*CFP* "ARMAND AND MICHÈLE MATTELART'S THOUGHTS ON COMMUNICATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, MATRIZES JOURNAL

The communicational line of thought and critical investigation articulated by Armand and Michèle Mattelart is one of the main criteria for strategical production of knowledge in the field – in Latin America and worldwide. This line of thought has been distinguished by its transdisciplinary strength to formulate theoretical resource/issues/subject and by its consistency and methodological openness to combine research strategies and procedures, which conjoin to elucidate a set of significant problems to the area of communication science.

In an epistemological dimension, Mattelart line has been a referential framework to considerations and systematic and deep critiques on the methodological and theoretical models, hegemonic in the area (positivism, functionalism, formalism, instrumentalism, technicism). In this sense, their argumentation on behalf of Latin American critical thought, which they recognize due to its philosophical, political, ethical and aesthetical fortune, has contributed to strategically questioning the Euro-American logocentrism. In this perspective, their epistemological work has been vital to problematize left-wing logics, assumptions, scholastic cultures, and political – communicational behaviors. With this in mind, their analysis of Allende and Mitterrand’s govern administrations, and of the “politics” of left-wing governments in Latin America and worldwide, are paradigmatic. Their criticism on politically correct culturalism, which has substantially restricted thoughts on culture communication since the 1980s, is also enlightening.

*CFP* "TRAUMA RESILIENCE BUILDING IN JOURNALISM CURRICULA: FACING RESEARCH CHALLENGES, ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE", CONFERENCE

Trauma Resilience Building in Journalism Curricula: Facing Research Challenges, Ethical Considerations and Implementation of Evidence Based Practice.

Jointly organised by

Lincoln School of English and Journalism 

Lincoln Institute for Advanced Studies 

in partnership with 

Association for Journalism Education 

Manchester and Salford Branch of the National Union of Journalists, UK.

Thursday 14th and Friday 15th May, 2020.

University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln. LN6 7TS. UK.

Time: 9.30am.

Research has documented the impact of trauma on journalists. So far, it is not clear if this has fostered a clearer understanding amongst journalism educators and other stakeholders about how to foster resilience among journalism students to face potentially distressing situations through their taught curricula and practical experience. 

*CFP* “FANDOM AND CONTROVERSY”, SPECIAL ISSUE, THE AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST JOURNAL

In 2005, American Behavioral Scientist published a special issue on Fandom, which contained articles that continue to resonate and influence the field today. This proposed special issue seeks to offer a follow-up to that foundational issue, offering new perspectives on fan cultures which respond to the changes that have happened in the fifteen years since its publication and acknowledging the complex cultural, social and political landscape that we currently occupy. The issue seeks to showcase voices from both established and emerging scholars, offering work that addresses these key concerns from a range of perspectives. Its focus is on the relationship between fandom and moments of fissure or controversy, including how this intersects with the current political and cultural moment.

Although fandom can very often involve admiration and pleasure towards a person or text, there are also moments where disappointment, shame, and displeasure occur (Jones 2018). In the past decade accusations of sexual harassment and assault surrounding celebrities such as Michael Jackson, R, Kelly, and the spread of the #metoo hashtag, have caused some fans to re-evaluate their attachments to famous figures and celebrities, challenging how we conceive of concepts such as ‘anti-fandom’ (Gray 2003), so-called ‘cancel culture’, or the spread of formsof ‘toxic fandom’ (Proctor and Kies 2018) or ‘reactionary fandom’ (Stanfill 2019). However, other fans have sought to maintain their fandom for these celebrities, offering justifications and solidarity to their object of fandom in the face of these controversial moments.

*CFP* "SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNSAID: REPRESENTING TABOO IN CONTEMPORARY POP CULTURE", EDITED VOLUME

We are pleased to invite contributions to an edited volume that analyzes sexual taboo in contemporary popular culture, with an eye toward theorizing taboo sexual practices using frameworks that reveal the uncomfortable or silenced spaces that surround non-normative sexual desire. We seek chapters that focus on how different cultural products normalize the taboo, bringing deviant behavior into mainstream spaces that challenge the traditional relegation of non-normative behavior to fringe spaces. We invite readings of literary, film, interactive and fan-created works that reveal positive representations of taboo, opening our readers to a sympathetic experience of deviancy and socially proscribed behavior.

Contributions can treat historical constructions of sexual taboos in popular culture as well as incest, pedophilia, hebephilia, necrophilia, BDSM, bodily abjection, and sexual subcultures. Theoretical interventions such as anthropological examinations, theories of the monstrous, the horrific, and the abject, machine structures, or affective networks are welcome.

*CFP* "WEIRD SCIENCES AND THE SCIENCES OF THE WEIRD", SPECIAL ISSUE, PULSE: THE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

Recent scientific discoveries in climatology, animal cognition and microbiology have radically altered our conceptions of ourselves and the environment we live in, both on micro and macroscales. Zooming in on the human microbiome and out to the planetary ecosystem, or even further into infinite cosmic spaces, the sciences are revealing strange dynamics of human-nonhuman interconnectedness, doing away with the established anthropocentrism and the idea of human exceptionalism. Current theoretical discussions revolving around the human-environment relation have shifted their interests from discourse to matter, shedding new light on strange bodily assemblages composed of anaerobic bacteria which live in symbiotic relationships with the human body (Jane Bennett, Stacy Alaimo), other types of cognition and intelligent life apart from our own (Steven Shaviro) and, especially, the mechanisms by which human action, no matter how abstract or invisible, contributes to the global ecological transformations (Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton). The ultimate effect of these conceptual transformations is a certain sense of estrangement that is often, but not necessarily, tied to feelings of unease, horror and/or fascination. This specific affect is commonly referred to as the weird because it operates through disrupting our ordinary perception and experience, creating confusion and a sense of disorientation.

*CFP* "MIGRATION, ADAPTATION AND MEMORY", 3RD INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Migration, Adaptation and Memory

3rd International Interdisciplinary Conference

Gdansk, Poland

How do we remember and represent our migration experiences? Who is involved in these processes? How does history remember these events? What helps migrants and societies to adapt? The significance of these and related questions have made their way into our daily lives, from the refugee crisis to policy decisions, individual psychotherapy to (re)building identities, communities, and memories.  

During the conference, we are going to turn our attention to processes that are integral to human experience: migration, adaptation, and memory. We are interested in all aspects of migration and adaptation, in their individual and collective dimensions, in the past and in the present-day world. We would like to examine the role of memory, the processes of migrating and adapting to various dynamic life circumstances, across time, space, culture, language, and discipline. 

*CFP* "MUSIC | VIDEO | SPACES", CONFERENCE

Music | Video | Spaces Conference, 

November 6-7, 2020 

University of Zurich (Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies)

The production and representation of space in film and (pop-)music has received increasing scholarly attention as of late. However, a surprising blank space appears at the most obvious intersection of these two fields of study: the music video. This conference jumps off from the observation that since their inception, music videos have been highly prolific media of spatial imagination and production.

From lovestruck skating middle-class teenagers in Californian suburbs in Air’s “All I Need” to cartographies of North-American small town childhoods in Men I Trust’s sentimental Super 8 driven video for “Tailwhip;” from attempts to escape similar spaces and accompanying mentalities in Tocotronic’s “Hey Du” to nostalgically rendered images of countercultural nature in Kurt Vile’s “One Trick Ponies;” from the folkloristic imaginations of a Morris dancing British village in Stealing Sheep’s “Apparation” to the ironic, touristic gaze on highly mediatized Icelandic wilderness in Mourn’s “Fun at the Geysers;” from the hypervertical urbanism of Forest Swords’ “Crow” to the Google Street View-inspired white middle class gaze on an African-American neighbourhood in Vince Staple’s “Fun;” from hipsterish mid-century architecture connoisseurship in Delmoro’s “Dove Siamo Finito” to the explorations of contemporary city-scapes through the Mancunian public transport system in Equiknoxx’s “Manchester,” music videos conceive, depict and perform a variety of imaginary, communicative, social and natural spaces.

*CFP* "IDENTITY AND POWER", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES

International Conference on Communication and Media Studies

“Identity and Power”

1-2 August 2020 – London, UK

organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Nowadays we live and breathe media, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. News, television, social media, celebrity culture, music, and more. As the media and communication sector becomes ever more diverse and dynamic, and we are going to consume it, we also need to understand it.

Today, the new bio-technical forms of life produced by mainstream digital media and by a whole range of artistic and non-artistic practices confront us with unprecedented theoretical questions, which can be dealt with by combining profound and perplexing perspectives. We need appropriate theoretical frameworks in order to understand the phenomena.

*CFP* “GENDER PERFORMATIVITIES IN DEMOCRACY UNDER THREAT”, 7TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON CULTURAL STUDIES

7th International Congress on Cultural Studies

Gender Performativities in Democracy Under Threat

21-23 Octubre 2020

University of Aveiro, Portugal

1. Gender Performativities in Democracy Under Threat

For the 7th International Congress on Cultural Studies we return to the debate on gender issues. In this edition, we aim to enquire the political, economic, social and historical materiality that gender issues and their performativities summon and articulate in times of democracy under threat.

2. Sessions

The 7th International Congress on Cultural Studies – Gender Performativities in Democracy Under Threat hosts three types of presentations: 

*CFP* “FRIENDS AND FOES OF MULTICULTURAL EAST ASIA”, SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EASTERN ASIA

Three decades have passed since East Asia emerged as a new destination for migrants.

While industrialized economies in this region have mostly accepted temporary guestworkers and coethnic migrants, the rapid emergence of multiethnic societies has brought about new research into multicultural East Asia. In the last decade, emerging scholarship on xenophobic discourses and practices has also documented the rise of a backlash against multiculturalism, primarily from the right- wing but also from liberal-oriented actors.

Most such studies exclusively address either one or the other dimension of this inter-related development. Against this background, the purpose of this special issue is to provide a forum for cross-national conversation on the historical process and political contexts that shape the complex landscape of multiculturalism and xenophobia in East Asia. 

*CFP* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, “LIVE CINEMA III: FESTIVAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION 2020”

Taking place across the week commencing 18th May 2020, this festival will feature a programme of commissioned live cinema screenings and events, leading academic research, master classes, workshops, an exhibition and demonstration track, Q&A sessions, world premieres of new artistic commissions and exclusive live events.  

The event will showcase the creative and critical advances in the multi-faceted field of live cinema which encompasses a diverse range of forms. These include experimental expanded cinema, the global live-casting of cultural and entertainment events and live performance during film screenings - indeed any instance of the live augmentation of screen spectatorship. This festival marks a unique historical juncture and provides an opportunity to draw together and reflect upon the many landmark and contemporary moments where the trajectories of liveness and emergent screen technologies have intersected. It is 50 years since the touchstone publication of Gene Youngblood’s book ‘Expanded Cinema’ which revolutionised notions of cinema-making and viewing through its pioneering consideration of videos, computers and holography as cinematic technologies. Furthermore, it is 30 years since the publication of Philip Auslander’s influential ‘Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture’. 

*CFP* "CURRENT RESEARCH IN SPECULATIVE FICTION", 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE (CRSF 2020)

Current Research in Speculative Fiction

10th Anniversary Conference (CRSF 2020)

University of Liverpool, UK

25-26 June, 2020

Keynotes

Prof Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes University)

Dr Caroline Edwards (Birkbeck University)

“They, the animals, do not speak. In a universe of increasing speech, of the constraint to confess and to speak, only they remain mute, and for this reason they seem to retreat far from us, behind the horizon of truth. But it is what makes us intimate with them. It is not the ecological problem of their survival that is important, but still and always that of their silence. In a world bent on doing nothing but making one speak, in a world assembled under the hegemony of signs and discourse, their silence weighs more and more heavily on our organization of meaning.” 

(Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

*CFP* "LUCANIA BETWEEN FILM AND ECOLOGY. BODIES, ENVIRONMENTS, REPRESENTATION", 2020 CONFERENCE

LiFE 2020 Conference

Lucania Between Film and Ecology.

Bodies, Environments, Representations

14-15 de Julio de 2020

Matera, Italy

The LiFE 2020 conference aims to explore the diversified connections between Basilicata, cinema and ecology, and thus to identify and emphasize the forms and ways through which urban/rural historical, cultural and social contexts have been and may be variously identified and represented. In order to explore the above mentioned connections that may be easily grouped under the term “film ecocriticism,” we can refer to the most general concept of the “film world” as the hermeneutic horizon within which ecocritical research can examine not only different ways of representing reality, but also the processes of signification through which it can be rethought and transformed. In this sense, moving images can be considered as a powerful means of transformation and change, from past to new ways of interpreting and inhabiting the world. This is the general framework within which the conference aims at considering film as a proper medium for ecocritical and philosophical reflections on a regional reality such as Basilicata, its history, its people, and its territory.

*CFP* “ARCHIVES FOR EDUCATION. CREATIVE REUSE FOR STUDENT FILMAKERS”, BFI EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM

As cultural heritage organisations digitise their collections and increase public access, the creative reuse of moving image archive material remains problematic, beset by questions of copyright law, rights clearance and “fair dealing” exceptions. The Archives for Education project provides a new model for the creative reuse of archive film in higher education, giving student filmmakers access to 39 films from the BBC and the BFI National Archive for creative reuse on course-related projects for the first time. 55 institutions have signed up to the scheme, allowing student filmmakers to connect their vision of Britain today with archival representations from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

This one-day symposium, organised by Kingston School of Art and hosted by BFI Education, reflects on the first full academic year of the scheme andexplores the creative and learning opportunities creative reuse can offer to young filmmakers and how the scheme can be developed within and beyond higher education.

*CFP* "RYAN MURPHY: GENRE, GENDER AND AUTHORSHIP", EDITED COLLECTION

In his 20 years in the US television industry Ryan Murphy has amassed a large and diverse body of television work. Murphy exemplifies the modern TV mogul, operating as an executive producer, creator, showrunner, writer and director on a wide range of series. Murphy is well-known for creating or co-creating Nip/Tuck (FX 2003-2010), Glee (FOX 2009-2015), American Horror Story (FX 2011-), Scream Queens (FOX 2015-2016), American Crime Story (FX 2016-), Feud (FX 2017), Pose (FX 2018-), 9-1-1 (FOX 2018-) and The Politician (Netflix 2019-), among others. 

In 2018, Murphy signed an unprecedented $300 million deal with streaming giant Netflix to create content for the platform for the next five years. Murphy’s television series and made-for-TV movies have been distributed across broadcast, cable and streaming, and they have a distinct recognizable style and aesthetic. Murphy has re-popularised the television anthology format and is known for his camp aesthetics and experiments with genre, form and style. Murphy’s television series often champion underdogs and non-traditional lead characters, such as people of colour, minoritized women, trans and non-binary characters and people who are diverse in their sexuality, gender, and/or sex characteristics. While these characters may be marginalized in other television series, in Murphy’s series they are rendered in complex and dynamic ways, challenging and subverting gender and genre expectations.

*CFP* "PICTURING POST-INDUSTRIALISM", EDITED VOLUME

Since the 1970s, many of Europe's one-time industrial landscapes have been redefined as locations of leisure through art and visual culture. The best of these projects typically imagine the uneven, contradictory, and often troubled transitions to post-industrialization. However, regeneration efforts can also make invisible the work, labour and production of the past. Similarly, they often cover up the ecological spoils and social devastation of the present. Picturing Post-Industrialism is an edited collection that will investigate artistic initiatives that make the industrial past visible, negotiable, reimaginable in the wake of closures, unemployment, diminished social services and shattered identities across Europe.

Art and visual culture incorporating the residues at and of former industry at post-industrial sites continue to thrive across Europe – including the former coal and steel production plants in Duisburg and other Ruhr Valley cities, the shipyards of Gdańsk, Newcastle and Bilbao, the coal mines of Loir, Silesia and the English Midlands, the textile factories of Łódź and other Eastern European cities, breweries in Kladno, petrol and oil refineries in Ploiești and Cluj, Romania. Picturing Post-Industrialism will examine art and visual culture at these and other European sites for their aesthetic, historical, and geographical role within regeneration and re-articulation efforts.

*CFP* "CHANGING THE (CULTURAL) CLIMATE WITH ECOCRITICISM AND ECOLINGUISTICS", INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

Changing the (cultural) climate with ecocriticism and ecolinguistics

International workshop

Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Ferrara, Italy

May 21-22, 2020

The discourse of the environment permeates attitudes towards the present, representations of the past and perceptions of the future.

How do languages, literatures and other modes of meaning-making promote ecocritical frameworks that interrogate Western and Eastern anthropocentric assumptions, biases and expectations?

How do the environmental humanities test new hermeneutic tools to assess the interdependence between natural and anthropic ecosystems?

Our focus is on new narratives of fragile and resilient environments; the im/material wellbeing of the organisms that live in them; the interconnections between diverse forms of life.

*CFP* “INTERACTIVE IMAGES AND NEW NARRATIVES”, SPECIAL ISSUE FOR THE REVUE FRANÇAISE DES MÉTHODES VISUELLES

Revue Française des Méthodes Visuelles, while acknowledging the preponderant role of photography and cinema in the evolution of research practices, remains open to other types of (audio)visual methods. And if researchers can claim to be from visual sociology or visual anthropology, they can also be from other disciplines, in an institutionalization of disciplines or sub-disciplines more or less asserted in this field (PINK, 2003). Since The Nuer (1940) by Edward EVANS-PRITCHARD and Balinese Character (1942) by Margaret MEAD and Gregory BATESON, the resulting photographic and then film production (Jean ROUCH among the precursors) is necessarily linked to aesthetics and the history of visual art in a complex and often ambiguous relationship. 

Documentary film, for example, is part of the history of cinema and the history of visual methods. It is logical that documentary film should be permeable to the introduction of digital technology and then to its almost-generalization, which goes much further than the abandonment of silver film by the creation of new formats that are more or less stable in their evolving aesthetics. Jacobo SUCARI, in a classification of contemporary documentary (2012), adds to the usual categories of "documentary of cinematic tradition" and "video documentary" four other categories that illustrate the tensions between film and video: 1) the documentary in a contemporary art process, 2) the expanded documentary, 3) the transmedia documentary and 4) the web documentary. The porousness between visual methods in social sciences and the art of documentary filmmaking inevitably leads to the implementation of methods inspired by this rapid upheaval of forms through digital technology. 

*CFP* "IN THE WAKE OF RED POWER MOVEMENTS. NEW PERSPECTIVES ON INDIGENOUS INTELLECTUAL AND NARRATIVE TRADITIONS", SYMPOSIUM

In the Wake of Red Power Movements. New Perspectives on Indigenous Intellectual and Narrative Traditions

May 15/16, 2020

Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick

This symposium explores North American Indigenous intellectual and narrative traditions that were recovered, reclaimed, or (re-)invented in the wake of Red Power movements that emerged in the 1960s in the settler colonial societies of Canada and the USA. It asks: which new perspectives and visions have been developed over the last 50 years within Indigenous studies and related fields when looking at Indigenous land and land rights, Indigenous political and social sovereignty, extractivism and environmental destruction, oppressive sex/gender systems, and for describing the repercussions of settler colonialism in North America, especially in narrative representations?

The symposium is guided by the idea that North American Indigenous intellectual and narrative traditions developed and recovered since the 1960s offer new and reclaimed ways of being, organizing, and thinking in the face of destruction, dispossession, and oppression; Indigenous ways of writing and righting are connected to ongoing social struggles for land rights, access to clean water, and intellectual and socio-political sovereignty; they are, as Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill (2013) have pointed out, “a gift” from which most academic disciplines can benefit greatly.

*CFP* “CHINESE AUDIO-VISUAL CULTURES: THE INTERACTION BETWEEN CHINA AND THE REST OF THE WORLD”, CIFR 2020 SYMPOSIUM

Chinese Audio-Visual Cultures: The Interaction between China and the Rest of the World

9 de Mayo de 2020

Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, UK

This symposium will explore the relationships that have formed between China and the globe, and more generally, how international and transnational relationships have shaped film industries on a worldwide scale. It will explore transnational media contents co-productions and distribution; distribution and exhibition of Chinese audio-visual products throughout the world; distribution and exhibition of audio-visual products from others countries/territories in China; film industries in East Asia; how China has adopted global aesthetics, and how contrastingly, film industries from other parts of the world have indeed adopted Chinese aesthetics; how the global media contents industry may have changed with China’s influence; how China’s film industry may have changed in light of influences from other parts of the world; and how digital media and its globalising technologies have reshaped international film industries, amongst other possible topics.

*CFP* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, 6TH CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRESS/POLITICS

On June 29-30, 2020, the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University (United Kingdom) will host the sixth conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, focused on academic research on the relation between media and political processes around the world. Professor Young Mie Kim from the University of Wisconsin will deliver a keynote lecture. The conference brings together scholars conducting internationally-oriented or comparative research on the intersection between news media and politics around the world. It aims to provide a forum for academics from a wide range of disciplines, countries, and methodological approaches to advance research in this area.

Examples of relevant topics include the political implications of current changes in media systems, including the increasing role of digital platforms; the importance of digital media for engaging with news and politics; analysis of the factors affecting the quality of political information and public discourse; studies of the role of entertainment and popular culture in how people engage with current affairs; studies of relations between political actors and journalists; analyses of the role of visuals and emotion in the production and processing of public information; and research on political communication during and beyond elections by government, political parties, interest groups, and social movements. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, ACOP INTERNATIONAL MEETING: PARLIAMENTS AND COMMUNICATION

ACOP International Meeting: Parliaments and Communication

May 15-16

León, Spain

The Association for Communication in Politics (ACOP) will be holding its Sixth International Meeting on 15-16 May 2020 in León (Spain). Drawing on León’s condition as the birthplace of parliamentarism, the academic committee of ACOP is calling on political communication scholars to submit proposals to a theme panel on ‘Parliaments and Communication’. A selection of the best papers presented at the León meeting will be considered for publication as part of a special issue in the International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics (Intellect Books) after peer review. 

The deadline for submission of abstracts is March 15, 2020. Attendees will be notified of acceptance by March 31, 2020.

Topics likely to be covered at the meeting include:

*CFP* “DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION 30”, XXVI ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE HUNGARIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION

XXVI. Annual Conference of the Hungarian Political Science Association 

Democratic Transition 30 

28-29 of May 2020

Szeged, Hungría 

The last 30 years provide an adequate perspective for political science to evaluate the transition of 1989-1990. With three decades’ hindsight we can reconsider all that seemed obvious during the transition and recognize what was unforeseen in the midst of the events. Re-evaluating the transition is not only about 1989 and 1990, the opposition movements, the roundtable discussions and the first free elections, but also about the system that was established by these events and processes. If the democratic transitions can be considered the basis of the new Central Eastern European democracies, then do they inevitably lead to the present or do we need to pay more attention to what happened after 1990.

*CFP* “PERSPECTIVES ON THE OCEAN”, SPECIAL ISSUE, THE DOVETAIL JOURNAL

CFP for the Dovetail Journal is to be on the topic of Perspectives on the Ocean. Successful submissions that pass the blind peer review process will be published in the fourth issue of the journal online in Winter 2020. 

The ocean is a contested space that serves both human and animal interests; it is a hub for industry; a wealth making resource; a home to marine animals; a food basket; a dumping ground; and a site of concern regarding climate change and global warming. Never before has there been so much debate from the public realm to the political arena over such topical issues as curbing CO2 emissions, the threat of mass extinction and the loss of ocean habitats. Creative and critical practice scholars, including PhD students across literature, creative arts and media are invited to submit work that focuses on the ocean and certain resonant perspectives and discourses.

12ª SESIÓN SEMINARIO DOIMECO "REDES SOCIALES ACADÉMICAS"

*CFP* "QUESTIONING THE HUMAN: POSTHUMAN ACCOUNTS IN POPULAR CULTURE", SPECIAL ISSUE, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES JOURNAL

Two broadly anthropocene concerns—the ‘human’ condition along with the condition of this human planet, Earth—bear on all discursive practices central to contemporary areas of research in humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Both these concerns reconfigure ways in which humans have come to make sense of themselves and of the world which they share with other forms of life. The anthropocene—ramifications of Cartesian vision of human subject, the giver of meaning, that ultimately subdues all nature and co-existing life-forms—however is challenged by a posthuman turn in the latter half of 20th Century that trenchantly undercuts the foundations of humanism catapulting from the set boundaries established by the ideal of Enlightenment. The beginning of science fiction and its global appeal, dawning around the latter half of twentieth century, inspired a series of directors—Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, Lana and Lily Wachowski, Andrew Niccol, Spike Jonze, Guillermo del Toro, Dennis Villeneuve, Alex Garland, and Timur Bekmambetov among many others—who have given shape to the desire, fear, and wonder of an amorphous future through this posthumanist turn.

*CFP* "UTOPIAS, DYSTOPIAS, ECOTOPIAS AND HETEROTOPIAS", 2020 Nº5 ISSUE, MESSENGERS FROM THE STARS: ON SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Messengers from the Stars is an international, peer-reviewed journal, offering academic articles, reviews, and providing an outlet for a wide range of creative work inspired by science fiction and fantasy. The 2020 issue will be dedicated to the following theme:

Utopias, Dystopias, Ecotopias and Heterotopias

For the 2020 Messengers from the Stars issue we will focus on representations of utopia and dystopia in Science-Fiction and Fantasy. The idea of conceptualizing a hypothetical social order as a way to think about the present has a rich literary and philosophical tradition, preceding Thomas More’s celebrated work itself. As Bloch describes, “the word utopia emerged here coined by Thomas More, though not the philosophically far more comprehensive concept of utopia.” (Bloch, The Principle of Hope, Vol. 1 14). In this sense, we can clearly see many iterations of the concept of utopia today, particularly those related to the idea of the current systems coming to an end. Given our current ecological, sociological and political circumstances, are we at the brink of collapse? What will come after that? In this issue we will address these and other questions related to the appeal of the utopian/dystopian in its many forms.

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

The 22nd Annual International Conference of the English Department,

University of Bucharest

Literature and Cultural Studies Section

Re-writing / Re-imagining the Past

4–6 June, 2020

The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures,

Str. Pitar Moş 7–13, Bucharest, Romania

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

“I am all for putting new wine in old bottles,

especially if the pressure of the new one

makes the old bottles explode.”

Angela Carter in “Notes from the Front Line”

*CFP* “REVISITING THE MARGINS: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES IN NORTH AMERICAN STUDIES”, ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF NORTH AMERICAN STUDIES

Annual Conference of the Graduate School of North American Studies

Revisiting the Margins: Contemporary Perspectives in North American Studies

10-12 de Junio de 2020

Freie Universität, Berlin

Keynote speakers

Jacob Breslow (London School of Economics)
Nikita Dhawan (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen)
Tiffany Lethabo King (Georgia State University)
Ellen McCallum (Michigan State University)

Claims about marginality are increasingly being made in order to explain and justify a wide variety of actions in North American culture and politics, economics and the arts. As a result, the concepts of the margins and marginalization seem to have renewed urgency. The center-margins binary is far from new, having been crucial to poststructuralist, postcolonialist, and intersectional criticisms of the 1980s and 90s. Since then, however, numerous theoretical interventions have attempted to redirect critical discourse away from this dichotomy.

*CFP* “COLONIAL, ANTI-COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL MUSEUMS, COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITIONS”, SPECIAL ISSUE, LUSOPHONE JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES

The encounter between audiences and art objects, in a specific space, has a long and complex history. It is a hermeneutical challenge, which changes over time, in accordance with the needs of the epoch and the objectives of each society and culture. In this encounter between art, time and audiences – which is both complex and fleeting – museums, collections and exhibitions project different representations of the world and narratives of the lives of human communities, which observe the standards of a wide array of different, and often conflicting, curatorial strategies.

Museums, collections and exhibitions are always regulated by political and programmatic objectives and are therefore open to multiple interpretations. Museums, collections and exhibitions always observe a regime of truth, regardless of whether they are founded by nation states, or by revolutionary or counter-revolutionary forces, and whether they are in support of the established regimes, or aim to alter the established order. This regime of truth is the core condition for the possibility of representations that a specific community makes of itself and its epoch, while also formulating possibilities of meaning in order to help us understand what it means to be human.

*CFP* "MEDIA, MATERIALITY AND EMERGENCY", ISSUE 2, MAST: JOURNAL OF MEDIA ART, STUDY AND THEORY

In what ways do questions of materiality matter in a time of crisis? What does it mean to explore the matter of things at a time when we are threatened with the annihilation of that matter, its disappearance, or its disintegration? The second issue of MAST journal seeks to answer and further explore these questions through essays from arts practitioners and theorists.

Questions of materiality have been central to both media arts practice and media and communication theory. In most accounts, media is situated as the ‘inbetween’ of bodies. A sender and a receiver, one and another, stand at either side of a divide and communicate via a medium. In this sense, media might, following Sybille Krämer’s (2015) reading of Habermas, be considered erotic, connecting material bodies, providing the conditions for the emergence of material assemblages. Of course, media may undertake the opposite role, as Krämer also points out, dividing matter into separate bodies, keeping the sender and receiver at a distance. Media arts practice in the most general sense has been about asking questions about these functions of mediation, which connect, divide and express materialities.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, ANGLES: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD

Angles: New Perspectives on the Anglophone World (ISSN: 2274-2042) is an international, scholarly, peer-reviewed open-access journal published bi-annually online by the SAES (Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur). It is indexed by MLA, EBSCO, ERIH Plus, and others.

Angles is currently accepting contributions on any topic associated with the study of the Anglophone world for its upcoming issues.

Contributions can be traditional papers, as well as more experimental fare. Studies in history/civilization, literature, linguistics, or any other lesser-known field are welcome. Likewise, we welcome studies spanning from Early Antiquity to the 21st century.

This interdisciplinary journal has a triple aim:

*CFP* "CHILDREN'S MEDIA", CONFERENCE

The CMC Research Sub-Committee is delighted to announce this year’s call for papers to be presented at the 2020 Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield on both the 8th and 9th July.

The Research Strand of the Children’s Media Conference (CMC) is a crucially important and popular part of this annual event, which attracts over 1,200 children’s media professionals to Sheffield every year.  The conference will take place from the 7th to the 9th July in 2020. The Research Sessions will be held on both the 8th and 9th July.

The content shared in the research sessions is eagerly anticipated by delegates and the research strand’s role is to provide valuable insights and thought-provoking research to the children’s media community.  The research presented may also be incorporated into other related conference sessions, to disseminate it more widely.

The wide variety of topics discussed at the conference can be seen in last year’s programme.

*CFP* “TABOO-TRANSGRESSION-TRANSCENDENCE IN ART & SCIENCE”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Taboo - Transgression - Transcendence in Art & Science 2020  

26-28 November 2020

University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria

The fourth international conference Taboo - Transgression -Transcendence in Art & Science, supported by the Department of Audio & Visual Arts of the Ionian University since its beginning in 2016, will take place November 26–28, 2020, in Austria, hosted by the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Including theoretical and art practice presentations, TTT2020 continues to focus (a) on questions about the nature of the forbidden and aesthetics of liminality as expressed in art that uses or is inspired by technology and science, and (b) on the opening of spaces for creative transformation in the merging of science and art.

*CFP* “TRUMP, TELEVISION AND THE MEDIA: FROM DRAMA TO 'FAKE NEWS' TO TWEETSTORMS”, ONE-DAY CONFERENCE 2020

Trump, Television and the Media: From Drama to “Fake News” to Tweetstorms

12 de Junio de 2020

London Metropolitan University, UK

The election of Donald Trump in November 2016 initiated a presidency that has become the most media-driven and media-critiqued in American history. Trump’s constructed identity as a media celebrity has been a central element of his political style, as he exploits a variety of media for political messaging. At the same time, television and the media more broadly has quickly become attuned to the extraordinary climate and fast-paced news environment of a presidency that constantly challenges administrative and political norms. As television addresses the contemporary era in genres from drama to satire, the boundaries between fact and fiction, realism and excess seem increasingly difficult to locate. All of this has occurred within a national experience that includes the unleashing of massive divisions within American culture, and the televised impeachment hearings of a president for only the third time in U.S. history.

*CFP* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, IRISH SCREEN STUDIES 2020 SEMINAR

Irish Screen Studies 2020 Seminar  

6-7 de Mayo de 2020

Ulster University, Derry

Keynote speakers 

John Hill, Professor of Film Studies at Royal Holloway London 

Dr. Liz Greene, Reader in Film and Sonic Arts at Liverpool John Moores University.

The Irish Screen Studies Seminar provides a unique platform for the presentation of new work –research, practice, and research through practice– by scholars and filmmakers from third-level institutions in Ireland, as well as those working on Irish screen-related topics in other universities and colleges worldwide.

*CFP* "NEW PERSPECTIVES ON NEWS: THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL CHALLENGES TO CONTEMPORARY NEWS RESEARCH", CONFERENCE

New Perspectives on News: Theoretical and Empirical Challenges to Contemporary News Research Conference,

28-29 May

Södertörn University, Stockholm

News, for a long time considered a distinct commodity produced by journalists and established media organisations, is currently often considered a concept in flux. This is prompted by changes in news production, including altering practices of journalists and the opportunities for media users to produce and share their own content, but it is equally a result of novel forms of news distribution, where social media platforms, micro-celebrities and alternative and viral news sites have gained a prominent role in news dissemination.

Alongside transformations in the production and distribution of news have followed changing use patterns, leading to renewed questions about participation, trust and civic engagement in the public sphere. It is arguable, furthermore, that the altered context for news consumption interlinks not only with new behaviours around news, but also with more varied understandings of the concept itself – with a range of different sources of information competing for what is to be considered ‘news’.

*CFP* “AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA AND PROCESSES IN ALGORITHMIC TECHNO-CUTLURE: IMAGES IN DISPERSION AND CONVERGENCE”, SPECIAL ISSUE, FRONTEIRAS JOURNAL

Between deep-fakes and the hyper-realism of videogames, from the “streaming wars” to the piracy of recent Oscar-nominated films, audiovisual media processes demand attention beyond approaches to their “new technologies”, without losing the prospect of asking about the specificities of the phenomena inserted in an apparent irrevocable presence of the software. Contemporary audiovisual media move through processes of dispersion and convergence that are increasingly challenged by an algorithmic (in)visibility which produces its own techno-cultural ambience: recycling languages, formats, and techniques, moving and transmuting through several devices and softwares, collapsing temporalities. Thus this call solicits contributions to the understanding of both cultural ambience and techno-aesthetic changes that affect audiovisual regimes and lead to the forgetting and / or retrieving of media and machines in contemporary audiovisuals – whether in cinema, TV, games, photos, social networks, or videos.

*CFP* "QUEER REPRESENTATION: PASTS, PRESENTS, FUTURES", CONFERENCE

Queer Representation: Pasts, Presents, Futures conference

May 21st - 22nd 2020

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh

Keynote Speaker: Prof Richard Dyer (King's College London)

This conference aims to examine how LGBTQ representation has changed through time, continues to evolve in the present, and what role it might play in the future. It draws on recent developments in queer on-screen representation - ranging from the increased focus on transgender and queer of colour protagonists in series such as Pose (2018, FX-), Transparent (2014-2019, Amazon Prime), Vida (2018-, Starz) and Orange is the New Black (2013-2019, Netflix), to depictions of queer characters in children’s programmes such as Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe (2013-) - in order to trace how LGBTQ media comments on both the current state of queer rights, as well as the possibility of queer futurity (Edelman 2004; Muñoz 2009). At the same time, it builds on work done on queer archives and histories (Cvetkovich 2003; Castiglia and Reed 2012; Dunn 2016; De Kosnik 2016) in order to question how queer lives were once commemorated, how these memories live on, and how representation has changed from then to now.

*CFP* "FIAT/IFTA MEDIA STUDY GRANTS", FIAT/IFTA WORLD CONFERENCE IN DUBLIN

FIAT/IFTA Media Study Grants

FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Dublin

26-29 October 2020

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

 

2020 Call for Projects

In 2020, FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission is looking to commission research that adds value to and helps us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a shifting, converging media environment.

*CFP* CALL FOR DOCUMENTARY/ACTIVIST FILMS, VIDEO ART PROJECTS AND ACTIVIST TALKS, 11TH ANNUAL IIPPE CONFERENCE

11TH Annual IIPPE Conference

Call for Documentary/Activist Films, Video Art Projects and Activist Talks

9-11 de Septiembre de 2020

National University Centre on Applied Economic Studies, Italy

The International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE) is inviting submissions of film and video art projects, and activist talks.

IIPPE is one of the largest international networks of heterodox political economists with a critical approach to neoliberal capitalism. Part of IIPPE’s objectives is to establish links between academics, artists, filmmakers and activists who are working for a more just and equal world.

In parallel with the academic conference, IIPPE will feature a film screening and discussion programme that addresses major issues affecting our world such as poverty, climate change and environmental crises, migration and displacement, gender equality, international development, privatisation, banking and financial fraud, the global economic crisis, the rise of the extreme right, armed conflicts, neocolonialism, etc.

*CFP* “INTERCULTURAL TENSIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS”, SPECIAL ISSUE, COMMUNICATION & ORGANISATION JOURNAL

CFP for a special issue on Intercultural tensions in organizations in the French journal Communication & Organisation. Articles must be written in French. Abstracts are due by March, 1st. See full CFP on the journal website.


Summary

Although a large body of research on intercultural communication has adopted “liquid” approaches to the concept of culture, open to its plurality and endeavoring to go past national scales, these views seem to remain scarcely represented among francophone work conducted within the field of information and communication sciences and focusing on organizations. Volume 58 of the French journal Communication & Organisation will explore this dimension and invites contributions using a critical framework to interculturality with the aim of shedding light on the following issues, from theoretical, empirical and/or methodological viewpoints (the following list is not exhaustive):

*CFP* “PERFORMING ANTHROPO(S)CENES: POLITICS OF/WITH(IN) POPULAR CULTURE”, EISA PEC 2020 CONFERENCE

EISA PEC 2020  

Performing Anthropo(s)cenes: Politics of/with(in) Popular Culture

16-19 de Septiembre de 2020

University of Malta, Malta

'By definition [the Anthropocene] precedes all cultural, political and economic differences. It indicates a shared destiny, an ethical challenge which defines our situation and sets the stage for political action'

(Horn & Bergthaller, 2020).

A century after the foundation of the discipline, scholars of International Relations are only now awakening to the ramifications of global climate change and the sixth mass extinction. Unlike Geography, which rallied around the so-called Anthropocene as a unifying field of interrogation, IR has tended to keep planetary-level changes at the edges. Our section strikes from these margins, unveiling the impact of the Anthropocene on IR as it manifests through performances across the popular culture-world politics (PCWP) continuum.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, JOURNAL OF DRACULA STUDIES

We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.

Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow MLA style.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright.

Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field.

*CFP* "MAKE SUPERHERO GREAT AGAIN!", SPECIAL ISSUE 2020, GALACTICA MEDIA, JOURNAL OF MEDIA STUDIES

The image of a superhero has become one of the fundamental images in the modern mass culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Coming down from the pages of American comics, he has made his way into the most diverse areas of modern culture: cinema, computer games, anime, cosplay, etc. He has been no longer a hero only for young people, becoming a kind of cultural core around which a whole universe of images, ideas, meanings, concepts, etc. is built.

The emergence of the superhero phenomenon is connected with the neo-mythological paradigm of American Mass Culture as an integral feature of the early 20th century Modernist cultural model. The superhero appears in a period of depressive moods in society. His emergence is close to the collective dream of common Americans seeking support and encouragement in somebody during the economic and social crises, united by the common name of the Great Depression. The new hero shows such traits as willingness to come to the rescue of an ordinary man, to risk his own life, and the quintessence of heroism itself - death for the interests of others.

*CFP* “CHILDREN AND MEDIA: EMERGING ISSUES”, SPECIAL ISSUE. COMMUNICATIONS: THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

The role of media in the lives of children and youth has long been the subject of research attention within the media and communications scholarly community to the extent that there now exists a defined sub-discipline specialism dedicated to the subject, drawing on a full range of methodologies, research traditions and disciplinary formations. To a great extent, research attention has followed patterns of media and communications research more generally, focusing in particular on children as consumers and related patterns of consumption as well as contexts, effects and consequences of media use and media repertoires.

The wider socio-political environment and the technological landscape of global internet connectivity as it impacts on children and youth have also received much attention, with reference to the shaping of policies that take children’s views and children’s lives into account. Consequently, with a growing evidence base and greater critical awareness of the heterogeneity of children’s and youth’s media experiences, the research agenda has moved from a generalized characterization of children and media as a fixed or holistic relationship to a much more nuanced and complex understanding of the mediated nature of life-worlds for children as for members of the adult world.

*CFP* "LANDSCAPES", SCHOOL OF ENGLISH POSTGRADUATE COLLOQUIUM

Landscapes

School of English Postgraduate Colloquium

22nd of May 2020

University of Sheffield

Proposals are invited for the 2020 University of Sheffield Postgraduate Colloquium to be held on Friday 22nd May 2020. The theme of this interdisciplinary conference is Landscapes. With extreme weather events, governments in crisis and sea levels on the rise, environmental and political climates seem to have reached a boiling point. In a societyin turmoil over Brexit negotiations, the climate crisis often goes ignored. Whether political or environmental, it is abundantlyclear that the landscapes we inhabit are no longer defined by stable factors, if they ever were. How do we make sense of these landscapes during turbulent times in which their topographies are constantly shifting? Tomorrow we may hear that yet another animal has gone extinct, or that we are facing another Brexit extension. How might the landscapes we live in – whether ecological, political, cultural, or otherwise – be redefined in a way that responds to the most urgent challenges of our time? 

*CFP* “AMERICAN HORROR STORY”, CHAPTERS BOOK

We are seeking chapters that engage with the television series American Horror Story created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Over eight seasons since 2011, American Horror Story (AHS)/has continued to push the boundaries of the televisual form in new and exciting ways. Emerging in a context which has seen a boom in popularity for horror series on television, AHS has distinguished itself from its ‘rivals’ such as The Walking Dead, Bates Motel or Penny Dreadful through its diverse strategies and storylines which have seen it explore archetypal narratives of horror culture as well as engaging with genuine history.

Utilising a repertory company model for its casting, the show has challenged issues around contemporary politics, heteronormativity, violence on the screen, and disability to name but a few. We invite potential contributors to send us an abstract of 300 words for a book chapter of approximately 5000 words. Although we welcome any relevant topic and critical approach to AHS, including aspects of cross-disciplinarily, all chapters are expected to engage with the academic discipline of Television Studies.

*CFP* "A CRITICAL COMPANION TO MEL GIBSON", CRITICAL COMPANION TO POPULAR DIRECTORS SERIES, EDITED VOLUME

Mel Gibson was one of the biggest film stars from the end of the nineties and the early 2000s. His movies were big international successes and he decided to become a director in 1993 with The Man without a Face, a low-budget film that already contains all the themes of his future oeuvre as a director. Obviously, Gibson is a real author, an artist who questions the ambivalence of the human being, a being who is capable of the best and the worst. This theme is also representative of his career as a director, because Gibson enjoyed fame (Braveheart won 5 Oscars, including that for best film in 1996) but also ostracization after The Passion of the Christ (2004). The latter film created a scandal, the director being accused of anti-Semitism, because of his portrayal of the Jewish people as the deicide people. In addition, Gibson’s personal life is also troubled as he himself is accused of being racist, homophobic and anti-Semist. However, like Christ, he managed to resuscitate in Hollywood with a war film Hacksaw Ridge (2016), which won 2 Oscars and 6 nominations. A feat for a director who has always tried to work on different film genres (drama, adventure film, peplum, war ...).

Now, Mel Gibson is once again an important director in Hollywood and this book shall demonstrate all the thematic and aesthetic richness of his work. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches that can illuminate the various aspects of the director’s work and visual style. This volume will undertake to address the entirety of his work. As this volume will be peer-reviewed and scholarly, chapters are to be written at a high academic level.

*CFP* “GLOCALIZATION OF POPULAR CULTURE IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN MEDIA”, VOL.2, NO.3, SOUTHEAST ASIAN MEDIA STUDIES

Southeast Asians consume various traditional and new media content, which makes the region a big market for content distributors. In particular, drama series produced in China, Japan, Korea, India, and the United States have aired in Southeast Asian countries and were presented either through dubbed or subbed content. Music and fashion sense inspired by popular music groups in East Asia have also developed and gained a large fan following in the region.

This issue collates papers that analyze the various manifestations of glocalization in media content exhibited in Southeast Asia. Dreisbach (2018) defined glocalization as a wordplay of the terms global and local that means the accommodation of foreign cultural sensibilities by local actors. Robertson (2000) conceptualized glocalization as the accommodation and/or contextualization of foreign ideas which results in cultural diversity. In this case, we refer to the concept as the process in accommodating global media content and contextualizing it according to the tastes of local consumers. Due to the broad scope of the theme, the journal invites papers revolving around, but not limited to, the politics of global media content localization, translation studies on dubbed content or songs, and the sociology and economics of fan studies. As such, the issue is interdisciplinary, incorporating papers with a focus linguistics, history, politics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, visual art, culture, and economics relevant to Southeast Asian media studies.

*CFP* "(INFRA)STRUCTURES", CENTRE FOR POSTDIGITAL CULTURES ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Centre for Postdigital Cultures annual conference

Coventry University, UK

4 - 5 June 2020

‘Infrastructure’ has emerged in recent years as the new academic buzzword. From the so-called ‘infrastructural turn’ in urban and architectural studies, the emergence of media infrastructure theory, to formation of new disciplinary discourses in the nascent critical infrastructural studies, an interest in infrastructural thinking has been widespread. Alan Liu has gone so far as to suggest that “‘infrastructure’ today can … give us the same kind of general purchase on social complexity that Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, and others sought when they reached for their all-purpose word, ‘culture.’”

What all these approaches to infrastructures have in common is an understanding of infrastructure as a structure of often unremarked power and a system for instituting, distributing, maintaining, controlling but, perhaps also, resisting socio-political, economic and technological worlds. In other words, to notice infrastructures is to pay attention to material and immaterial systems which tend to be unobtrusively invisible, boring and rarely scrutinised, but always present and always inevitably determining how and why we are in society.

*CFP* "PERSPECTIVAS LATINOAMERICANAS SOBRE LA DATIFICACIÓN Y LA INTELIGENCIA ARTIFICIAL", NÚMERO ESPECIAL, REVISTA PALABRA CLAVE

Las diversas contribuciones de la escuela latinoamericana de comunicación a la comprensión y la teorización de las culturas mediáticas, las prácticas comunicativas y los medios digitales, han comenzado a reconocerse desde hace poco en los estudios anglófonos. En una serie de publicaciones temáticas (Enghel y Becerra, 2018; Harlow, 2017; Pertierra y Salazar, 2019; Sierra y Gravante, 2018; Stephansen y Treré, 2019) se han presentado los aportes originales de los estudios de comunicación latinoamericanos a la investigación mundial de los medios, los cuales han actualizado, refinado y expandido la comprensión global contemporánea de la investigación cultural y de los medios en la región. De esta manera, se ha logrado conectar esta parte importante de la historia con líneas de investigación de reciente desarrollo.

No obstante, nuestro panorama de los medios está cambiando con rapidez, debido, entre otras cosas, al implacable despliegue de los sistemas de datos, el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial, la propagación de la automatización y la difusión del internet de las cosas. Estos desarrollos vienen acompañados de esperanzas (p. ej., su potencial para la democratización de la sociedad y para la toma de «mejores» decisiones con respecto a los recursos comunes), así como de temores (p. ej., la extralimitación de los poderes estatales y la intrusión de la industria en la vida privada de las personas). Si bien los estudios académicos están tratando de dar sentido a estos cambios rápidos con base en un conjunto diverso de herramientas conceptuales desde las disciplinas de los estudios de medios (p. ej., Couldry y Mejias, 2019; van Dijck, Poell y de Waal, 2018), los estudios de vigilancia y seguridad (p. ej., Amoore y Piotukh, 2016; Lyon, 2018), la informática crítica (p. ej., Dourish, 2016; Mustafa, 2016), entre otros, el potencial de los estudios latinoamericanos de comunicación aún no se ha explorado por completo para vislumbrar estos cambios claves en nuestro ecosistema de información.

*CFP* “MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO CROWDFUNDING PLATFORMS”, CHAPTER BOOK

During recent years, the number of crowdfunding platforms has increased in worldwide. In order to discuss ideas, problems, challenges, and solutions for changes in society and organizations to improve crowdfunding platforms, we prepare this book. This book has an important role to play in providing knowledge for researchers, experts, and practitioners of crowdfunding platforms in the global digital economy. It also intends to provide guidelines for economists, managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, policy makers, and technology developers.


Objective

This book will aim to provide relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the area. It will be written for professionals who want to improve their understanding of crowdfunding at different levels of the knowledge.

*CFP* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, CRITICAL STUDIES IN TELEVISION BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

Critical Studies in Television Biennial Conference

26-28 August 2020

Edge Hill University

Ormskirk, UK

Where to, Television Studies? What directions are there to investigate? What are the themes that are important as the medium morphs and changes? What methodological challenges do these changes pose to Television Studies and what place does television history continue to hold within our discipline?

This conference will be a space where we can come together to set the agenda for television research and education. We therefore invite papers from all disciplines that engage with television and want to contribute to Television Studies as a field. We are particularly interested in papers that offer analyses of the field(s) or methods and ask questions about what research Television Studies should conduct and how we want to teach the subject. 

*CFP* “QUEER FIRE: LIBERATION AND ABOLITION”, SPECIAL ISSUE, GLQ JOURNAL

Modes of imprisonment not only pervade historical and contemporary life but, more substantively, structure the grounds of sociality. Calls for justice, then, must have at their fundament abolition, and abolition must be understood as the complete obliteration of modes of imprisonment so as to create a world which would sustain life through forms of justice not conceived through violence. This would entail a radical reorientation to life and living. This reorientation must attend to gender, as gender is one of the chief forms of imprisonment—in the double sense that gender, it can be asserted, is a kind of prison; and the institutions of prisons have at their centers the regulatory (re)production of the gender binary.

In Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got, the very first chapter in the collection Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade provocatively suggest, “Impossibility may very well be our only possibility.” They go on to ask, What would it mean to embrace, rather than shy away from, the impossibility of our ways of living as well as our political visions? What would it mean to desire a future that we can’t even imagine but that we are told couldn’t ever exist? (42). This special issue of GLQ, titled Queer Fire: Liberation and Abolition, seeks to begin with these questions of im/possibility, futurity and presence, and knowledge and practice to explore the ways in which queerness converges with abolition.

*CFP* “MUTATING ECOLOGIES IN CONTEMPORARY ART: MACHINIC CAPITALISM, MOLECULARIZED SELVES & SUBSISTENTIAL TERRITORIES”, IV INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM 2020

Mutating Ecologies in Contemporary Art: Machinic Capitalism, Molecularized Selves & Subsistential Territories 

28 de Abril de 2020

MACBA, Barcelona

According to psychotherapist, activist and philosopher Félix Guattari, the intensification of the dynamics of hierarchization, segregation, and exploitation that emerged with the advent of neoliberal capitalism converge with the development of a new type of fascism of planetary scale. Unlike earlier forms of authoritarian fascisms, this unprecedented biopolitical force operates within the interiority of subjects, and it aims at making sure that each individual assumes mechanisms of control, repression, and modelization of the dominant order (2009, 258). By way of a miniaturization of its logistics, machinic capitalism manages to seep into our psychic territories, intervening in the basic functioning of the perceptive, sensorial, affective, cognitive, linguistic behaviours (2009, 262). Deleuze and Guattari's procedural distinction between signifying and asignifying semiotics offer an accurate understanding of how this molecular colonization occur (1987, 9).