*CFP* "EXHIBITING THE HOLOCAUST IN THE IMMEDIATE POSTWAR PERIOD: HISTORIES, PRACTICES AND POLITICS", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST RESEARCH

Exhibitions were a crucial medium of Holocaust memory in the immediate postwar period. Between 1944-1950, hundreds of exhibitions were mounted across war torn Europe and the United States that sought to tell the story of World War II, Nazi Crimes, and the Holocaust. Already on the day after liberation, the process of “museumification” was initiated. Political prisoners and Allied soldiers organized impromptu site-specific exhibits in the concentration and extermination camps. Small, low-tech, DIY exhibitions were mounted in the Displaced Persons camps and Historical Commissions by Jewish survivors. Impressive blockbusters sponsored by governmental ministries and international organizations, such as the United Nations War Crimes Commission, opened in museums across Europe. Varying in their budgets, resources, tone, media, and function, these exhibitions were intended to convince and convict but also to inform, educate, and commemorate. Whether meticulously planned and generously funded or makeshift and improvised, they offered their visitors a different “way of seeing” and interpreting the violence, atrocity, and human rights abuses of the recent past.

Exhibitions not only illustrate history, they also shape it. Despite their central role in shaping our understanding and representation of Nazi crimes and victim experiences, these early postwar exhibitions have received little scholarly attention to date. Yet their impact rivals the media of monuments, photography, and film, cutting across national and political lines and belying the “Myth of Silence” regarding the postwar period that David Cesarani so persuasively debunked. Reconstructing these exhibition histories can tell us a great deal about how different nations, communities, and individuals chose to remember, and what they privileged and understood about the war. It can help us construct a historiography of Holocaust representation, tracing the canonization of certain practices and images, as well as certain modes of presentation. This special issue hopes to offer a more nuanced understanding of exhibitions as a neglected but important medium of early Holocaust memory.

*CFP* "'THE EXORCIST: STUDIES ON POSSESSION, INFLUENCE, AND SOCIETY", SPECIAL EDITION, REVENTANT JOURNAL

The Exorcist, both as a book and film, has had a lasting influence beyond the world of horror. It is essentially a foundational, multivalent work: on the one hand, it helps understand and approach the theological concept and spiritual dimension of demonic possession as found in the Catholic faith, and on the other hand, it investigates domestic/public, spaces, dynamics, and spheres. Indeed, The Exorcist examines social discourse and narratives from a transformative and turbulent period of American history, sheds light on the difficulties that aging populations face in societies that do not offer adequate social safety nets, and exposes the miserable circumstances that people with mental health conditions and medically uninsured individuals and families often endure. Moreover, The Exorcist also speaks directly to the colonization and neo-colonization of archaeological sites and religions.

The Exorcist has much to offer as the foci for extensive and sustained research in the humanistic disciplines. This Special Edition of Revenant aims to start a new conversation on The Exorcist according to three dimensions: 1) to go back to the roots of the concept of possession, 2) to assess the cultural impact of the book and film, and 3) to present new scholarly developments about the book and film. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

*CFP* "SOCIOSEMIOTIC CRITIQUE. A LOTMANIAN PERSPECTIVE", ISSUE 5 (2022), SOCIAL SEMIOTIC JOURNAL

In 2022 – the centenary of the birth of Juri Lotman – we invite you to focus on the potentiality of his semiotic theory (including ideas of as personality, translation, creolization, autocommunication, self-description, semiosphere) to critique power structures and ideological processes in semiosic phenomena.

We invite contributors to prepare an analytical essay focusing on a specific case study of a semiotic artefact or type of artefact, demonstrating how Lotmanian theory can fuel a critique of the limitations on, and variations in, the ways in which the semiotic resources/practices in question may perpetuate biases, imbalance or legitimize and maintain kinds of power interests.

At this stage, we solicit not papers but a proposal of between 1000 and 1500 words length, with bibliographic references included. On this basis, we will select 8 proposals, to be developed in an essay of 7/8000 words (bibliography included).

Proposals should be sent to: (annamaria.lorusso@unibo.it) and (franciscu.sedda@gmail.com).

Deadline CfP: 30 October 2021

*CFP* "MOB CENSORSHIP AND DIGITAL VIOLENCE AGAINST THE PRESS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF DIGITAL JOURNALISM

Online violence against journalists is a global phenomenon. Recent studies have documented patterns suggesting that specific groups of journalists defined by gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and religion, are likely targets of digital harassment, doxing and other forms of violence. Violence is perpetrated by ordinary citizens, states, and para-state actors. This special issue focuses on mob censorship in digital spaces against journalists and the press. Mob censorship is understood as violence exercised by ordinary citizens against journalists with the intention to intimidate and silence the press. The study of mob censorship sheds light into the patterns, the causes, and the effects of violence against journalism and the right of expression of citizens in the digital society. As expression has become more abundant through digital platforms, so has violence against journalists and other actors with visible, prominent positions in the public sphere.

The aim of the special issue is to contribute novel empirical findings and theoretical and conceptual innovations in the study of digital violence against the press, as well as to provide recommendations for addressing the problem. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions from around the world that address questions in the areas of mob censorship, digital hate and journalism, anti-press violence, freedom of expression, and journalistic safety. Studies grounded in various theoretical frameworks and that use different research designs and methodologies are welcome. Comparative, cross-national perspectives might be particularly useful to comprehend causes and manifestations of mob censorship in different political regimes and information contexts.

*CFP* "INVESTIGATING TRUE CRIME & THE MEDIA", JOURNALISM@NEWCASTLE CONFERENCE

"Investigating True Crime & the Media"

Journalism@Newcastle

Ethical Space, the International Journal of Communication Ethics

23 June 2022

Submissions are open to researchers, PhD students, and practitioners working in the field, and parity of esteem will be afforded to both theoretically-driven and practice-related papers.

We particularly welcome submissions from diverse voices and nations and regions beyond Western perspectives. The aims of the conference and  double issue are to explore current and emerging concepts, developments and potential future trajectories of true crime narratives and  production from a global perspective.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, IASPM XXI 2022 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR MUSIC

IASPM XXI 2022

International Association for the Study of Popular Music

Daegu, South Korea, 5-9 July 2022 (hybrid format)

 

On behalf of the IASPM XXI 2022 Organizing Committee, we are pleased to invite you to the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) to be held at Daegu, South Korea on 5-9 July 2022. As you all know, IASPM 2021 originally to be held in July 2021 was postponed for 12 months. Due to this postponement, we are reopening Call for Presentations (CFP) for those who missed the chance to apply first time around and those who wish to revise or replace their original proposals.

Having been held every two years since 1981, IASPM is now one of world's most prestigious international conferences of popular music studies. It will be a fascinating opportunity for participants to share the latest information and knowledge in the diverse areas of popular music.

*CFP* "EXPLORING MOTHERLY INSTINCTS: REPRESENTATION OF MOTHERS IN INDIAN CINEMA", ISSUE 63, CAFÉ DISSENSUS MAGAZINE

The figure of the mother has always been glorified and depicted in black and white without shades of grey. However, time and again filmmakers and academic thinkers have strived to push this conventional depiction to accommodate various layers associated with the concept of motherhood, as they have sought to challenge the simplistic representation of mothers in popular media. It is important to explore the maternal world further in this highly digitized, globalized and gender-neutral environment. This proposed issue of Café Dissensus aims to curate a collection of essays on the representation of mothers in films that go beyond the stereotypical portrayal of motherhood as epitomized in the figures of Nirupa Roy and Rakhee Gulzar in conventional Bollywood style, showing unconditional love toward her offspring. The proposed issue welcomes submissions on the following themes (though not limited to them):

• Queerness and motherhood 
• Good vs. bad mothers 
• Evolution of the representation of mothers in cinema 
• Modern women and motherhood 
• Reimagining the domestic space 
• Masculinity and motherhood 

*CFP* "THEOLOGY AND VAMPIRES", THEOLOGY AND POP CULTURE SERIES COLLECTED VOLUME

From the ‘vampire craze’ of the eighteenth century, and up to contemporary takes on the genre, vampire narratives have been inextricably bound up with theological questions. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its many adaptations, the vampire is repelled by the crucifix and the consecrated Host. Two puncture wounds on the victim’s neck in Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ make the doctor send for a clergyman. In Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil, Lestat believes that he has witnessed the Crucifixion and tasted Christ’s blood. ‘God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves’, he tells Louis in Interview with the Vampire, styling himself as a God, and mimicking divine omnipotence. But he has no answers to give Louis, no revelation, and no known salvation or solace, because he is just like him in their shared vampiric nature. What do these examples tell us about where the vampire sits in relation to the divine? And what kind of theological vision do vampire stories uncover?

Given the richness of theological substratum in vampire fiction, we invite submissions for a collected volume entitled Theology and Vampires, for the Theology and Pop Culture Series published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic. The aim of this volume is to explore the theology of vampires, with a particular focus on the pop culture aspect of vampire narratives. We are seeking essays exploring the theological implications of the vampire across a wide range of media, from popular Victorian tales through to films, video games, and animated series.

*CFP* "CINEMATIC BOND AT 60: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES", A HISTORY RESEARCH GROUP SYMPOSIUM

Cinematic Bond at 60: National and International Perspectives

A History Research Group Symposium

Bournemouth University (Online), 4 March 2022

 

In 1962 the first James Bond film, Dr No (Terence Young) was released. The film was a huge financial success for EON productions, catapulted Sean Connery to lifelong stardom and started a period of Bondmania that lasted for most of the 1960s. As a cultural icon and cultural phenomenon, James Bond and the Bond film have become a globally recognised brand. 

The films have been widely analysed for their spectacle, their often problematic engagement with masculinity, gender relations and cultural appropriation as well as the ideological implications of how they engage with their backdrop of social and geopolitical change across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With 2022 marking 60 years of the cinematic Bond and the latest instalment, No Time to Die (Cary Fukunaga), due (allegedly) for release in October 2021, critical reflections on this ongoing franchise are relevant and timely.

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF ABEL FERRARA", BOOK CHAPTER

Over his four-decade long career, Abel Ferrara has built himself a reputation of being one of the most audacious and unconventional filmmakers in contemporary cinema. After his beginnings in the exploitation circuit of late 1970s he developed to become one of the central figures in the ‘indie’ wave of the 1980s and 90s and is by now a frequent guest at the leading international film festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno.

Ferrara’s unique career covers the entire cinematic spectrum from grindhouse to arthouse but has seldomly been at the center of scholarly attention. The prospective collection of essays (planned to appear in the ReFocus series at Edinburgh University Press) aims to close this gap by offering a comprehensive critical survey of the director’s multi-faceted oeuvre covering his narrative features as well as his documentaries and his work for television.

In order to ensure a broad range of methodological, theoretical, historical or philosophical perspectives on Ferrara’s work, scholars of film studies and related fields such as cultural studies, screen and media studies, or philosophy are invited to submit a short abstract (approx. 300 words) for essays to be included in the collection. 

*CFP* "MEDIATING DIGITAL SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUALS: JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION IN THE TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY", MOSCOW READINGS CONFERENCE

On 18-19 November 2021, the Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University will hold its annual Moscow Readings conference. The topic is 'Mediating Digital Society and Individuals: Journalism and Communication in the Times of Uncertainty'. The conference will be organized as a virtual event, with all sessions taking place online. Moscow Readings conferences is co-sposored by the International Association for Media and Communication Research - IAMCR, and organized in partnership with IAMCR Digital Divide Working Group, IAMCR Communication in Post- and Neo-Authoritarian Societies Working Group, IAMCR Journalism Research and Education Section, UNESCO chair in communication, European Journalism Training Association, the Global Risk Journalism Hub, and National Association of Mass Media Researchers.

Today, historical transformations affecting media industries and production such as digitalization, consolidation, deregulation and related trends identified by scholars long ago (Hamelink, 1998) amplify and accelerate due to new disruptive processes influencing media work on a global scale. This includes the rapid growth of platform power and platform convergence, the emergence of telecommunications giants as competitors in the content market, and growing concerns about sustainability of the news industry and journalism as a profession in this context (Deuze, & Prenger, 2019; Meese, 2021).

*CFP* "BORDERS AND DETECTIVE FICTION", THEME ISSUE, CLUES: A JOURNAL OF DETECTION

For this theme issue of Clues, proposals are sought from a wide variety of critical, national, and cultural perspectives addressing how and why borders are represented in detective fiction, film, television, or other media (e.g., computer games, graphic novels, radio drama, podcasts). As David Newman and Anssi Paasi argue, “The construction of boundaries at all scales and dimensions takes place through narrativity.” Thus, it makes sense to turn to the detective story, a genre whose plots conceptualize issues of morality, legality, security, and transgression to understand the ways in which borders are conceptualized and mediated. Crossing borders can signify openness, mobility, cultural exchange, and cooperation. But the border can also be a site of surveillance, discipline, risk, exclusion, and violence, a place where geographic, cultural, economic, and bodily integrity are rendered vulnerable. It can, in short, be the scene of (the) crime. How do imaginative narratives across the diverse range of historical and contemporary crime fiction constitute investigations of defined, dynamic, and/or developing border spaces?

Suggested topics:

• Detective fiction and migrancy/refugees 

*CFP* "FAIRY TALE AND FANTASY FICTION", SPECIAL ISSUE, FANTASY ART AND STUDIES JOURNAL

In 1947, Tolkien published “On Fairy Stories”, an essay on fairy tales which grew out of his 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture and has since become the basis for the theorisation of the modern Fantasy genre. This essay popularised the terms secondary world, subcreation and subcreator in specialist criticism. Yet Tolkien’s text, often presented as being more a reflection on the author’s own literary conception and his Fantasy work, is indeed supposed to be about fairy tales and to offer a definition and presentation of their main characteristics, such as the notion of eucatastrophe, a concept coined by Tolkien to refer to the happy ending of fairy tales and which can be put into perspective with the naïve ethics of these tales, as examined by André Jolles in his book Simple Forms (1930).

While it might therefore seem remarkable that Tolkien’s essay has become the basis for the theorisation of Fantasy, this is hardly surprising to Fantasy scholars, as Fantasy regularly borrows from the marvellous staff and structure of the fairy tale. It should not be forgotten that Tolkien himself considered The Lord of the Rings to be a fairy tale for adults and that his work is not free of elements and motifs from fairy tales. Moreover, the rewriting of fairy tales is recurrent within Fantasy to the point of having become an obligatory part of the genre for authors, willingly encouraged by publishers. One can mention in this respect the series of anthologies edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, Snow White, Red Blood, the first volume of which is dedicated to Angela Carter, herself known for her rewrites of fairy tales. The Fairy Tale Series, also directed by Terri Windling, includes White as Snow by Tanith Lee (a rewriting of Snow White) and Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, based on Sleeping Beauty.

*CFP* "SATANISM AND FEMINISM IN POPULAR CULTURE", EDITED COLLECTION

In 2017 historian Per Faxneld published the landmark study Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture. The book argues for the existence of a nineteenth-century counter-reading of Satan that constructed the Devil as a symbol of women's liberation, progressive values, and intellectual freedom. For nineteenth- and early twentieth-century suffragists, artists, and radical thinkers, Satan served as an empowering model of self-determination and nonconformity. This collection seeks to build on the work of Faxneld and other scholars of the Satanic by mapping some of how Satanism has been employed as a lens through which to explore issues related to gender, sexuality, and feminist activism in twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular culture.

In the twentieth century, Satanism flourished as part of 1960s and 1970s popular Occulture, moving from real-life satanic organisations like the Church of Satan (founded in 1966) to sensationalist portrayals in films like Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973). In both its real-world and fictional incarnations, Satanism often collided with issues central to the women's movement: reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, and gender-based violence. Satan also served as a symbol of women's liberation in many texts of this period, with films like Black Sunday (1960), Don't Deliver Us from Evil (1971), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), and Alucarda (1977) portraying Satanic women as alluring, even empowering, figures. Now, in the twenty-first century, Satanism retains its complex imbrication with feminist discourse and activism. Organisations like the Satanic Temple (founded in 2012) utilise Satanic iconography in campaigns for reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Around the same time, a new wave of films and television shows utilised Satanic ideas and iconography to explore feminist themes.

*CFP* "SPECULATIVE FICTION'S INTERSECTIONS WITH POSTHUMANISM AND NEW MATERIALISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, EXTRAPOLATION JOURNAL

Extrapolation invites papers for a special issue investigating how speculative fiction, broadly conceived, dramatizes the tensions between the material limitations of the body and efforts to think beyond the human subject in posthumanism and new materialism. Taking our cues from contemporary authors like Jeff VanderMeer, Nalo Hopkinson, Caitlín Kiernan, Kathe Koja, Ken Liu, and China Miéville, we will examine how experimentation with form serves to articulate human practices for enduring and even flourishing in our extra-human reality. We are particularly invested in the ways speculative texts critique the centrality of the human while remaining attentive to the lived experience of the material body as it responds to ecological, technological, and economic demands that exceed human capacities of understanding.

Despite its modest aim to investigate thought and life that operates beyond the boundaries of enlightenment humanism, the field of the critical posthumanities often employs a rhetoric of extremes that invites us to abolish, expunge, contort, challenge, and undo the category of the human entirely. Yet, this expansive model of posthuman(ist) thought is often haunted by bodies, environments, and matter that resist being tamed by intellectual abstraction. Concomitantly, the turn to new materialism takes up problems of inter-relation and ecological co-constitution, offering ethical practices for coping with threats posed by the Anthropocene. Aiming to think more expansively than anthropocentrism allows, new materialist discourse disavows the human subject as the agent of our world to describe, instead, how agency—or animacy—is distributed beyond the human. 

*CFP* "MEMORY, GUILT AND SHAME", 3RD INTERNATIONAL INTERISCIPLINARY ONLINE CONFERENCE

Memory, guilt and shame

3rd International Interdisciplinary Conference

Conference online (via Zoom)

 

The 20th century – an epoch of genocides – will be forever associated with feelings of guilt and shame. And it is not only the case of perpetrators. People are still ashamed of their ancestors and of the members of their nations, societies or families. Those who suffered from crimes and cruelties often experience survivor guilt, a mysterious phenomenon that psychotherapists try to tame. The status of bystanders is nowadays more and more often called into question, as it became clear that remaining “neutral” in the face of violence and atrocities was simply impossible. At the same time, many of both the victims and executioners make efforts to forget about the past events and repress the uncomfortable emotions. Others forget the facts involuntarily. Yet others cultivate false memories of what never occurred. Politicians impose their own narratives of history, with the hope of re-shaping the common convictions and achieving their short-sighted goals. Therefore, researchers dealing with memory studies of various kinds aim at explaining the complex relations of facts and phantasms, real and imagined guilt, justified and irrational shame.

*CFP* CALL FOR PROPOSALS, CRITICAL COMPANIONS TO POPULAR DIRECTORS SERIES

The series covers many directors who have not been studied previously in academic publications and whose works nonetheless are highly renowned nowadays. The intent of the series is to offer interesting and illuminating interpretations of the various directors’ films that will be accessible to both scholars of the academic community and critically-minded fans of the directors’ works. Each volume combines discussions of a director’s oeuvre from a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, thus offering the reader a variegated and compelling picture of the directors’ works. In this sense, the volumes will be of interest (and will be instructive) for students and scholars engaged in subjects as different as film studies, literature, philosophy, popular culture studies, religion and others. We welcome proposals for both monographs and edited collections that offer interdisciplinary analyses, focusing on the complete oeuvre of one contemporary director per volume.

Proposals may include (but are certainly not limited to) the following directors:

• Woody Allen; 
• Luc Besson; 
• Katryn Bigelow; 

*CFP* "CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA", EDITED COLLECTION

In the world of teen drama (or YA drama, as some prefer), there are a number of ways to represent adolescence and its attendant horrors, and we’ve seen a great deal of fantasy-based approaches; beginning with Buffy, some establish that high school is actual hell. But few series come close to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s devotion to that idea. The Netflix series (2018-20), based on the Archie Comics spin-off and featuring a much darker version of Sabrina Spellman, may be difficult for audiences to reconcile with ABC’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the previous adaptation. While one is a teen sitcom in which Sabrina’s powers get her into wacky situations, and she is supported by a talking Salem the cat, the other might feel closer to The Craft. However different this version of Greendale is from what we may be used to, it certainly offers much to explore.

We invite proposals for a forthcoming collection of essays on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and welcome those that engage with industry perspectives, textual approaches, audience studies, and issues of critical reception. We anticipate a broad audience for this collection, which includes scholars as well as students of the humanities at both graduate and undergraduate levels. As such, submissions from contributors at various levels and from diverse fields are encouraged. 

DEFENSA DE TESIS "THE PORTRAYAL OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ON NATIONAL TELEVISION IN LEBANON: THE CASES OF LBCI AND MTV"

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

Información de la tesis: 


"The Portrayal of Domestic Violence on National Television in Lebanon: The Cases of LBCI and MTV"

Autor/a: KAFAA MSAED

*CFP* "COMUNICACIÓN, PROPAGANDA Y MOVIMIENTOS REVOLUCIONARIOS EN LA HISTORIA", NÚMERO ESPECIAL, RAEIC: REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE LA ASOCIACIÓN DE INVESTIGACIÓN DE LA COMUNICACIÓN

RAEIC, Revista Española de la Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación, abre su llamada a propuestas para los artículos del número especial sobre “Comunicación, propaganda y movimientos revolucionarios en la historia”, que se publicará en mayo de 2022.

La comunicación planificada, especialmente de tipo persuasivo mediante diferentes estrategias y técnicas al servicio de emisores políticos, sociales o culturales, ha tenido un protagonismo relevante en los procesos revolucionarios a lo largo de la historia, sobre todo a partir de su difusión en los medios de comunicación de masas en períodos de crisis y/o conflictos sociales.

El uso de un periodismo militante y de los medios en la esfera pública como instrumentos de lucha política mediante la difusión de mensajes de agitación al servicio de causas que promueven el cambio de modelo político o social y sus instituciones en determinados períodos históricos, ha sido una constante en la historia contemporánea. Pero la capacidad seductora de los movimientos revolucionarios, tanto en su dimensión simbólica como en su cualidad sensacional para los medios periodísticos, ha potenciado su capacidad de impacto mediático y persuasivo.

*CFP* "HISTORIES OF DIGITAL JOURNALISM", CONFERENCE

Histories of Digital Journalism

A conference exploring the intersections of history, culture, digital technology and journalism

Budapest, Hungary: 24–25 June 2022

 

Although the shared past of digitization and journalism stretches back at least to a half-century, digital journalism history is a field still in formation. Building on the momentum of the recent ‘historical turn’ in digital media and internet studies, the aim of the conference is to bring together an interdisciplinary network of scholars to interrogate digital journalism histories and to start a global critical exchange on various approaches to and aspects of historicising digital journalism. As digital journalism has been re-configured by socio-historical contradictions of communication and complexities of its technological innovations, journalism scholarship should continuously strive for enhancing critical exchange to advance studies that intersect with numerous disciplines, theoretical approaches and methodological traditions. Emphasis of the conference is on the plurality of histories instead of one single digital journalism history, acknowledging diachronic as well as synchronic complexities of social relations, political contingencies, cultural traditions and power configurations between journalism and digitisation. Instead of enforcing one great master narrative, the conference aims to offer a space to embrace the co-existence of parallel, sometimes complementing, often conflicting historical investigations and narratives.

*CFP* "THE VITALITY OF ANCIENT RECEPTION STUDIES, NOW", INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

The Vitality of Ancient Reception Studies, Now

An international virtual conference presented by Antiquity in Media Studies (AIMS)

15-18 December 2021

 

The officers of Antiquity in Media Studies invite proposals for presentations that illuminate the ongoing vitality of antiquity in recent discourses. Despite decades of institutional disinvestment in the study of antiquity, a venerated deep past figured as a powerful shared imaginary remains a perennial, emotionally evocative, even highly lucrative concept in myriad contemporary media, around the world and across all manner of identity lines. Among antiquities, of particularly widespread interest has been the millennia of history centered on the Mediterranean and dubbed “classical” among successor societies, both self-appointed and colonized. From Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, from Hideki Takeuchi’s Thermae Romae to Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls, to politicians' and pundits' invocations of the Persian Wars and the fall of Rome, each year produces more receptions of this antiquity. Beyond the Greco-Roman-centered past, all antiquities mobilized for such cultural work today are welcome at this ancient reception studies conference.

DEFENSA DE TESIS: "EL ROL DE LA TELEVISIÓN PÚBLICA EN LA COMUNICACIÓN DE LOS MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES"

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

Información de la tesis: 


"El rol de la televisión pública en la comunicación de los movimientos sociales"

Autor/a: PAZ ANDREA CRISÓSTOMO FLORES

*CFP* "MEDIATING DIGITAL SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUALS: JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION IN THE TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY", MOSCOW READINGS CONFERENCE

On 18-19 November 2021, the Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University will hold its annual Moscow Readings conference. The topic is 'Mediating Digital Society and Individuals: Journalism and Communication in the Times of Uncertainty'. The conference will be organized as a virtual event, with all sessions taking place online. Moscow Readings conferences is co-sposored by the International Association for Media and Communication Research - IAMCR, and organized in partnership with IAMCR Digital Divide Working Group, IAMCR Communication in Post- and Neo-Authoritarian Societies Working Group, IAMCR Journalism Research and Education Section, UNESCO chair in communication, European Journalism Training Association, the Global Risk Journalism Hub, and National Association of Mass Media Researchers.

Today, historical transformations affecting media industries and production such as digitalization, consolidation, deregulation and related trends identified by scholars long ago (Hamelink, 1998) amplify and accelerate due to new disruptive processes influencing media work on a global scale. This includes the rapid growth of platform power and platform convergence, the emergence of telecommunications giants as competitors in the content market, and growing concerns about sustainability of the news industry and journalism as a profession in this context (Deuze, & Prenger, 2019; Meese, 2021).

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, NEXT ISSUES, NEW CINEMAS: JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY FILM

New Cinemas is seeking scholars and practitioners working in the fields below to act as peer reviewers. A vital part of academic publishing, peer review enriches the discipline and improves the work of authors and reviewers alike. We encourage reviewers from diverse backgrounds and at different stages of their career to join the peer review pool. We are particularly interested in hearing from researchers in Asian cinemas, film theory and philosophy, and genres such as horror and sci-fi.

New Cinemas is a peer-reviewed journal aiming to provide a platform for the study of new forms of cinematic practice and fresh approaches to cinemas hitherto neglected in western scholarship. It particularly welcomes scholarship that does not take existing paradigms and theoretical conceptualisations as given; rather, it anticipates submissions that are refreshing in approach and exhibit a willingness to tackle cinematic practices that are still in the process of development into something new.

We particularly welcome submissions from those close to completing their Ph.D., Early Career Researchers and practitioners, especially from outside ‘Western’ spaces, as well as work on film beyond the text (such as festivals, technology and marketing). We also seek to publish research and cutting-edge thought in shorter formats than the traditional academic article.

*CFP* "FILM EXHIBITION: THE ITALIAN CONTEXT", SYMPOSIUM AND EDITED VOLUME

This symposium and edited volume seeks to draw together research into cinematic exhibition in Italy throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century. Current research into Italian cinema is continuously expanding its purview to consider the great range of genres, forms and contexts that have been engaged by filmmakers working in the country. Similarly, recent studies have shone vital light on the complex make up of Italy’s film audiences, and on the practices of film producers and distributors in the country. This project will continue this critical expansion by investigating the myriad ways in which film media (both Italian and foreign) has been exhibited and consumed in Italy. It aims to investigate both the audience experience of film exhibition and the practices of exhibitors themselves (eg their programming habits, the construction and restoration of cinemas, their relationships with distributors and political organisations etc).

Possible subjects of discussion could include, but are not limited to:

• The screening of silent/early films at travelling fairs and other public events 
• The establishment/construction of Italy’s first purpose-built cinemas 
• The conversion of Italian cinemas to sound 

*CFP* "SHORT-FORM HORROR: HISTORY, PEDAGOGY, AND PRACTICE", ISSUE 5.2, MONSTRUM JOURNAL

From TV to TikTok, movie trailers to music videos, and GIFs to short films, the short form dominates most of our media consumption. The horror genre is ripe for experimentation in the short form, through screamer videos, short stories and flash fiction, television series, and even commercials. Today, most horror creators work primarily in the short form; with the continually prohibitive costs associated with a sustained feature-length filmmaking career, many filmmakers and creators—particularly those marginalized by race, gender, or socioeconomic status—prefer, or are compelled, to explore the creative and professional possibilities of short-form media. 

While the number of BIPOC, queer, and women-identifying creators who have established and successful careers in horror filmmaking remain few and far between, the short-form market is brimming with content from these often-marginalized voices and is, therefore, one of the most productive media niches for theorizing issues of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and the intersectionality of these identifiers in the horror genre. In attending to the richness of the short form, how can scholars, makers and curators not simply diversify the content and canon of horror as a field, but also challenge our assumptions of how we read, analyze, consumer and react to horror media?

*CFP* "QUEER VISUALS: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND INDIAN CINEMA", BOOK CHAPTER

How society represents its gender and sexual minorities, and whether the visual media should, at all, bear the responsibility of fair and equal representation, form two crucial discourses for a broader discussion in the field of gender studies at present. While ancient Indian society treated sexuality as a fluid concept, homosexuality eventually acquired the label of being a sin or crime primarily during the British Raj. However, the Indian society, as a whole, attempted to engage in constant historical, social and political struggles, the result of which was the decriminalization of the Act 377 terming it as ‘unconstitutional’ in 2018 by the Supreme Court of India. In the post-independent era, the cultural representation of gender identities had undergone a drastic transformation in various forms of visual media. Indian Cinema, one of the most common and easily accessible mediums of entertainment to the common mass, represented gender discourses not only through its stories, but also the songs that it incorporated and which served very much to forward the narrative of the plot, unlike its Western counterpart.

While commercial Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood, has come a long way in its depiction of diversified gender identities, the stereotypes of comical relief and voyeurism still remain its dominant feature. Since songs play a crucial role in facilitating the narrative of the plot, the lyrics used also form a crucial space for critical investigation in the field of gender studies, and to understand in what ways Hindi songs uphold or subvert traditional gender roles. Though in non-Hindi Indian cinema, gender representation in commercial films and songs has often paralleled their Hindi counterparts, there has often been acclaimed efforts by Indian filmmakers who handled the subject and presented the story with a sense of ingenuity, along with sensitivity and sincerity, thus making a mark of socio-cultural significance. 

*CFP* "SUICIDE AND POPULAR CULTURE", BOOK CHAPTER

According to the World Health Organization, more than 700,000 people die by suicide every year; one in 100 global deaths is by suicide. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 45,000 deaths by suicide (14.2 per 100,000) for the year 2020, representing a 30 percent increase over a 20-year period. Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death in the U.S., and among persons between the ages of 10 to 34, it is the second leading cause. Women are more likely than men to attempt suicide, but men are three to four times more likely than women to die by suicide. In short, suicide is an intractable public and global health issue that has shown few signs of abating. The growing salience of suicide in popular culture is unsurprising in light of these worrisome trends.

Representations of suicide and suicidality abound in popular culture. More recent examples include young adult literature like Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why and Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places, on which the Netflix original series and movie, respectively, were based; narrative videogames like Life is Strange, The Suicide of Rachel Foster, and Indigo Prophecy; Charles Forsman’s graphic novel, I Am Not Okay with This (also the basis of a Netflix series); the ABC TV series, A Million Little Things; Eric Steel’s documentary film, The Bridge; and media coverage of and tributes to celebrity suicides like Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Mindy McCready, and Chester Bennington. As many of these representations illustrate, suicide is not reducible to a singular cause, but lies at the juncture of myriad intersecting forces. 

*CFP* "ESSAYS ON POLICE AND POLICING IN 21ST CENTURY FILM AND TELEVISION", BOOK COLLECTION

The Black Lives Matter movement, the trial and conviction of Derek Chauvin, calls to defund the police, the prominence in the media of killer police such as Joseph James DeAngelo are recent manifestations of intense and even unprecedented levels of media attention on policing at interlocking points of race, inequality, social justice and political agendas.  Equally, exciting cross-disciplinary engagement between fields of justice studies, criminology, cultural studies and popular culture are increasingly opening up.

Police have been the inspiration for and focus of countless film and television stories, a long-standing dramatic strain that is a fictional backdrop to the intense recent public scrutiny, and at times rejection of policing. Perceptions of the police are shaped by these long standing narrative forms of film and television that can also convey other shapers of perception, from bodycam footage to mobile phone recordings. At this point of exceptional pressure on police conduct and the uncertain paths that policing will take in the 21st century, this collection is intended to be a topical opportunity to examine the themes of how police and policing are perceived and portrayed and these points are intended as the focal point for each contribution. We are assembling a special collection of essays that consider addressing the intersection of police and policing with film and television in the 21st century. 

*CFP* "EMERGING MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE TOURIST ENCOUNTER", SPECIAL ISSUE, TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES JOURNAL

This special issue examines practices, meanings and impacts of emerging media technologies: digital, mobile, geo/locative and augmented reality technologies within tourism geographies. The special issue aims to situate emerging media technologies within processes of the production and transformation of space, spatial knowledge and social relations within the tourist encounter. We ask contributors to the special issue to consider: What are the configurations of different technologies involved with tourist experiences? In what ways do emerging media technologies shape tourism imaginaries and experiences? What are the particular cultural inflections in the relationship between digital and tourist practices? How do broader infrastructural and economic conditions shape the relationships between digital and tourist practices?

Papers in this special issue will explore the unfolding contexts of media, digital and emerging technologies in tourism geographies across breadth and depth and may include the following topics:

• Culturally and geographically situated explorations of digital practices in tourist sites (including empirical investigations into travel photography, virtual reality headsets, online travel writing, and travel vlogs) 

*CFP* "BODIES OF WATER IN AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION & FILM", BOOK CHAPTER

We invite abstracts for a new book of original essays which explore the meaning and/or function of still or moving bodies of water -- lakes, rivers, the sea, gulfs, streams, ponds, canals -- in narratives by African Americans.  In particular, we seek other innovative and provocative critiques of images of water in 20th and 21st Century African American fiction and film, poetry and drama.  At once, a few pieces of literature and film come to mind:  August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean; Zora Neal Hurston’s Janie Crawford in the Everglades; Michelle Cliff’s short story collection, Bodies of Water; so much of Toni Morrison’s fiction; readings of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust; Spike Lee on Hurricane Katrina; and, Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou, for example.  Our volume wants analyses which acknowledge the legitimacy of but move beyond the familiar or conventional interpretations of the Atlantic Ocean Middle Passage and/or Transatlantic Slave Trade.  

Some possible questions for African American analysis, including environmental or ecocritical contemplation:

• What roles do bodies of water play in African American literary and filmic creative imagination?  In particular, how does the trope of water/waterways get interwoven into works by African American authors and filmmakers?  

*CFP* "DIGITAL FUTURES: A HUMAN CENTRED DIGITIZATION AND COMMUNICATION", VIRTUAL CONFERECE AND CONNECTIST ISTAMBUL UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION SCIENCES (ISSUE 62)

Digital Futures: A Human Centred Digitization and Communication

Virtual Conference and 

Connectist Istanbul University Journal of Communication Sciences, Issue 62

January 6-7, 2022

 

This call for papers is for publication of a special issue of Connectist. It is combined with a call for submissions to a virtual conference on the same theme, which may precede publication.

Participants in the virtual conference on Digital Futures: A Human Centred Digitization and Communication will benefit from feedback and an opportunity to refine or develop work, prior to submission to the associated journal.  Also, it will be a great opportunity to network with other researchers from different parts of the world to open a discussion on various emerging topics, compare practices in different communities, and develop research networks.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, IV INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS MOVE.NET ON TIC AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

IV International Congress Move.net on TIC and Social Movements

Faculty of Communication

(University of Seville)

11 and 12 November 2021

 

This CFP for the IV International Congress Move.net on TIC and Social Movements is structured along the following thematic lines:

• Technological Sovereignty 
• Digital Rights 
• Ciberactivism 

*CFP* "ANIMATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY. RETHINKING IMAGES AND TECHNOLOGY", 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF FILM STUDIES

Animation in the 21st Century. Rethinking Images and Technology

27th International Conference of Film Studies

Rome, 25-26 November 2021

Roma Tre University

Online – Microsoft Teams platform

 

The 27th International Conference of Film Studies Animation in the 21st Century. Rethinking Images and Technology aims to investigate the critical role played by animation in contemporary audio-visual culture. Animated images have a significant and crucial position in current Film and Media Studies: they are the audio-visual horizon in which some of the most decisive and stimulating technological, aesthetic, narrative, political, and cultural challenges are faced. While contemporary works retain some of the fundamental elements of the tradition of animated film, taking them to a new level of sophistication, they also continue to represent a field of absolute experimentation in their audio and visual aspects.

*CFP* "REFLECTIONS AND REVERSALS. SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND AUDIOVISUAL FICTION", III INTERNACIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

 Reflections and reverslas. Symbiosis between political communication and audiovisual fiction

III International Symposium of Political Communication

Faculty of Philology and Communication

University of Barcelona

December 2-3, 2021

Even though audiovisual fiction is usually studied within cultural bounds (Trenzado Romero, 2000), it also presents an important political dimension taking into account that representations play a large role “when it comes to determining which social reality is to be constructed; that is, which figures and forms will prevail in the process of modelling life and social institutions” (Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 13). The spectacularisation of politics is inspired, partly, by the processes of fictionalisation and, at the same time, spheres such as the cinema or scenarios characteristic of serialised fiction are also a reflection of that reality (Rodríguez and Padilla, 2018). In turn, fiction can be a pretext of understanding so as to find the significance of knowledge and to try to bring it closer to a framework of reality (Oliveros Aya, 2010). However, beyond being a call and a reminder of certain events or political phenomena, fiction can also represent reality “by means of a different type of evidence and therefore it can offer a different and more complete approach to realism” (Whitebrook, 1991: 5). It can be said that, as a significant part of mass culture, audiovisual fiction contributes decisively to the formation, debate, inspiration and interpretation of a variety of political imaginaries.

*CFP* "THE 'LITTLE APPARATUS': 100 YEARS OF 9.5MM FILM", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The ‘little apparatus’: 100 years of 9.5mm film

16, 17, 18 June 2022

University of Southampton

 

An international conference hosted in person and online by the Department of Film Studies’ Centre For International Film Research at the University of Southampton.

December 1922 will mark the centenary of the introduction of 9.5mm film to the French cinematographic market.  Pathé Freres first launched their ‘Pathé Baby’ home cinema system on domestic territory in time for the Christmas season, with the promise of a soon to follow lightweight and modestly priced cine-camera using the same narrow gauge, that could fit in a vest pocket (1923, pp. 48–50). In time, the new gauge became available elsewhere -arriving just ahead of Kodak’s 16mm film/cinema system and together signalling the first major boom in amateur filmmaking.

*CFP* "THE EDUCATIONAL DISPOSITIF", THEMED ISSUE, TMG JOURNAL OF MEDIA HISTORY

The growing body of work on the history of audiovisual educational media in recent years has also led to intensified methodological efforts to grasp the complex interplay between institutional policies, screening situations, and the form, style, and content of the respective media employed (be they magic lantern slides, educational films or television programs). In particular, the (heuristic) concept of the dispositif has proved to be extremely instructive in this regard, as it allows to map these different elements in a large variety of performative educational situations and describe their pragmatic interrelations: expectations, requirements, goals. Therefore, we propose to adopt the term educational dispositif as a starting point for a themed issue and define it as a variant of the “performance dispositif” of illustrated lectures that Frank Kessler expounded in a recent article.[1] Kessler has modeled the abovementioned set of elements as a triangular configuration of so-called poles – performance context, text, and user-spectator – that stand in an interdependent, pragmatic relation to each other.

At the same time, by focusing on the educational aspects of the performance dispositif, we want to open up a space for considerations that capture the specificity—and productivity to media and cultural studies—of the pedagogical issues brought to bear on media use in the classroom and lecture hall. On the one hand, this means engaging with the heterogeneous arrangements of objects, people, spaces, technologies, policies, and implicit and explicit norms that constitute actual educational practices, and the contributions of media within them. These arrangements have been the subject of nuanced considerations as well as apodictic prescriptions by pedagogues past and present (as witnessed in many guideline documents) and have recently become the subject of increasing sociological and ethnographic interest.[2]

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, SPRING 2022 GENERAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES OF TURKEY

An international biannual print and on-line publication of the American Studies Association of Turkey, the Journal of American Studies of Turkey operates with a double-blind peer review system and publishes work (in English) on American literature, history, art, music, film, popular culture, institutions, politics, economics, geography and related subjects.

The Editorial Board welcomes articles which cross conventional borders between academic disciplines, as well as comparative studies of the United States.

The Journal of American Studies of Turkey is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, TÜBİTAK/ULAKBİM TR Dizin, and the Classificazione ANVUR delle riviste scientifiche (Italy). It also appears in the Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory and the MLA Directory of Periodicals. It can be accessed online, in print, and through the EBSCO and Dergi Park databases.  

Please see our submission guidelines for how to submit your manuscripts.

*CFP* CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR TOPICAL ISSUES, OPEN CULTURAL STUDIES

Open Cultural Studies invites groups of researchers, conference organizers and individual scholars to submit their proposals of edited volumes to be considered for publication as topical issues of the journal. 

 

About the journal: 

Open Cultural Studies is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal that explores the fields of Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts. It interprets culture in an inclusive sense, in different theoretical, geographical and historical contexts. The journal would like to promote new research perspectives in cultural studies, but it also seeks to map out social and political scholarship that places questions of inequalities and imbalances of power at the heart of academic debate. 

 

Published special/Topical issues: 

*CFP* "DIGITAL DISCONNECTION, MEDIA DETOX, TECHNOLOGICAL DISENTAGLEMENT", ONLINE WORKSHOP

We would like to remind you that until the end of September the call for applications for the free online workshop with André Jansson, Karlstad University, Sweden is open.

Towards development of mediatization research V. Counter-mediatization, digital disconnection and other reverse trends in media use.

Online, 10.12.2021

Organized by the Institute of Social Communication and Media Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, in partnership with Academia Europaea Wroclaw Knowledge Hub.

We invite all researchers who wish to discuss their research projects in a narrow and closed group of media scholars under the guidance of an expert. The aim of this year's edition is to answer questions like:

*CFP* "VIRTUAL, AUGMENTED AND MIXED REALITIES IN JOURNALISM: THEORY, PRACTICE, CRITIQUE", SPECIAL ISSUE, BRAZILIAN JOURNALISM RESEARCH JOURNAL

The magnitude of the changes that occurred during the last 25 years of digital journalism has given way to a new communication scenario full of opportunities but also of professional and ethical challenges (Salaverría, 2019). Technology is behind many of the transformations that have taken place during this time and that have had an impact on the models of production, distribution and even consumption of information. The metamorphosis experienced, as referred to by certain authors (López-García, 2010; Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2020), has led to the current scenario: convergent, mobile and now also ubiquitous (Pavlik, 2001; Salaverría, 2015).

News media organizations are currently witnessing the introduction of a set of high- technologies in our daily lives: 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, intelligent virtual assistants, among others (López- García, 2019; Mosco, 2017). Its introduction in journalism practices has given way to what has been named as Hi-tech Journalism (Larrondo and López-García, 2020; Murcia and Ufarte, 2019; Pérez-Seijo et al., 2020; Salaverría, 2015; Ufarte et al., 2020). This label encompasses different trends that shape the "journalism that will tell the future" (López- Hidalgo, 2016, p. 255): use of drones to cover news (Fischer, 2019); VR and 360-degree video Journalism (Mabrook and Singer, 2019), also referred to as Immersive Journalism (De la Peña et al., 2010); augmented reality for news (Aitamurto et al., 2020); Automated, Robot or Algorithmic Journalism (Caswell and Dörr, 2018); and, among others, use of conversational bots –chatbots– in news websites (Ford and Hutchinson, 2019; Jones and Jones, 2019).

*CFP* "DIGITAL PEDAGOGIES POST-COVID-19", SPECIAL ISSUE, CONVERGENCE JOURNAL

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced academe to rethink the role digital and internet technologies play in and with the pedagogical process. For better or worse, the internet as institution has disrupted classical and traditional notions of learning. As evidenced by the pandemic, we are all falling behind in this paradigmatic shift in pedagogical understanding and approach. According to some (Ulmer, 2003; Serres, 2015; Hayles, 2007), the exigency of such a reconsideration arrives as utterly overdue. While the otherwise future of online learning has already arrived, COVID-19 has demonstrated that we are still yet living in the past.

Understanding our era as an apparatus or paradigm (Ulmer 1998)—at least with regard to digital technologies in general, the internet in particular—we must give attention to emerging patterns of activity, belief, logic, and even neurology. While some theorists have warned about the danger of digital technologies causing disorientation (Stiegler, 2008), the soul at work (Berardi, 2009), violence (Virilio, 1986), or general detriment (Carr, 2010), we should be reminded of the concept of appropriation, as given by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, 1987). Digital technologies are what we make of them, and this includes digital pedagogy. Digital pedagogy thus again returns us to the /pharmakon/: a poison, or a cure—or both. As such, the aim of education is to remedy the influence of digital media and immunize us against it, even if by way of digital education.

*CFP* "ESPORTS IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC", PALGRAVE SERIES IN ASIA AND PACIFIC STUDIES VOLUME

Over the last two decades, the Asia-Pacific region has been central to the growth and development of esports. The establishment in 2000 of the Korean Esports Association placed competitive gaming within a government ministry at a time when it was still a niche hobby in other parts of the world (Jin, 2010). Three years later, the Chinese government also recognized esports, making it the country's 99th official sport, and broadcasting esports documentaries and tournaments on state-owned television stations (Lu, 2016).

Today, the region remains a major esports site, with Jakarta hosting an exhibition esports tournament as part of the 2018 Asian games (Etchells, 2018), and Hangzhou set to host the first medalling esports Olympic event as part of the 2022 Asian games (The 19th Asian Games, 2021).

Asia is also a huge esports market. It is the fastest growing esports sector in the world and in 2019 it “generated nearly half of total global esports revenue at $519 million” (Niko Partners, 2020). The size of the Asian population plays a key role in both the number of spectators and the number of esports athletes from the region: “According to Juniper, 50% of the over 1 billion esports and games viewers in 2025 will be from the Asia Pacific region” (Campe, 2021).

*CFP* "GENDER AND MEDIA STUDIES. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES", SPECIAL ISSUE, SOCIOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION JOURNAL

Despite the widespread perception of an abundance of literature and opportunities for discussion about gender and media, “researching the gender-media dyad is still an important project for media scholars” (Ross, 2010, p. 3). One reason for the prominence of the topic is the richness and rapidity of the evolution of media products, technologies and actors. Indeed, the contemporary media landscape and its cultural dimension are the result of the accumulation and juxtaposition of content, media forms, production and consumption practices, and everything in between (Bolter, 2020). Rigid and stereotyped images of women, men and other subjectivities coexist with critical content, as the result of practices of remix, sharing, co-creation and contestation.

The relationship between gender and media also appears to be of interest due to the growth of studies about the complexity and variety of subjectivities, identities, orientations and social and sexual relations in the media universe. Indeed, in the last two decades, theoretical reflections and empirical analyses have flourished in the scientific debate, thematizing the gender-media dyad beyond the conspicuous theme of representations, beyond binary opposing and heteronormatively visions (Buonanno, Faccioli, 2020; Farris, Compton, Herrera, 2020; Kay, 2020; Scarcelli, Krijnen, Nixon, 2020; Ross, 2020). Moreover, gender and media studies have recently been enriched by wide-ranging interdisciplinary analyses that look at the topic from a prismatic, intersectional perspective, which deepens the encounter between sociology and feminist media studies (Corradi 2008; Buonanno, 2014; Byerly, 2017). In this regard, there is an increasing sensitivity to the transformations in the social discourse of feminism due (also) to its mediatisation and the re-signification of feminist terms in a neoliberal perspective (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2016; McRobbie, 2020; Rottenberg, 2018).

*CFP* CALL FOR VIDEO-ESSAYS, ISSUE 8, TECMERIN: JOURNAL OF AUDIOVISUAL ESSAYS

Tecmerin. Journal of Audiovisual Essays launches its CFP for issue 8. It is a biannual, peer-reviewed journal, which also offers a monographic dossier each year. This journal is published by the research group Tecmerin (Television, Cinema, Memory, Representation and Industry) of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Department of Journalism and Media Studies).

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

Instructions for authors:

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

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

*CFP* "A LICENSE TO HATE: ANTI-ASIAN PREJUDICE IN DIGITAL COMMUNICATION", 3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE PANEL

A License to Hate: Anti-Asian Prejudice in Digital Communication

University of South Florida

3rd International Conference: Approaches to Digital Discourse Analysis (ADDA3)

St. Petersburg, FL, USA: May 13-15, 2022

 

 

As reported, racism and anti-Chinese sentiments increased significantly after the start of the pandemic and have been directly linked to it (Vachuska, 2020). Disturbingly, over ¾ of Chinese Americans polled about their experiences reported being victim of at least 1 incident of COVID-19 racial discrimination online and/or in person, and over half perceived health-related Sinophobia in America and media-perpetuated Sinophobia (Cheah et al., 2020). Verbal and physical attacks on Asian Americans have been linked to racism and xenophobia deeply entrenched in the US society, and to the “us vs. them” worldview relegating Asian Americans to the bottom of the social hierarchy (Gover, Harper & Langton, 2020). Such feelings have been at least partly caused or exacerbated by the inflammatory rhetoric by the US politicians (Wu, 2020), and there has been evidence of ex-president Trump’s tweets to cause an uptick in anti-Asian verbal aggression on Twitter (Ziems et al., 2020). Researchers have analyzed the victims’ narratives (Satoh & Hata 2021) and even identified counter-discourses employing linguistic creativity to oppose hate (Zhu, 2020).

*CFP* "THE WORKS OF SHONDA RHIMES", SCREEN STORYTELLING EDITED VOLUME

This edited volume on the works of Shonda Rhimes will be the first book in a new series to be published by Bloomsbury Academic. Seeking 250-word abstracts for previously unpublished essays on television series created by Rhimes. Final essays will be 3,000-3,500 words, written for an audience of student readers, and will be due in the Spring of 2022.

The Screen Storytelling series is designed for students, professors, and enthusiastic consumers of film, television, and new media who seek information about contemporary and historically significant screenwriters that is both accessible and critically rigorous. The intention with this new series is to bring much-deserved attention to screen and television writers who have developed noteworthy films and television series of significant aesthetic or cultural achievement, critical acclaim, or commercial success, and to offer close readings of the films and series from the perspective of story, screenwriting craft, audience reception, and cultural impact. Each volume will explore the works of a single screen storyteller. The series will place a strong focus on examining works by screenwriters often left out of classroom syllabi, including women, writers of color, LGBTQ writers, and international writers. (Note: The Works of Jane Anderson is slated as the second volume in the series.)

 

The Works of Shonda Rhimes

*CFP* "GROOVES AND MOVEMENTS", IASPM-US 2022 CONFERENCE

Grooves and Movements

IASPM-US 2022 Conference

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor/Detroit Michigan: May 26-28, 2022

 

The International Association for the Study of Popular Music-United States chapter (IASPM-US) invites proposals for its annual conference, which will take place in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan on May 26-28, 2022. We welcome abstracts for individual papers, organized panels, roundtable discussions, and alternative (non-paper) presentations on all aspects of popular music, broadly defined, from any discipline or profession. We especially encourage submissions on the many rich popular music histories of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Detroit. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to normalize virtual connections in local and global settings and to reconfigure physical spaces for social distancing, the present moment calls for an examination of the virtual and physical modalities of music-making. The theme for this year’s conference “Grooves and Movements” intersects with Detroit and its storied place in rhythm and blues, rock, punk, hip-hop, and electronic dance music, and is intended to connect the histories, philosophies, and practices of urban spaces to other historical and global popular music communities.

*CFP* "TROPICAL LANDSCAPES: NATURE-CULTURE ENTANGLEMENTS", SPECIAL ISSUE, ETROPIC: ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF STUDIES IN THE TROPICS

Landscape integrates both natural and cultural aspects of a particular area. Landscapes incorporate environmental elements including landforms, waterscapes, climate and weather, flora and fauna. They also necessarily involve human perception and inscriptions which reflect histories of extraction and excavation, of planting and settlement, of design and pollution. Natural elements and the cultural shaping by humans – past, present and future – means landscapes reflect living entanglements of people and place.

A landscape’s physicality is entwined with layers of human meaning and value – and tropical landscapes have a particular human value. The tropics is commonly defined in geographical terms as the region of Earth on either side of the Equator extending to the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Yet the tropics is far more than geographical and needs to be understood through the imaginary of tropicality. Tropicality refers to how the tropics are construed as the exoticised environmental Other of the Western world as this is informed by art and culture, and imperial and scientific practices. In this imaginary – in which the tropics are depicted through nature images as either fecund paradise or fetid hell – the temperate is portrayed as civilised and the tropical as requiring cultivation.

*CFP* "DESINFORMACIÓN Y TRATAMIENTO DE LA MEMORIA DEMOCRÁTICA EN REDES SOCIALES", VOL. 13, Nº 2, REVISTA MEDITERRÁNEA DE COMUNICACIÓN

´Posverdad´, ´desinformación´, ´bulos´, ´fake news´, son conceptos que se han consolidado en la agenda mediática acompañados del ascenso de partidos vinculados a la extrema derecha, experimentado de manera universal, y que han provocado una creciente polarización política. La agenda mediática de estas nuevas opciones políticas amparadas por las sociedades democráticas se limita a unos pocos temas, pero con alta tensión social, que pretenden conseguir un objetivo de movilización emocional del electorado. Entre ellos, destaca el de la Memoria Democrática, referida en España a los crímenes institucionales cometidos durante la dictadura franquista. Pero más allá de España, en otros muchos países con un pasado de padecimiento bajo el influjo de regímenes totalitarios, la memoria también está adquiriendo un papel protagonista en los medios, centralizada en la difusión a través de las redes sociales (Argentina, Chile, Alemania, Israel, Italia, Sáhara, Cuba, etc.).

El presente monográfico, con clara motivación internacional, pretende promover la reflexión crítica y el debate en torno a la utilización de la memoria como temática incluida en la agenda política en diferentes países con pasado o presente absolutista. Algunas de las cuestiones a investigar que planteamos en esta llamada a la publicación son:

• Tratamiento y difusión de información sobre personajes y cuestiones históricas.

*CFP* "VIRAL LOGICS AND CYTOPATHIC EFFECTS", SPECIAL ISSUE, CULTURE, THEORY AND CRITIQUE JOURNAL

Culture, Theory and Critique is calling for submissions for a themed series to be entitled, “Viral Logics and Cytopathic Effects”. In line with the journal’s aims and scope, papers submitted for this series should address ways in which the current COVID-19 pandemic requires us to reconceptualise extant theoretical frameworks or, conversely, how these frameworks might enable us to reconfigure the viral logics that have come to dominate many different forms of culture. The critical interventions called for should then seek, metaphorically, to bring about cytopathic effects in the bodies of knowledge that are, or should be, operational in the current environment.

 

Submission Instructions

All papers will undergo a process of double blind peer review; however, in line with the accelerated timelines of this contemporary moment, we will aim to fast track the refereeing process for papers in this series. Once accepted and through the refereeing and production process, papers will be made immediately available online; we are currently negotiating for these papers to be open access but cannot confirm this as yet. Papers will appear in print issues of the journal as soon as possible, published across a number of issues as a series rather than all together in a single volume.

*CFP* "COMMUNICATION AND DISSENT: COMPETING VOICES IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD", ISSUE 14.2 (FALL 2022), CATALAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION & CULTURAL STUDIES

Traditional media were for a long time seen as institutions that had to avoid challenges to the system in order to guarantee the maintenance of the social structure, which was dependant on broad consensus around certain issues. Making news was key to the social construction of reality in a complex world (Tuchman, 1983). The impact of the media on public opinion, approached at first as a desirable influence for the functioning of society (Lippmann, 2011), was later identified as an instrument of control and propaganda (Herman & Chomsky, 2013). However, the media have also proven to be essential in questioning discourses of power. Alternative journalism has offered a discordant as well as rigorous proposal of framing reality (Couldry & Curran, 2003; Barranquero Carretero & Sánchez Mocanda, 2018). And, occasionally, media outlets have also been responsible for the generation of dissent in the public sphere, promoting social protests (Milne, 2005). The expression of dissent has been strengthened thanks to the digital media (Loader, 2018), which have given rise to connective actions (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012); this is, online mobilizations that coexist with collective action in offline world, as the anti-racial protests in the US or the new impetus of the feminist movement have recently shown.

But dissent expressed on the Internet often establishes problematic relationships with factual truths, as COVID-19 denialism has demonstrated in the first pandemic of the post-truth era (Parmet & Paul, 2020). Digital sphere has emerged as a perfect ally for the dissemination of hoaxes and misinformation (Magallón, 2020; Salaverría et al., 2020), conspiracies that tune in with messages delivered by celebrities and politicians such as Bolsonaro (Ricard & Medeiros, 2020) and Trump, who first talked about “alternative facts” to deny data provided by journalists, discredited as fake news. 

*CFP* "HISTORIZING INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND THEIR COMMUNICATION - INSTITUTIONS, PRACTICES, CHANGES", THEMATIC SECTION, STUDIES IN COMMUNICATION SCIENCES JOURNAL

We are seeking contributions for a thematic section of Studies in Communication Sciences (SComS) exploring international organizations and their communication from a historical perspective. SComS is a peer-reviewed journal of communication and media research with platinum open-access (no article processing charges).

To illuminate and discuss issues, research perspectives and the thematic spectrum of the history of international organizations and their communication, the guest editors request submissions which, using concrete international organizations as examples, address one or more of the problem areas and thematic focuses outlined below:

• Communication and communication management of international organizations

*CFP* "MEDIA AND THE 'NEW NORMAL'", SPECIAL ISSUE, MEDIA ASIA JOURNAL

If you’re researching the "new normal," perhaps the normal thing to do is to consider Media Asia.

The peer reviewed journal is published by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Established in 1974, it focuses on studies and practices in journalism, advertising, public relations, entertainment and other aspects of media in Asia.

Manuscripts should analyze issues related to the media’s role in the “new normal” in Asia. These are some topics worth exploring:

• “New normal” in the context of media studies (e.g., increasing role of the Internet, changing broadcast landscape, relevance of print) 
• Work-from-home arrangements of journalists and media workers 
• Changes in media production and distribution 
• Evolving media consumption 
• Marketing trends and the rise of e-commerce