*CFP* "INDIGENOUS AFRICAN LANGUAGE MEDIA: PAST, PRESENT AND THE FUTURE", BOOK CHAPTER

Indigenous African language media, also referred to as ethnic or minority language media in some contexts, encompass tools of communication, socialisation and community that Africans used during pre-colonial periods and are still in existence despite the advent of Western-styled media.

 

The research entity of Indigenous Language Media in Africa is inviting contributions in the form of essays and articles from interested individuals to honour his contributions to these various fields of knowledge in communication and journalism studies. These will be published in the form of a double blind peer reviewed festschrift. Possible topics to explore for submission to this book include:

• Media Representations: representations of gender, race, class and ethnicity in minority/African indigenous language news media;
• Practice-based studies: Cases studies that demonstrate the use of minority/African indigenous media of drama, songs, folklore, theatre for development communication or democratisation;
• Media texts and contents: Studies that utilise discourse analysis, thematic analysis and content analysis to analyse minority/African indigenous language media constructions of social reality in Africa;

*CFP* "POSTHUMANISM AT THE MARGINS: ON FILM, MEDIA, AND NEW WAYS OF BEING", SPECIAL ISSUE, SYNOPTIQUE: JOURNAL OF MOVING IMAGE STUDIES

The term posthumanism has, throughout its relatively short lifespan, swelled to encompass any number of definitions and permutations, ranging from a descriptor for a technological afterlife of the “human” to a critical look at ways of being within a wider ecology. The immediate quandary that any scholar of the posthuman faces is the wrangling of a proper definition for such an expansive yet timely topic. It is precisely this ambiguity that we hope to engage with in this issue of Synoptique, as the amorphous idea of the posthuman offers us the chance to re-examine the “human.”

Traditionally, posthumanism has remained “committed to a specific order of rationality, one rooted in the epistemological locus of the West” (Jackson 2013, 671). By building upon such legacies of radical perspectives that decentre traditional Western humanist paradigms, such as deanthropocentrism, decoloniality, feminist, and Queer lenses, we aim to place posthumanism in conversation with film and media studies, with the goal of highlighting the historically marginalized perspectives central to this intersection. We believe that film and other new media are uniquely situated to address these sets of questions due to the breadth of disciplines they intersect with, as well as their positions between the technological and the cultural. We invite submissions to consider how different forms of media may challenge, transform, and transcend traditional paradigms of the posthuman; we especially invite submissions of alternative media such as video essays, zines, or other art pieces.

*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* "DECOLONISING FILM AND SCREEN STUDIES", EDITED VOLUME

The Screen Worlds project is delighted to announce a call for submissions to contribute to the broad range of research and resources on our website. This call builds on our belief that the decolonising of Film and Screen Studies is necessarily a collective task.

As Robert Stam powerfully noted in Film Theory: An Introduction (2000), film’s historical relationship with imperialism, colonialism and racism has been the least researched area in Film and Screen Studies. This is in spite of the fact that the film medium, since its invention in the late 1800s, was powered by White patriarchal privilege and racist representations of Africans, Asians, indigenous communities and, in particular, Black people – and which are still evident today in films and filmmaking practices. The discipline of Film and Screen Studies also remains mostly Eurocentric in its historical, theoretical and critical frameworks, despite important, ongoing critiques by Third Cinema, Black and other film scholars, and despite the attempts of world cinema and transnational cinema scholars to “expand” the field. This call is based on our conviction that a re-envisioning of our field is thus necessary.

We invite submissions that approach the topic of “decolonizing film” through a diverse range of perspectives, angles, and forms (films, audiovisual essays, reflective essays, interviews, toolkits/syllabi and academic articles – see below for further information). We are particularly interested in approaches that:

*CFP* "ADOPTION, KINSHIP, CULTURE: ENGAGING THE PAST, IMAGINING THE FUTURE", ASAC 2021 EIGHTH BIENNIAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Adoption, Kinship, Culture: Engaging the Past, Imagining the Future

ASAC 2021 Eighth Biennial Virtual Conference

Gatherings for Q&A on Zoom: Oct. 15, 10am-7pm EST

 

Adoption, Kinship, Culture: Engaging the Past, Imagining the Future, hosted by The Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC), considers crossing boundaries, changing discourses, and new kinship formations to imagine the futures of adoption. This conference investigates what adoption, foster care, kinship, and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) might look like in the coming decades. What discourses, representations, practices, policies, and laws will change and which will stay the same, and why? Who and what will lead the way? As we speculate about the futures of adoption, we cannot ignore the innumerable pasts and the complexities of our present moment. Thus, we also ask, how has the past informed, anticipated, or rejected the future? What will be the effects of the past on our future kinships?

*CFP* "INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM AND SELF-DETERMINATION", CONFERENCE

Indigenous Journalism and Self-Determination Conference

Online conference

September 28th to 29th

 

We invite you to submit an extended abstract (approximately 400 words) for the Indigenous Journalism Conference 2021. The theme for the conference is /Indigenous Journalism and Self-determination/ and we aim to bring together both academics in the field of Indigenous Journalism as well as indigenous media leaders and indigenous journalists.

We would be delighted to have you attend this online conference and share knowledge on Indigenous Journalism. We encourage participants to present on the following topics. (Other subjects regarding Indigenous journalism and self-government will also be appreciated):

*CFP* "MEDIATING ARCTIC GEOGRAPHIES: CONTEMPORARY IMAGINARIES OF THE CIRCUMPOLAR WORLD", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Mediating Arctic Geographies: Contemporary Imaginaries of the Circumpolar World

Inari, Finland, 11-12 August 2021

Tampere University

 

Since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the Arctic (understood here as the circumpolar region around and north of the Arctic Circle) has entered worldwide public discussion to an unprecedented extent. As a global climate archive and the site of various scrambles for resources, it has become the centre of attention within debates on climate change and global geopolitics. The international stir created by the planting of a Russian flag under the Arctic sea ice in 2007 and a Chinese flag at the North Pole in 2012, the politicisation of the recovery of the two shipwrecks from John Franklin’s disastrous 1845 expedition in 2014 and 2016, and Donald Trump’s controversial overturning of Barack Obama’s ban on oil drilling in the Arctic are spectacular examples of this new hypervisibility of the Arctic in international politics and global media.

*CFP* "INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE MEDIA AND DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION", BOOK PROJECT

Since the 1970s, the active role and involvement of marginalized citizens in development and social change programmes at local, national, and in some instances, international levels, has sparked much interests from scholars around the globe (cf. Waisbord, 2008). At the heart of this scholarship is the need to coordinate active citizen participation in different aspects of development, which is a breakaway from the earlier top-down development agenda of the 1940s- which placed emphasis on the Marshall plan of economic growth (i.e. Modernisation), where beneficiaries of development played little or no role in decision-making processes involving them (cf. Melkote & Steeves, 2015; Manyozo, 2008). Through participatory communication- which was influenced by Paulo Freire’s work on dialogical praxis, liberation pedagogy, and conscientisation as part of his classical treatise: /“Pedagogy of the oppressed” /(cf. Molale, 2021), scholars around the global south, largely from Latin America, began exploring ways in which different theories, frameworks and models can be established to facilitate and enhance meaningful and sustainable transformation in the quality of life for local citizens through their active involvement in development processes (cf. Manyozo, 2012).

The alternative paradigm that emerged was geared toward the popularisation of the development and design of campaign messages, that are supposed to be culturally sensitive, */language specific/* (emphasis intended) and in tune with the social realities of the people of the developing world (cf. Salawu, 2015; Nwuneli, 1993; Uribe-Jongbloed, 2013). The language in which a development message is disseminated is a very important aspect of the massage treatment. It is posited that the indigenous language of any community is best suited for the purpose of conveying any message, whatsoever, to the said community (cf. Salawu, 2015; Nwuneli, 1985: 203). 

*CFP* "INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE MEDIA AND DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION", BOOK PROJECT CHAPTER

Since the 1970s, the active role and involvement of marginalised citizens in development and social change programmes at local, national, and in some instances, international levels, has sparked much interests from scholars around the globe (cf. Waisbord, 2008). At the heart of this scholarship is the need to coordinate active citizen participation in different aspects of development, which is a breakaway from the earlier top-down development agenda of the 1940s- which placed emphasis on the Marshall plan of economic growth (i.e. Modernisation), where beneficiaries of development played little or no role in decision-making processes involving them (cf. Melkote & Steeves, 2015; Manyozo, 2008). 

Through participatory communication- which was influenced by Paulo Freire’s work on dialogical praxis, liberation pedagogy, and conscientisation as part of his classical treatise: “Pedagogy of the oppressed” (cf. Molale, 2021), scholars around the global south, largely from Latin America, began exploring ways in which different theories, frameworks and models can be established to facilitate and enhance meaningful and sustainable transformation in the quality of life for local citizens through their active involvement in development processes (cf. Manyozo, 2012).

*CFP* "DIGITAL MATTERS: DESIGNING/PERFORMING AGENCY FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE", 25TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE DRHA

Digital Matters: Designing/Performing Agency for the Anthropocene

25th annual conference of the DRHA (Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts)

Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 5-7.09.2021.

 

The Anthropocene highlights a fundamental fracture in contemporary culture between what we know and how we act. In the public sphere, this contradiction can be summarized by the overwhelming sense of apathy in the face of growing complexity and crisis. In scholarship the Anthropocene has been tied up with the experience of the unthinkable – by thinkers including Timothy Morton, Donna Haraway, and Amitav Ghosh. Yet, the current COVID-19 pandemic —which as a crisis also exemplifies the human impact on and a reshaping of environments—challenges the pervasiveness of the key concepts of abstraction and unthinkability.

*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* "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* "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* "THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF SOFT POWER", BOOK CHAPTER

The First Edition of The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power contributed, through essays, (in Part One) to advancement in theorisation of soft power; and the clarification of soft power’s relationship with public diplomacy. It also offered research chapters, (in Part Two) on the use and or reception of soft power, across four swathes of the world – Europe and the Americas; the Middle East and Africa; Central and South Asia; and Northeast and Southeast Asia. There has been much change since it came out in 2017. The Second Edition will seek to further contribute to theory development, as well as map soft power issues that have become salient after 2017. The theory essay (Part One) and research article (Part Two) model will be retained, but content will be fully refreshed.

Geopolitical competition, accentuated by the pandemic of 2020-21, has had an impact on how actors treat soft power as a resource, and as a targeted outcome.  An old term, ‘sharp power’ has surfaced in the new geopolitical climate. The change in administrations in the United States portends a renewed emphasis on soft power; there has been talk at the highest levels of the need to focus on the power of example rather than the example of power.

*CFP* "DOCUMENTARY", FOURTH VOLUME, REFRACT: AN OPEN ACCESS VISUAL STUDIES JOURNAL

Refract’s fourth volume seeks to explore the entanglements between the document and the documentary as sources of information and forms of visual culture. Etymologically, document/ary derives from the Latin docere, to teach. The document is therefore a pedagogical tool. It can also be a disciplinary measure, a literary and legal form that ascribes value to people and property and gives shape to cultural beliefs called laws. And yet, the document defies boundaries–it is at once literary, visual, sociological, scientific, and historical. The aesthetic elements of the document/ary–its materiality, age, iconography, site(s)–are designed to facilitate the recording of information, providing authenticity and legitimacy by appearing to (re)produce, or provide evidence of, “the real.”

The document/ary can be read within a longer history of creative expression invested in the representation of reality or “truth.” Scientific illustrations, cartography, and portraits all construct and communicate evidence about the world. The invention of photographic technology in the 19th century ushered in the idea that a direct representation of reality was possible, a genre which formalised in the 20th century as the “documentary.” Outside of dominant western cultures, methods of truth-telling take on very different forms–such as oral histories and genealogies, non-logographic writing systems and records, and non-human knowledges–which have often been devalued, destroyed or overwritten by imperial epistemologies. 

*CFP* "'AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER' AND 'THE LEGEND OF JORRA'", BOOK CHAPTER

Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-08) and its sequel The Legend of Korra (2012-14) are among the most acclaimed and influential animated television series of the twenty-first century. Yet, there has been little scholarly writing about them. To remedy this gap, I am looking for contributors for an edited volume of essays on this franchise.

The book will be designed for a general undergraduate readership, covering a range of topics in relation to the Avatar franchise. These include (but are not limited to):

• Depictions of race and ethnicity (esp. of Asian and Indigenous peoples), gender, and sexuality 
• Use of character design, storyboarding, voice acting, music, etc. 
• Issues regarding nationality, transnationality, and cultural appropriation 
• Depictions of violence, imperialism, and trauma 
• Genre (e.g. kung fu films, fantasy, and anime) 
• Fandom and fanworks (e.g. Racebending.com, shipping, cosplay, etc.) 
• Adaptation and franchise

*CFP* "AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND CINEMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, ANTIPODES JOURNAL

We invite essay submissions for a special issue of Antipodes, journal of the American Association for Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS), devoted to the topic “Australian and New Zealand Cinema.” This special issue will be guest edited by Eva Rueschmann, Professor of Cultural Studies at Hampshire College (Amherst, MA) and former President of the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies.

In the last two decades, Australasian cinema and film criticism have increasingly interrogated the ways in which questions of intersectional identities and histories have haunted post-settlement Australia and New Zealand, and have foregrounded indigenous and immigrant knowledge, memory and (in)visibility. We are seeking essays that critically explore the intersectionality of race, indigeneity, gender and sexuality, class, immigration/refugee status and/or (dis)ability in Australian and/or New Zealand films. Other topics may be considered. 

 

*CFP* "CRITICAL AND CREATIVE ENGAGEMENTS WITH PETRO-MEDIA", SPECIAL ISSUE, IMAGINATIONS JOURNAL

This special issue of Imaginations will concentrate on media engaging with petroleum and its attendant socio-political and economic structures. Drawing on technology and media studies, energy humanities scholarship, and a range of methods in visual and cultural studies, the contributors will theorize contemporary and historical uses of media to resist and facilitate petroleum infrastructures. Building on Imaginations’ long-standing engagement with petrocultures scholarship, including their 2012 special issue “Sighting Oil” (Sheena Wilson and Andrew Pendakis, eds.), this issue will mobilize critiques of corporate petro-media with decolonial methods from a range of disciplines, focusing on the interlacing of oil, settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, and media production. 

The issue will consist of peer-reviewed essays from scholars and practitioners, artist interviews and contributions (including samples of multimedia work with accompanying artists statements), and a review section (including a comparative book review essay, curatorial reviews and responses to digital exhibitions in the age of COVID-19, etc.). We are particularly invested in featuring research-creation and media-rich scholarship.

*CFP* "AT THE INTERSECTIONS: SCREEN PRODUCTION RESEARCH PROJECT", EDITED BOOKS

This is to invite you to consider submitting an abstract for either of the two books below. If you have any queries, please contact Arezou Zalipour at arezou.zalipour@aut.ac.nz.

Book titles:

• At the Intersections: Race, Indigeneity, and Diaspora in Screen Production Research
• At the Intersections: Ageing, Disability, Sexuality, and Gender in Screen Production Research

Editors: A/P Arezou Zalipour and Prof Welby Ings, Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand


Description and scope of the books

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

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

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

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