Park. While Ukraine had by 2017 decreed the removal of all 1,320 statues of Lenin. And in Germany there are no monuments commemorating the military in the war years. 

In the USA, statues of Confederate leaders are being taken down; thwarted by a statute forbidding such removals, the mayor of Birmingham Alabama had one offending figure covered in plastic. Outside Delhi statues of military and British royalty languish, a ‘shambles’ in a ‘veritable dust bowl’ (Times of India) awaiting a revamp that never seems to arrive, the neglect telling its own story. In the UK the national flag and the statues of slavers are being fought over by the government and sections of the population deploying memes, hashtags and video footage whilst also appearing in official and commercial films, TV, documentary, news footage.

*CFP* "EL CINE DE LUIS GARCÍA BERLANGA (1921-2010)", Nº 25-2022, REVISTA FOTOCINEMA

El año 2021 se conmemoró el centenario del nacimiento del director Luis García Berlanga, uno de los cineastas españoles más internacionales e influyentes de nuestra cinematografía. Su universo fílmico, único y singular, ha traspasado la ficción para proyectarse en la realidad que está más allá de la pantalla, como reconoció la Real Academia Española (RAE) al incluir en el diccionario el término “berlanguiano”.

Desde su primera película, Esa pareja feliz (1951), codirigida con Juan Antonio Bardem, hasta la última, París-Tombuctú (1999), pasando por otros títulos significativos como Calabuch (1956), ¡Vivan los novios! (1969), su trilogía Nacional (1978, 1980, y 1982), La vaquilla (1985) o Todos a la cárcel (1993), Berlanga ha reflejado medio siglo de la intrahistoria de España con ironía y cierto jolgorio festivo. La mirada de este director, acompañada en gran parte por la pluma del guionista Rafael Azcona, ha retratado de manera sarcástica, pero a la vez conmovedora, la idiosincrasia de la realidad española. En el cine de Berlanga la trama, con situaciones esperpénticas, absurdas, caóticas, carnavalescas, reflejadas con un tono de humor negro, satírico y festivo, se despliega en planos secuencia corales donde los múltiples y variados personajes se mueven de un espacio a otro, mientras hablan y hablan. Personajes miserables, pero entrañables. Personajes atrapados en el “arco berlanguiano”, en esa estructura dramática que impide que puedan llevar a cabo sus sueños, alcanzar sus metas, y que hace de las películas de Berlanga crónicas de un fracaso, como el propio director decía.

*CFP* "LIFE NARRATIVES: PRISMATIC WORLD OF THE AUTHOR AND BEYOND", ISSUE 5.1, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

The interconnectedness between life and writing, explored in life narratives, subscribes to the axiom of endorsing a transparency regarding the nature of the self who is writing—not only to the readers, but to the author itself who may find a moment of oneness between life and writing. This generates multiple possibilities of interpretation embedded in the questions of truth, memory, and agency of the writing subject. While establishing the subject as the prism of narration, these narratives of subjectivity are punctuated with impulses to understand one’s own life, memorialize one’s experiences, record one’s encounters with the animate and the inanimate, or even a will to preserve the unity of one’s own identity. At the center of life narratives then are located the self-projections of the artist, either underscoring or playing with the apparent unity of author, narrator, and protagonist. But despite this focus on the artist-subject, life narratives keep engaging with epistemological enquiries that often go beyond what the author intends to promote—the act of personal recollection offering unintended consequences despite the concerns being focused upon individuality, subjectivity, interiority, or authenticity associated with the specular figure of the author.

Though overtly committed to personal memory, life narratives also uncover performativity inscribed in the very form, seen as the element of deliberate stylization, that draws attention to the limits of self-expression when structural and creative considerations come into play. Representation of subject, style of writing, or the pattern of self-disclosure gets reflected in plurality of forms that are both sedimented and fluid in structure. 

*CFP* "BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE", SUMMER SCHOOL: MULTIDISCIPLINARY GAME RESEARCH

Between Theory and Practice

Summer School: Multidisciplinary Game Research

16-20 August 2021

Utrecht University [online-only]

 

This summer course provides an overview of contemporary research perspectives on games and play, bringing together perspectives from the humanities, educational sciences and social sciences. It provides participants with a holistic perspective, including aspects of analysis, critical design and validation, which is necessary to employ games and play meaningfully and productively within contemporary academia as well as society at large. The program comprises workshops by senior researchers from the Center for Game Research (Utrecht University/UU), the Departments for “Media and Culture Studies” and “Information and Computing Sciences” (UU), the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (UU), Palacký University Olomouc and Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Each day is dedicated to a different angle, starting with game analysis, moving on to games for sustainability and environmental communication, games for learning, scenario-planning games and finally interactive narrative design.

*CFP* "NARRATING COLD WARS", A MULTIDISCIPLINARY HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE

 Narrating "Cold Wars" - A Multidisciplinary Conference

Hong Kong Baptist University 

11 & 12 November 2021

 

Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images invites you to submit a proposal for "Narrating Cold Wars" A Multidisciplinary Conference to be held in Hong Kong Baptist University on 11-12 November 2021. The Conference invites proposals for a multidisciplinary conference critically examining “Cold War” thinking, both historically and as a construct for understanding contemporary global rivalries. 

 

In particular, we are keen to include papers that critically examine and problematize Cold War narratives; their production and circulation among foreign policy professionals as well as in academia, media, and culture; their broader influence on contemporary ways of thinking; and their continued use in the 21st century. 

*CFP* "COMUNICACIÓN POLÍTICA Y TECNOLOGÍAS APLICADAS: DESINFORMACIÓN, NOTICIAS FALSAS Y VERIFICACIÓN DE HECHOS", NÚMERO 112, REVISTA RAZÓN Y PALABRA

La facilidad de propagación de las noticias falsas en la sociedad digital constituye un peligro para la salud o la economía, pero también para la democracia en su conjunto. Esta es una consecuencia más de la popularización de la computación, de la robotización o de la segmentación algorítmica. En el marco de la Comunicación Política, sus consecuencias nocivas preocupan a instituciones, medios de comunicación y ciudadanía, muy especialmente en época electoral.

La crisis originada por la pandemia de COVID-19 ha generado un debate sobre la necesidad de establecer mecanismos de control que eviten la desinformación, así como el desarrollo de instrumentos que permitan verificar hechos. El “fact-checking”, pues, es una de las principales tareas de la comunicación, constituyéndose como pieza angular de la responsabilidad social: automatiza la corroboración de las noticias a través de la detección de la fuente, del análisis de contenido y de la dirección de los distintos flujos informativos. Y es que, en este contexto de miedo colectivo, la proliferación de datos inexactos y la utilización con fines de intoxicación de las redes sociales por parte de actores políticos erosiona la estabilidad social, la convivencia pacífica y las bases sobre las que se construyen las democracias liberales, también las iberoamericanas.