*CFP* "BROADCASTING IN (DE)COLONIAL SETTINGS", JOURNAL OF RADIO & AUDIO MEDIA SYMPOSIUM

The emergence of radio introduced profound changes in public communication, changing patterns of information dissemination at local, national and international levels. In the case of the Imperial nations this role was extended overseas with radio becoming the most important medium for uniting the home countries with the expats living in the far reaches of the empires, though not unproblematically.

A growing body of literature on the history of imperial and colonial broadcasting, as well as of sound, have been contributing to the understanding of the role of radio technologies, broadcasting and music in the 20th century in forging audible and sonorous empires. However, the ways in which different imperial countries used radio to create a sense of nation and colonial identities among those living in different geographies remains an open question. On the other hand, in the last decades works dealing with the media during decolonization have called attention to the significant role played by the audio medium in promoting independence from colonial powers and giving visibility to forms of culture that would become part of national identities of the new-born countries. What research has also revealed is that much is still to be understood about the relation between radio and decolonization practices and processes. Thus, this special issue seeks to publish manuscripts dealing with how broadcasting was incorporated and appropriated within different colonial and decolonial settings.

*CFP* "ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH", BOOK CHAPTERS

Environmental issues continue to grow in scope, indicating the timely need to address pressing areas of concern: global warming; climate change; food security and public health safety; overpopulation; water, land, and air pollution; increased carbon footprint; deforestation; and natural disasters. These issues go beyond the realm of science into the areas of politics, public policy, and economics. As environmental

concerns grow, the need for a well-informed public becomes more critical (Jamil, 2020). 

 

Public opinion and perceptions about environmental issues are shaped by many sources including government and non-government organizations, the academe, and the media. Journalists and the news media, in particular, are among the important sources of information about the environment. A major challenge is how to convey complex concepts and impart a sense of urgency in addressing problems in a way that engages the reader. In the past two decades, environmental journalism has evolved to serve this purpose and has represented people's diverse perceptions of the world. 

 

*CFP* "MAPEANDO LA DATAFICACIÓN: IMAGINARIOS, INTERFACES, E INFRAESTRUCTURAS DE LA SOCIEDAD DATIFICADA", VOL. 16, Nº 2, REVISTA INMEDIACIONES DE LA COMUNICACIÓN

Esta convocatoria de InMediaciones de la Comunicación se fija en los imaginarios, las interfaces y las infraestructuras que emergen junto al entramado del proceso de dataficación o de mediatización de los datos.

En los últimos años, los estudios de comunicación han entrado con mayor profundidad en el escenario del uso de métodos digitales que permiten el análisis de grandes cantidades de datos generados por las practicas comunicativas. Esta entrada no ha sido solo metodológica, sino que también abarca áreas investigativas o profesionales específicas: la comunicación política, el periodismo de datos, la visualización de datos, entre otras. Pero la temática tiene un alcance todavía mayor: la dataficación es un problema interdisciplinar que admite y requiere la participación complementaria de varios campos del saber.

Este volumen de InMediaciones de la Comunicación quiere abrir un espacio de reflexión sobre los fenómenos y las problemáticas que atraviesan la datificación con el propósito de pensar críticamente lo que algunos investigadores han definido como una nueva forma de mediatización que incluye la bidireccionalidad de la recogida y el análisis de datos. En este contexto, las plataformas de redes sociales, los sistemas de recomendación, pero también los aportes teóricos sobre las nuevas epistemologías del Big Data, se encuentran con los debates actuales sobre la sostenibilidad ecológica de las nuevas infraestructuras.

*CFP* "ON THE MARGINS OF THE MARGINS: RACISM AND COLONIALISM IN CANADIAN COMMUNICATION STUDIES", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

As Black Lives Matter and Indigenous organizing capture public attention about white privilege and the systemic nature of racism and colonialism, major Canadian institutions have finally started acknowledging that they, too, are structured by racism. These institutions have included universities across Canada, many of whom have previously deflected accusations that they ignore racism and colonialism and have failed to take meaningful steps to make the needed systemic changes.

The Canadian Journal of Communication seeks papers for a special issue, tentatively scheduled for release in 2021, on the specific forms that racism and colonialism take in Canadian Communication Studies.

Despite the national imaginary that presents Canada as a country that embraces diversity and equity under the umbrella of multiculturalism, the reality is that this country, as a settler colonial society, is defined and structured by an eradicating, silencing whiteness. Canadian Communication Studies, despite its ostensible attention to the power dynamics of ‘the centre and the margins’, propounded by foundational thinkers like Harold Innis, and its Marxist legacy that focuses on workers’ rights and critiques capitalism, is no exception to the rule of dominant whiteness.

*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* “CINEMA AND MEDIA CULTURES IN THE MIDDLE EAST”, CHAPTER BOOK

Book proposals are sought for publication in a new book series, Cinema and Media Cultures in the Middle East, the purpose of which is to demarcate and critically examine the shifting terrain of film- and media-making in the Middle East, and of practices of film and media studies regarding it, testing them both against their larger, social enabling conditions at the national, regional, and transnational levels.

Titles in the series will engage recent developments in the field of Middle East film and media studies and will help point the field in an intellectually meaningful, pedagogically effective direction in relation to both current and, in some cases, significant, previously ignored, older work.

The proposed series is conceived at a moment during which Middle Eastern film and film criticism have begun to develop in new directions. Recent years have witnessed a modest increase in scholarly engagement with topics and modes of inquiry often previously considered outside academic discourse.  

*CFP* “HYBRID WARS IN THE AGE OF PLATFORM IMPERIALISM”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Hybrid Wars in the Age of Platform Imperialism

25-26 de Septiembre de 2020

National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Moscow, Russia

Keynote speakers

Dr. Oliver Joseph Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University, Ohio (USA)

Dr. Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies (UK)

Dr. David Miller, University of Bristol (UK)

This conference provides a forum for researchers who seek to analyze, challenge, and rethink the concepts of “platform imperialism” in the age of hybrid warfare.

Basically, we are interested in the exchange of opinions on the following issues:

• The distribution of global power in terms of the domination over the global platform market by the West (predominantly, the US: e.g., Google, Facebook, Youtube) and control over regional platform markets by China (Baidu, QQ, etc.), Russia (VK, Yandex, etc.), Korea (Cyworld), and so on.

*CFP* “MEDIA, DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY: HISTORICAL AND CURRENT CONNECTIONS”, CHAPTER BOOK

Connections between the emergence of national democracies, economic development, and the introduction of mass media have been studied for many decades, but there are still missing links in this complex web. In 1949, Daniel Lerner suggested the existence of a relationship between new media and the modern mentality in developing nations. Although much criticized, his insights influenced optimistic views of the impact of television and the internet around the globe. Here we ask a different question: what is the impact of State censorship and material restrictions on the press, in countries that have been witnessing continuous economic development?

Do restrictions on the functioning of the media in the formative period of a nation have long-term impacts on economic development? Looking from a different angle, can a limited labor market, with few formal vacancies in competitive firms, make literacy less rewarding, discouraging private investment in education? How do low literacy rates influence political culture and the nature of the public sphere in a modern society? In this volume, we would like to examine the multiple relationships between economic development, adoption of new media, literacy and education, and democratic culture.

*CFP* “INDIGENOUS MOBILITIES: TRAVELERS THROUGH THE HEART(S) OF EMPIRE”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Indigenous Mobilities: Travelers Through the Heart(s) of Empire

17-19 de Junio de 2020

Reid Hall, Paris

Keynote Speakers

David A. Chang (University of Minnesota)
Nika Collison (Haida Gwaii Museum)
Michael H. Crowe (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians)

In 2006, Anishinaabe artist Robert Houle (Sandy Bay First Nation) conceived Paris/Ojibwa during his residency at La Cité des Arts in Paris. Partly a commemoration of the 1845 visit of Maungwudaus and his troupe of performers, and partly a “reply” to the contemporary responses of French writers and artists the work reflects on the history and politics of encounter, and on disappearance. The piece recalls Indigenous ties to the land, while also alluding to the untimely deaths of members of Maungwudaus’s troupe and family while on tour. The resulting installation invited renewed encounter between Parisian publics and that Anishinaabe history, through a contemporary Anishinaabe presence in the city.

*CFP* “IMPERIAL VIEWS: COLONIAL VISUALITIES AND PROCESSES OF VISUAL DECOLONIZATION”, NEW ISSUE, VISTA: VISUAL CULTURE JOURNAL

In recent years, there has been an increased access and interest in the archives produced by the European colonizing countries and those provided from the archives of the countries that have become independent. This interest is partly due to the end of the legal barriers that prevented access to or dissemination to these archives. Moreover, after several decades of decolonization processes, which caused traumas and misunderstandings between the actors of both factions, a new generation of academics and non-academics aims to better understand these stories. On the other hand, the work of digitizing some of these assets has made it possible to reveal the very existence of the archives, facilitating their visibility and contributing to their reception outside the restricted group of political and social historians. Thus, in literature, journalism, cinema, anthropology, the history of science, photography and the arts, between theorists, as well as between artists and other protagonists of the world of culture, a critical work is being produced concerning these objects of the contemporary history of the twentieth century, whose effects are still felt.

The number 5 of the journal VISTA uses the notion of "sight", in its diversity of meanings, to propose a debate on the colonial and postcolonial regimes of visuality and their contemporary relevance.

*CFP* “FRAMING THE PENAL COLONY”, NATIONAL JUSTICE MUSEUM, UK

Framing the penal colony

22-23 November 2019

National Justice Museum, UK

Whether presented as a tabula rasa onto which all the hopes, desires, pathologies and detritus of Empire might be projected, as a brilliant story of nation-state building via a hearty mix of backbreaking labour and genocide, or as an abandoned scarred landscape of failed utopian dreams, the penal colony is a space as much imagined as real. 

This conference will explore historical and contemporary representations of the penal colony as philosophical concept, political project and geographical imaginary. While direct challenges to existing historiographies are anticipated, the intention is to consider the role of visual culture, maps, photography, cinema, graphic novels/comics, museums in 'framing' the penal colony alongside literature, philosophy, politics. If the penal colony is generally considered to belong to the past, its legacy remains in the form of the prison islands and convict labour camps still operative across the globe. What can historical and contemporary representations of the penal colony tell us about its continuing legacy and what opportunities do such representations offer for thinking critically and creatively about our own ‘carceral’ present?

*CFP* "PEOPLES AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD" INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, PALERMO UNIVERSITY

Peoples and Cultures of the World

International Conference

Palermo University, January 24-25, 2019

Building 19, Viale delle Scienze

Rooms: Aula Seminari A and B

In this interdisciplinary conference we aim to study different peoples and cultures of the world by taking into account the various ways peoples and cultures define themselves and others, thus shaping their identities. The organising committee (including anthropologists, geographers, semioticians and urban planners) is open to all disciplines and invites contributions from these and other fields of study. We aim to explore the complex relationships being established between cultural dynamics and identities in their spatial and/or chronological dimensions. In our modern world, how can we still talk of homogeneous, spatially defined cultures? In what terms, nowadays, can we conceive a people and a culture stressing their various aspects, as they are stressed in the culture itself? Or, on the contrary, should we resort to other concepts and theories to define peoples by differences and by comparison? In its turn, how does globalization contribute to the delineating, crystallizing or altering of identities? How can we look more effectively at cultural differences through the lens of social sciences? And, most of all, what is the role played by natives and ethnic minorities in our modern world? 

*CFP* INDIANA JONES AND THE EDITED COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS, MCFARLAND

With his signature bullwhip and fedora, the familiar sounds of his orchestral anthem, and his eventful explorations into the arcana of world religions, Indiana Jones – archeologist, adventurer, and ophidiophobe – has become one of the most recognizable heroes of the silver screen.  Since his debut in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones has appeared in three sequels, and Steven Spielberg has recently announced that he will soon begin production on a fifth Indiana Jones film.  Along the way, the character has spawned a raft of children’s novels, cartoon and live-action television series, and video and role-playing games.  

Despite the longevity and popularity of the Indiana Jones franchise, however, it has rarely been the focus of academic criticism, a fact which is surprising considering the critical attention enjoyed by other early George Lucas and Steven Spielberg films.  As stories about archeology, the Indiana Jones tales reflect an array of ethical questions and representational issues regarding the nature of the past.  As stories about an American man globe-trotting in the middle of the twentieth century, Indiana Jones’s adventures intersect with a wide range of cultural narratives about World War II, the late colonial era, and late-century nostalgia for perceived mid-century ideals.  As stories about the sacred, Indiana Jones’s quests engage questions about the nature of the sublime, the representation of the otherworldly, and the role of narrative in constructing reality.