*CFP* "INCLUSIVE MEDIA EDUCATION FOR DIVERSE SOCIETIES", HYBRID WORKSHOP

 Inclusive Media Education for Diverse Societies

University of Groningen (Netherlands)

11 & 12 November 2021

 

 

This hybrid workshop aims to bring together papers that develop a critical perspective and focus on issues related to media literacy education, differences and diversity. We aim to include conceptual papers as well as empirical studies from different contexts that provide a critical reflection of existing media education practices.

The papers can focus on the following topics among others:

• Media literacy education for intercultural dialogue;

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

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

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

*CFP* "SECONDHAND CULTURES AND UNSETTLED TIMES", INTERDISCIPLINARY VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM

Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times

Interdisciplinary Virtual Symposium

School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University

15-16 June 2021

 

Secondhand cultures and practices, from reselling sites to charity shops and thrift stores to waste picking, have expanded and transformed over recent decades, with profound social, political, and environmental implications. Despite vibrant and growing research into secondhand worlds, opportunities to share and discuss this research across interdisciplinary boundaries have been rare. Further, secondhand cultures have been unsettled by the global pandemic in ways that are not yet well understood.

*CFP* "BEING MARGINAL-PERFORMING RACED AND GENDERED LABOUR", A SYMPOSIUM BY IAMCR'S GENDER AND COMMUNICATION SECTION

"Being Marginal- Performing Raced and Gendered Labour"

A Symposium by IAMCR's Gender and Communication Section

Saturday 3 July, 2021 (online)

 

With a focus on intersectionality, simultaneity, and reflexivity about the self in context, confrontation of issues of power even within marginal groups, the symposium "Being Marginal- Performing Raced and Gendered Labour", to be held online on Saturday 3 July, 2021, sponsored by the Gender and Communication Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), aims to engage with the layers of being a marginal woman, asking the question of what intersectionality looks like in academia with special reference to the field of Communication. We want to turn the feminist lenses we work with back on ourselves, our practices, our contexts, our lives.

*CFP* "VOICES AT THE MARGINS. CULTURAL MEMORY THEORY AND METHODOLOGY SUMMER SCHOOL", CENTRE FOR MEMORY, NARRATIVE AND HISTORIES SUMMER SCHOOL FOR PHD RESEARCHERS

Voices at the Margins. Cultural Memory Theory and Methodology Summer School

20th to 24th September 2021

Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories. University of Brighton

A burgeoning, cross-disciplinary “memory boom” has highlighted the significance of memories of the past for the present and future. In this context, this interdisciplinary, workshop-based summer school explores the timely, yet under-addressed themes of memories and histories ‘at the margins’ and specifically focuses on the theoretical and methodological challenges associated with research that engages with such ‘marginal’ voices. We invite PhD researchers from all disciplines working with such memories, voices and histories ‘at the margins’ to apply for the “Voices at the Margins?” summer school, which is taking place from 20 to 24 September 2021 at the University of Brighton.

‘At the margins’ is a phrase we have adopted here to refer to the multifarious forms of experiences and spaces that have traditionally remained at the periphery of public and scholarly attention. Such ‘margins’ can be the result of power dynamics that under-recognise, marginalise, exclude, silence and/or oppress specific groups or members of society.

*CFP* "TOWARD THE ANTIRACIST CONFERENCE: RECKONING WITH THE PAST, REMAINING THE PRESENT", THOMAS R. WATSON CONFERENCE IN RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION

Toward the Antiracist Conference: Reckoning With the Past, Reimagining the Present

April 21st-23rd, 2021

Online

 

The thirteenth biennial Thomas R. Watson Conference in Rhetoric and Composition, which will be held virtually from April 21-23, 2021, will focus on policies and practices for planning and convening antiracist conferences. The exigence for our theme is global and local. 

 

This year’s uprisings for Black liberation have only reaffirmed the need for institutions of higher education to confront their roles in perpetuating a white supremacist system and, with the BIPOC students, faculty, and staff who have endured this violence and marginalization, to create just and equitable structures in its place. Moreover, we seek to extend the repair work the Watson Conference has undertaken in addressing its own history of enabling anti-Black racism by forging a way forward. (See Watson and Anti-Black Racism for a complete discussion).

*CFP* "EXCLUSIONS IN THE HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION STUDIES", INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION REMOTE PRECONFERENCE

Exclusions in the History and Historiography of Communication Studies

International Communication Association Remote Preconference

May 27, 2021

Online

The broader field of communication studies is in a moment when we are—or should be—intensively interrogating patterns of exclusion and hegemony that have continued to constitute it: around global region (de-Westernizing, theory from the South, persistent patterns of American influence/hegemony), race (#communicationsowhite), gender (#metoo, #gendercom, Matilda effects,), and indigeneity/colonization (postcolonial and decolonial initiatives). To frame these exclusions as constitutive is to head off any easy solutions in terms of greater inclusivity, though that needs to be part of the mix; rather, it is to invite us to consider all of the ways in which these and other exclusions have functioned to center certain problems, theories, methods, languages, nations, social identities, and publication venues; and to exclude or marginalize others that are cast as differentially less valuable, lower status, Other, and more. To frame them as constitutive is also to draw attention to how those exclusions are performatively enacted on an ongoing basis through the full range of practices, social and epistemological, through which the field (re)produces itself.

*CFP* "A MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY OF INDIA", CHAPTER BOOK

The intertwining of Communication and Media Studies, and the discipline of Anthropology is not new, in the Indian context. Arjun Appadurai’s (1990) considered takes on global communication flows and mediascapes, Purnima Mankekar’s (1999) landmark work on screen cultures, and the steady engagement of anthropologists like Binod C. Agrawal (1985) in Communication and Media Studies, are some instances of efforts at bringing the two subject areas to influence each other. 

 

The growing number of ethnographies in Communication and Media Studies showcase the influence of Anthropology’s methodological and epistemological offerings to study various media-related phenomena. Research on media and cultures is underway in various departments of Cultural Studies and Film Studies, in the country and outside. Similarly, the popularity of digital ethnography, anthropology of popular culture and development, are areas that have caught Anthropology's fancy. Visual Anthropology has emerged as a distinct field within Anthropology, while departments of Sociology carry out ethnographic work on aspects of Communication and Media Studies. 

*CFP* "MAPPING CITIES IN THE MENA REGION: VISUALISING THE UNTOLD NARRATIVES OF HERITAGE", BOOK CHAPTERS

Stories behind the current social and physical features of many cities in the MENA region remain untold. Whether through the application of urban theories, historic facts, interviews, or other methods, the colours or pinpointed locations on a city map tell a new or a different narrative of these cities.

Visualisations and maps are powerful tools to tell such stories. Whether narratives of the physical features that divide a city, tales from a city that are only known to its locals, stories of planning schemes that have changed the city or a colonial past that camouflage itself. Some maps use alternative methods in order to tell an alternative narrative or illustrate a different perspective. The contributions should focus on mapping phenomena that considers heritage on a city‐scale (not on singular structures, parks, nor on an entire region).


The Book Content: Chapters and Maps

*CFP* "PODCASTING'S LISTENING PUBLICS", SPECIAL ISSUE, PARTICIPATIONS: JOURNAL OF AUDIENCE AND RECEPTION STUDIES

Listening is essential to the engagement with most of our media, albeit that the act of listening which is embedded in the word ‘audience’ is rarely acknowledged. It is a no less curious absence in theories of the public sphere, where the objective of political agency is often characterized as being to find a voice – which surely implies finding a public that will listen, and that has a will to listen
(Lacey viii).

As podcasting moves through its adolescence, a period of flux in which reformations of the technological and industrial organisation are having fundamental effects on the next phase of its evolution, the ways in which it encourages listening and reception practices are also undergoing fundamental development. The nature of this development depends on the communities, listening publics, and audiences the podcasts serve and/or participate in.

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

Annual Conference of the Graduate School of North American Studies

Revisiting the Margins: Contemporary Perspectives in North American Studies

10-12 de Junio de 2020

Freie Universität, Berlin

Keynote speakers

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

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

*CFP* "CROSS-CULTURAL FEMINIST TECHNOLOGIES", SPECIAL COLLECTION, GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES JOURNAL

Feminist scholarship is an increasingly diverse, interdisciplinary field that uncovers a wide range of voices, perspectives and points of emphasis. Feminist theory and movements are crucial in disentangling asymmetries such as power and subordination, oppression and resistance, dominance and marginalisation through a critical lens, and at bettering existing social environments and the pursuit of fairness, justice and freedom. Particularly, the merit of feminist theory lies within the shared scepticism of dualistic thinking that divides the world into clear-cut, antagonistic categories and reinforces hierarchical relationships between these categories (Ferguson, 2017).

In the digital age, feminist scholars have shifted their attention to the impact of technology on gender inequalities, asymmetric power relations and social circumstances. For instance, the internet used to be understood as a feminist media that may enable women’s liberation and   lay the groundwork for a new type of social relations (Wajcman, 2010). However, the restrictive and hierarchical nature of the digital environment, while enabling many opportunities for marginalised categories, also engenders emergent issues such as cyber racism (Daniels, 2009), online misogyny (Jane, 2014; Dragiewicz, 2018), virtual   sexual violence or revenge porn (Arora, 2019; Henry & Powell, 2015).