*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* "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* "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* "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* "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* "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* "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* "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* "METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS AND CHALLENGES OF RESEARCH ON DIGITALLY CONNECTED HOMES", SPECIAL ISSUE, DIGITAL CREATIVITY JOURNAL

The past few years have seen a rapid increase in the number and variety of technologies embedded in and passing through home environments. Researchers increasingly recognize the distinct nature of the home as a site of research. The past four decades have seen a significant shift in the technology environment from the "media home" (Spigel, 2001) to the "smart home" (Woods, 2021). We have seen significant additions to the abundant digital ecology of the home, increasing the number of digital access-points and available services, and intensifying the data-circulation in connected homes. The home is a site of mundane, private, usually hidden but highly significant everyday practices (Pink et al. 2017). Yet it is also increasingly becoming a part of national healthcare infrastructures through the deployment of welfare technologies, and energy policy through smart meters. During the "global lockdown" caused by the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, technologies took a prominent role as the home transformed itself into a site in which activities such as learning, parenting, work, entertainment, and remote medical care intermingled.

The increasing complexity of the digital infrastructures and the experiences, spaces, visions of the home in a current era of connected homes and connected living poses particular challenges for conducting research in such an environment. This also calls for methodological innovations that shape how we see the home as a research site and how we engage with it.

*CFP* "CRITICAL ICT INFRASTRUCTURES AND PLATFORMS", 14TH CMI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

 Critical ICT infrastructures and platforms

14th CMI International Conference

Hybrid (online/In-person): 25-26 November 2021

 

ICT infrastructures and platforms are increasingly pervasive and critical for societies, systems and organizations and for individuals. It is, therefore, of great importance that efficient and resilient infrastructures are developed and deployed and that disruptions of services caused by either cyber-attacks or other interruptions of services are mitigated. Also, as digital platforms constitute crucial communication infrastructures for societies, it is important that such platforms contribute to democratic processes and economic and social fairness.

The 14th CMI conference will be concerned with these topics from different complementary angles: The development and deployment of fast and efficient communication infrastructures including cloud and edge technologies; resilience of ICT systems in order to increase cyber security and mitigate cyber-attacks; institution of social practices and governance approaches that will promote democratic discussions and processes, contribute to economic and social development, equity and fairness, and protect privacy.

*CFP* "MEDIOS DE COMUNICACIÓN PÚBLICOS, CIUDADANÍA E INFLUENCIA DIGITAL EN LA ERA DE LA DESINFORMACIÓN", COMLOC 2021 XVI CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE COMUNICACIÓN LOCAL

“Medios de comunicación públicos, ciudadanía e influencia digital en la era de la desinformación”

ComLoc 2021. XVI Congreso Internacional de Comunicación Local

Universitat Jaume I

4 y 5 de noviembre de 2021

 

En los últimos años, se constata la pérdida de relevancia de los medios de comunicación públicos, en un escenario muy complejo en el que han coincidido diversos factores. Por un lado, una fuerte crisis económica que ha reducido notablemente los presupuestos de las corporaciones públicas. En segundo lugar, la irrupción de las plataformas digitales, que ha alterado los hábitos y formas de consumo de la ciudadanía. Asimismo, una fuerte pérdida de credibilidad de los medios públicos –y también privados–, por la falta de independencia del poder político y económico que muchos ciudadanos perciben. Y, finalmente, la expansión de las redes sociales ha cambiado las prácticas periodísticas, así como los modos de producción de contenidos de entretenimiento y de ficción audiovisual. En el caso de la Comunidad Valenciana, estas circunstancias han contribuido a debilitar, de manera bastante notable, el sistema comunicativo y audiovisual valenciano, sumido en una profunda crisis desde hace más de una década.

*CFP* "EL PARADIGMA DEL DIGITAL LITERACY: RETOS Y EXPERIENCIAS", NÚMERO 21, COMMUNICATION PAPERS: SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH JOURNAL

La de 2020 no ha sido la primera pandemia que ha atravesado la Humanidad, como tampoco será la última, al menos, eso aseguran las voces expertas. Lo que sí ha sido una novedad es que esta tragedia sanitaria global coincide con el mayor periodo de interconectividad que hemos experimentado como especie.

A principios de mayo de ese año, la Organización Mundial de la Salud publicó una hoja informativa titulada Entender la Infodemia y la Desinformación en la lucha contra la Covid-19, en la que se advierte sobre las consecuencias tanto de la infodemia (flujo excesivo de información, verídica o no) como de la desinformación deliberada.

Porque la extraordinaria difusión de las tecnologías de la información está suponiendo la quiebra de muchos paradigmas educativos tradicionales. En este contexto global, los medios digitales -Internet- han disipado las fronteras entre la comunicación de masas y la comunicación interpersonal y, las diferencias entre los productores y los consumidores de productos culturales y de entretenimiento, son cada vez más difusas. Muchas de estas transformaciones implican inexorablemente a la infancia, adolescencia y juventud, usuarios intensivos de las tecnologías, que provenientes de las pantallas audiovisuales, han migrado a las interficies digitales.

*CFP* "MEDIATING MOTHER-ACTIVISM", BOOK CHAPTER

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in exploring motherhood and mothering as political and emotional resources for digital activism. Although the intertwinement of mothering and politics predates the digital context, feminist debates around the politicization of mothering, from protests against state killings and disappearances, via the role of the mother in nation-building, to advocacy for right wing populisms, need addressing all the more urgently as we endeavour to understand the ways in which mothering is not only mediatised, but agentively deployed across social media platforms. The political role and significance of the mother, the uneasy relation between motherhood as gendered identity and mothering as daily practice, continue to be contentious issues for feminists (Rich 1976, DiQuinzio 1999, Gumbs, Martens and Williams 2016, Naber 2021). Mother-activists have historically constructed public issues from their personal experiences of suffering and loss within family structures (Reiger 2000), utilizing the symbolic power of motherhood in order to motivate others to join their causes (Logsdon Conradsen 2011). Notwithstanding, campaigns such those of the Argentinian Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been cast as ‘trapped by a bad script’ (Taylor 1997), that is as reproducing the same narratives of familialism and heteropatriarchal bloodline that underpin the narrative of the state. Conversely, many feminist scholars have argued that the political mobilisation of the trope of the mother has the potential to challenge the ‘official’ frameworks of national, ethnic or other group loyalty and to undermine or to radically reframe these very narratives (Kim 2020, Athanasiou 2017, Carreon and Moghadam 2015). For example, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have raised the slogan ‘One child, all the children’ (Sosa 2014), taking the campaign beyond limits of blood kinship.

*CFP* "DISINFORMATION-FOR-HIRE AND CLICK FARMING AROUND THE WORLD: IDENTITIES, INCENTIVES, INFRAESTRUCTURES", SPECIAL ISSUE, SOCIAL MEDIA + SOCIETY JOURNAL

From state-sponsored propagandists using paid troll armies, to commercially motivated data analytics firms selling their toolkits to politicians, and platform workers producing memes for overseas clients, the global industry of disinformation production has only professionalized and diversified. This special issue for Social Media + Society aims to deepen understanding about the social identities, work arrangements, and political and commercial motivations of an emerging class of digital disinformation workers. We are interested in critical and interdisciplinary research that examines the political economy, specifically the digital and creative industries that propel and produce disinformation. The special issue’s focus on business models and disinformation worker identities in global context aims to expand on disinformation studies’ analysis of “fake news” and hate speech as content that require better policing or fact-checking. It also aims to expand platform studies’ research agenda and consider the range of digital professionals and entrepreneurs who buy and sell engagement on social media–with pernicious political consequences especially in contexts where dissenting voices are suppressed.

Thus, we solicit submissions that discuss the diverse worker hierarchies and conditions, outsourced gig arrangements, money politics, and/or regulatory loopholes in the promotional industries that enable the strategic production of disinformation. We are interested in interdisciplinary and ethnographic research that engages with the deep stories of workers in “dark PR” firms (Silverman, Lytyvenko & Kung 2020; Verwey & Muir 2019), data analytics firms (Briant 2021), Latin American and Indonesian Instagram click farms (Lindquist 2021), and “propaganda secretary” offices (Hassan & Hitchen 2019). We are also interested in normative discussions about complicity and collusion in digital industries as well as scholarly self-reflection about the challenges of doing engaged research about disinformation (Ong 2020).

*CFP* "BLACK AND QUEER, MUSIC ON SCREEN", SPECIAL ISSUE, LIQUID BLACKNESS: JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND BLACK STUDIES

This special issue of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies proposes to work on Black Queer expression in audiovisual musics cutting across histories of the avant-garde, popular audiovisuality, and frameworks both transnational and critically transhistorical. The goal of the issue is to set up the framework for a survey of Black and Queer musicality in audiovisual media so as to suggest “non-contemporaneous” dialogues between and across historical registers and media platforms, so that the critical expressive power of non-conforming persons of color become a given rather than an alibi, an absence, or a projection.

From early sound cinema to the present, queer or gender non-conforming black artists have voiced a complex series of claims, propositions, demands, and desires, from the introduction of sound to the cinematic screen to the introduction of social media video in networked digital cultures. Black feminist and queer scholarship has often engaged with the meanings and powers expressed in these works, or in musical artists indebted to them or referencing them, from Angela Davis’ reading of transformations of historical memory in Smith’s St. Louis Blues (Blues Legacies and Black Feminisms), to Lindon Barrett’s study of Billie Holiday (Blackness and Value), to Saidiya Hartman’s discussion of errancy in relation to woman-identified women singers in the early years of recording (Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments), and Daphne Brooks’ recent reading of black women’s use of arrangement, sonic curation, and blackness as technology (Liner Notes for the Revolution) in articulating a politics of being and becoming. 

*CFP* "IMAG(IN)ING THE NATION: LITERATURE, THE ARTS AND PROCESSES OF NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION", RELATIONAL FORMS VI CONFERENCE

Relational Forms VI

Imag(in)ing the Nation: Literature, the Arts and Processes of National Construction

2 - 4 December 2021

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, Portugal

 

According to scholars, criteria for nationhood have typically involved a commonality of ethnicity, language or religion, historically prolonged occupation of a stretch of land, frequently linked to the existence of a state apparatus, collective experience, and shared memories. Literature and the other arts have often been mobilized to support (if not altogether participate in the construction of) this sense of belonging and identity, which they can also challenge and complicate. Nationalism may simply be described as the most extreme form of such engagements and allegiances. In his 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism”, George Orwell denounces the characteristic aggressiveness and single-mindedness of the nationalist, as well as the peculiar indifference to reality such attitudes entail. Orwell’s essay betrays a sense of urgency derived both from the hazards of the Second World War and from the perceived political and ideological threats of the approaching Cold War – a term he would himself coin.