*CFP* "DIALOGUE-SHARED EXPERIENCES ACROSS SPACE AND TIME: CROSS-LINGUISTIC AND CROSS-CULTURAL PRACTICES", 6TH ESTIDIA CONFERENCE

6th ESTIDIA Conference

Dialogue-shared Experiences across Space and Time: Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Practices

University of Alicante, Spain

15-17 June, 2022

 

From the Socratic dialogues to post-modern cyberchats, it is only in and through communicative interaction that we can understand the world, people, and how things are working around us (Bohm, 2004/1996, Rockwell 2003). By means of dialogue people are able to argue for their viewpoints, to come to terms with each other, to jointly solve problems, and to resolve conflicts (Pickering and Garrod 2021). Dialogue brings together women and men, young and old, people from the east and the west, from the north and the south. Through the creative synergy of shared thoughts, ideas, and experiences, we can travel anywhere in space and time. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, POLITICAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION MEDIA AND POLITICS GROUP ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group Annual Conference

Centre for Research on Communities and Cultures

Canterbury Christ Church University

15-16 December 2021

This conference will facilitate a space for thinking critically about the concept of communities and how it is used in political discourse and political communication in the digital and (post)pandemic context. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Political discourses about and by communities

*CFP* "AND YET IT MOVES! ON CINEMA, MEDIA, AND MOBILITY", XXVIII INTERNATIONAL FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES CONFERENCE

And Yet It Moves! On Cinema, Media, and Mobility

XXVIII International Film and Media Studies Conference

November 2nd–5th 2021

On-line/Udine – Gorizia (IT)

 

The covid pandemic has dramatically revealed the high level of mobility in our contemporary society by, paradoxically, reducing human movement to almost zero, even if images, data, news, financial flows, material goods, and the virus itself have continued to circulate at full speed around the globe. The pandemic has provoked new configurations of the media system, pushing media adaptability and pervasiveness into unexpected scenarios, and accelerating technological and socio-cultural processes already underway (Keidl, Melamed, Hediger and Somaini 2021). As we seem to slowly regain our mobility, it seems fitting to reflect at large on the role historically played by cinema and media in shaping movement and space. 

*CFP* "POLITICS, PERILS AND PRIVILEGES: IMMOBILITIES IN THE TIME OF GLOBAL PANDEMICS", SPECIAL ISSUE, TRANSITIONS JOURNAL

When the COVID-19 global pandemic struck in early 2020, governments around the world reacted by closing international and national state borders, banning or restricting international and interstate travel, and resorting to enforced lockdowns and curfews. The economic and social impacts of these sudden restrictions in movements have been devastating with the lived experiences of everyone impacted. The employed became unemployed, industries whose entire business models are dependent on human interactions such as tourism, hospitality and entertainment collapsed, supply chains were disrupted, remote working and studying became the norm, families were separated from each other and professional and education opportunities were lost.

People around the world frustrated by the impact the pandemic has had on them, and by the systemic and new inequalities that emerged, voiced their anger through street protests and in the online space with the pandemic fuelling both extreme right wing and left wing fervour. The rapid move to the online space to conduct almost every kind of human activity meant a complete reliance on the digital resulting in new kinds of inequalities and challenges. The rise of the digital in the time of forced immobilities has also created completely new opportunities born out of necessity. While mobility was once the life blood for human and individual necessity, progress and advancement, immobility has shown itself to create perils and privileges never really realised. For example, workers not required to be ‘on site’ are able to set up home offices to work from home.

*CFP* "SOUNDS OF MIGRATION", 2021 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

"Sounds of Migration" 2021 Annual Conference

Pennsylvania State University (hybrid or virtual conference format – TBD)

November 4-6, 2021

 

The growing flow and circulation of migrants and refugees across the world introduces unfamiliar voices and sounds into new environments. This conference will examine the diverse expressions and echoes of what we call the sounds of migration. Drawing from Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) definition of technoscapes, we conceptualize “the sounds of migration” as encapsulating the fluid nature of sounds, bodies, and cultural elements coming together to construct imagined worlds, as seen in a globalized space. We invite a broad range of submissions that explore various aspects of the oral and aural dynamics related to migrations, displacements, refugees, and diasporas. How do minority voices emerge? What impact do experiences of migration have on everyday life, both from those relocating and the receiving society? How is literature, language, music, and/or other forms of culture and artistic expression created? How do languages in contact influence each other and lead to changes in pronunciation, word formation or sentence structure?

*CFP* "THE FRACTURED STATES OF AMERICA", 6 ISSUE, JAM IT!: JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES

The quest to define the true essence of US identity dates back to colonial times, long before the nation itself was formally established. Yet, scholars traditionally situate the first explicit investigation into what constitutes an American citizen in J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The third of the titular letters, aptly named “What is an American,” offers a list of features that de Crèvecœur considered quintessential to Americanness: industry, freedom, individualism, equality, assimilation. All these elements converged in what later became known as American exceptionalism, a doctrine that undergirded (and, to an extent, still undergirds) most, if not all, of US foreign policy.

De Crevecoeur’s essay also introduced the concept of the ‘melting pot’ to describe the yearned-for-homogeneity of a nation aspiring to merge the different cultures informing it, rather than to preserve their differences. Ever since, the United States has strived to present a solid front against the rest of the world, returning time and time again to the defining features of its citizens, and to what sets them apart from their European counterparts. Yet, over the past few decades, it has become evident that internal divisions and differences are increasing, rather than decreasing. While the national narrative of the United States insists on advocating the exceptionality of its people, it is also continuously confronted by the hard truth of their lived experiences (Sieber 2005; Hodgson 2009; Grandin 2019; Spragg 2019).

*CFP* "MEDIATING KINSHIP, REPRESENTATION AND DIFFERENCE", PALGRAVE BOOK SERIES

This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin relationships with emerging and new technologies which allow for the creation, maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term “family” as a working truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection of technologies including those which allow for family creation, migration, communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and corporeal settings.

Possible book topics include:

• the use of technology and migration and family composition and disjunction; the ways that technologies may both push and pull kin together/apart 
• the range of technology use across literal and figurative space including intersections of geography, race, age, poverty, gender and beyond 

*CFP* "EUROPEANISATION THROUGH THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES INITIATIVE: IDENTITY AND HIGHER EDUCATION PERSPECTIVES", EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES INITIATIVE (EUI) CONFERENCE

 "Europeanisation through the European Universities Initiative: Identity and Higher Education Perspectives"

European Universities Initiative (EUI) Conference

12th November 2021

Approaching the EUI as an object of scientific study: conceptual and methodological frameworks - The EUI in the light of Europeanisation theories: integration /disintegration - The EUI in the context of EU public diplomacy and decision-making

Europeanizing identities through the EUI

• The EUI from a legal perspective

*CFP* "MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGIES IN EUROPE", EASA MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY NETWORK ONLINE WORKSHOP

“Media Anthropologies in Europe”

European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) 

Media Anthropology Network Online Workshop

14 & 15 October 2021

 

Building on previous EASA Media Anthropology Network activities – including the latest panels at the EASA conferences, the bi-annual workshops, and e-seminar series, we are organising an online workshop that aims at reflecting on different traditions and practices of ‘media anthropology’ in different European countries. What are the different traditions of media anthropology in Europe? How can we integrate the diversity of European media anthropology in the sub-discipline’s discourse and beyond? How do media anthropologies in Europe share their analysis and methodologies with sister disciplines and how do they collaborate? How do digital technologies contribute to a common terrain of inquiry and the sharing of media approaches/methodologies?

*CFP* "NEW DIRECTIONS IN SHAKESPEARE'S MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING", EDITED COLLECTION

Over the past three decades, Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing has risen from beloved comedy to cultural and scholarly sensation. This rise results in part from the collective discovery that the skirmish of wit between Benedick and Beatrice and the intrigue surrounding Hero and Claudio create their own issues distinct from those in the cross-dressing The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It; the magical A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the virtuosic Love’s Labour’s Lost; and, finally, the more commedia dell’arte-like The Taming of the Shrew. But Much Ado owes the greater part of its rise to the popularity and success of Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film adaptation and to the play’s relevance to our current moment in gender relations. Vis-à-vis its new importance, Much Ado about Nothing deserves fresh attention, both as a literary and historical artefact and as a recent cultural phenomenon. 

This proposed collection invites essays that address the play and its “moment,” broadly interpreted to include culture both then and now. These essays may cover recent stage and film versions that demonstrate the play’s more problematic aspects, from Branagh’s version with its opening tableau of nude male bodies to Josh Whedon’s contemporary black-and-white version and its intersections with the pressing movements of our time. How and why do these and other directorial alterations redirect our focus and attention, and what purpose do they serve? 

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF JOAQUÍN JORDÁ", EDITED COLLECTION

With a career that lasted almost fifty years, Joaquín Jordá (1935-2006) is one of the main figures in unconventional, heterodox and combative Spanish cinema. A leader of the Barcelona School of Film, an innovative movement within Spanish cinema in the sixties, Jordá exiled himself to Italy, where he practiced militant cinema and political activism. After returning to Spain, he worked as a translator and prestigious screenwriter, before reactivating his career as a filmmaker in the nineties. From the end of that decade onwards, and coinciding with a stroke that marked a turning point in his career, he was best known in two ways: as one of the principal creators in the area of new documentary film in Spain and through his educational activities in screenwriting and creative documentary.

Through his work, it is possible to trace the history of a particular kind of cinema devoted to politics and its development in a world where political struggles are often fragmented and dispersed. Jordá is an interdisciplinary creator who seamlessly combined his work in cinema with political activism, literature and education. Despite being recognized at the end of his career by international film festivals (Torino Film Festival and Festival International du Documentaire-Marseille) as one of the most original, innovative and powerful documentary filmmakers of his time; he is still not well known internationally.

*CFP* "OTHERING / OTHERISATION", EDITED COLLECTION

The concept of “Othering/Otherisation” refers to the classification of individuals or groups as outsiders. This cognitive classification divides any sociocultural and political formation into potential two generally monolithic and mutually exclusive blocks: the in-group community versus the out-group community. The inclusion or exclusion of each block is contingent on different criteria like religion, ethnicity, culture, race, politics, class, etc. When these differences are used descriptively, they become somewhat acceptable and harmless. However, when they are normative, they are often couched in the discourses of superiority or inferiority, goodness or badness, civilized-ness or uncivilized-ness, etc. Thus, those differences become highly harmful and unacceptable. The politics of “Othering” are quite likely to generate social in-justice, discrimination, racism, and power abuses. So, “Othering”, as a concept or a practice, needs more careful study and vigorous research to understand the dynamics of its production and the goals of its installation.

The perception that one group stands as a threat to another group increases people’s tendency to reject each other and to create a negative representation of them. “Othering” rests on a binary opposition of the self and the other. It is structured around a positive representation of the self and demonization of the other. Hence, “Othering” or “otherisation” rests on a solid politics of fear of the strange, the unfamiliar, the unknown, and the mysterious. It seems that the politics of “Othering” is one indulging in and capitalizing on xenophobic sentiment par excellence.

*CFP* "MEDIA, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND PROTEST CULTURES IN AFRICA", BOOK PROJECT

Social movements are not a new phenomenon in African societies. These social movements, as is the global trend, have used and continue to use different strategies and media such as blogs, social media, underground newspapers and radio, posters, t-shirts, street theatre, art, mural, music and street posters and pamphlets to send their messages across (see Lee and Chan 2011; Willems 2011). It is social and other popular political movements that are credited with bringing about different types of revolutions and change especially during colonial times leading to independence (Taylor 1997). The liberation and accompanying social movements in Africa are peculiar and different from all others across the globe: they were born as protests and resistance to colonial oppression. They may share the same characteristics with others in that they started off being led organically from the bottom by ordinary people in a quest to change the trajectory of their lives. These movements faced different challenges in spreading their messages as the colonial governments used the press for control, suppression and assimilation in the case of the French. The British, according to Nyamnjoh (2005) were a bit liberal in allowing black cultural (and yet not critical) content in some of the publications. They used different media such as missionary newspapers sympathetic to the black people’s cause as was the case in West Africa (Nyamnjoh 2005), underground radio and newspapers in Rhodesia and South Africa (Kirk 1975; Smith 2013). Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspaper in Nigeria is credited with bringing up a culture of black protest in in the mid-20^th century. His newspaper gave space for disruptive articulations of independence to the black educated elite most of whom returning home from the west where they had acquired an education.

*CFP* "CORONAVIRUS, CRISIS AND CULTURE: POLICING, PROTEST AND THE MEDIATION OF DISSENT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC", BOOK CHAPTER

Global restrictions on protest

In May 2020, the Bonavero Centre for Human Rights published an analysis of twelve nations’ response to the pandemic: the authors identified ‘a global rise in autocratic populism’ accompanied by ‘Covid 19 emergency measures’ that ‘risk becoming a foundation for greater consolidation of executive power’ (3). A month later, Amnesty International produced Policing the Pandemic, which drew attention to ‘systemic human rights concerns regarding institutional racism, discrimination in law enforcement and lack of accountability regarding allegations of unlawful use of force by law enforcement officials’ (4). In March 2021, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace identified over 230 anti-government protests in some 110 countries, with 25 significant protests aimed specifically at coronavirus restrictions.

This Call for Chapters from the Media Discourse Centre emerges in response to the worldwide limits placed on public protest during the last twelve months, and the social movements that have continued to mobilise in the face of these conditions. Contributors can discuss new manifestations of dissent, the adaptation of existing movements to political/pandemic restrictions, live and mediated events, and the online reconfiguration of the protest tradition (see below).  

*CFP* "MIGRATIONS, CITIZENSHIPS, INCLUSION. NARRATIVES OF PLURAL ITALY, BETWEEN IMAGINARY AND DIVERSITY POLITICS", XXVI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF FILM STUDIES

Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion. Narratives of Plural Italy, between Imaginary and Diversity Politics

XXVI International Conference of Film Studies

Rome, May 6-8, 2021

 

Please note that, with the number of infections rising up again in Italy as elsewhere in Europe, we were forced to reschedule our XXVI International Conference of Film Studies (Rome, May 6-8, 2021) as an online event.

We remind you that the issue of this year is Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion. Narratives of Plural Italy, between Imaginary and Diversity Politics and the deadline for the proposal of abstracts is March 31st 2021. Below you find again our call for papers.

*CFP* "DISSONANT LOVES: THE CONVIVIALITY OF CONTEMPORARY SOUND DIASPORAS", EDITED VOLUME

We are seeking contributors to an upcoming edited volume to be published by Routledge. The contents of the book are to be framed around the living transmission of diaspora through sound in (speech, everyday life, media, computation, music, history) over diverse spaces and times drawing upon cases from around the globe. The intention of the book is not simply to map these formations but to evaluate the resources they provide as convivial formations – in the context of reconfigured global capitalism, augmented nationalism and racism, and sound’s uneven capture in computation. 

The volume aspires to incorporate a wide range of voices, their hopes, fears and living realities. The book will be culturally focussed whilst not disregarding the materialities of sound. We welcome interest from anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, historians, ethnomusicologists, cultural theorists and others with an interest in the multiplicity of ways in which diasporic sound cultures are transmitted and lived. In doing so the volume will move away from a sonic eurocentricism that until recently has dominated sonic epistemologies and contribute to a critical re-appraisal of the role of sound in contemporary global modernity.

*CFP* "INQUIRING HEALING ACROSS SCREEN CULTURES", JUNE 2021 CONFERENCE ONLINE

Inquiring healing across screen cultures

1st-2nd June 2021

Workshop Online

 

There has always been a desire and necessity to tell the difficult times, to uncover how they have been lived. Letters were written, diaries were kept, cameras captured the moments. Memories, narratives, images, and utterances have been shared across all kinds of media in diverse forms. Do these exposures have a capacity to heal us or others? Or do they trap us in our traumas by constantly reproducing them? What kinds of recuperating potentials can we ascribe to our screen cultures across film, media, and art in troubling times?

Amid the turbulent events of our age that rapidly emerge and expand in personal, social, and political realms, we are prompted to explore questions of healing. During a global pandemic, and while we are spending more and more time on the screens, this workshop aims at a critical inquiry of the recuperating forms, mediums, and creativities across screen cultures. Experienced in bodies, homes, institutions, environments, and borders, difficult times can leave us in loss, deprivation, confusion, anxiety, fear, and grief.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND THE FAR-RIGHT", SPECIAL EDITION, FOR(E)DIALOGUE JOURNAL

In recent years, there has been a clear increase in the dissemination of exclusionary discourses in the public sphere worldwide, articulated in part by prominent figures on the right and far-right wings of international politics. Given the appetite for these ideas, evident from the widespread rise of conservative and populist values in society and the numerous voters opting for far-right political parties in Europe and beyond, many politicians and activists have adopted an openly hostile stance against minorities, challenging minority rights and championing restrictive social policies. Established news media outlets have a complex relationship with far-right and radical actors, often contributing to the mainstreaming of said actors and their beliefs, despite ostensibly adopting critical stances against them. Far-right actors have attacked the credibility of these mainstream media outlets and networks, gravitating increasingly towards alternative ‘news outlets’, such as websites, blogs, forums and social media platforms. At the same time, for over two decades, far-right actors and groups have utilised online communication structures to build their networks, gain visibility, recruit members and spread mis/disinformation through channels that are almost impossible to trace, audit or moderate. The mobilisation of Trump supporters in recent months is one example of this, with radicalisation and organisation taking place via forums, messaging services, and a variety of extremist websites and online spaces, culminating in a violent assault on the US Capitol.

16ª SESIÓN SEMINARIO DOIMECO, "EXILIO CUBANO: DESDE LOS MÁRGENES DEL DOCUMENTAL EN LA DIÁSPORA (2006-2018)"

 

*CFP* "BODY, SOUL, CRISIS, RECOVERY", AN INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Body, Soul, Crisis, Recovery: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference

Virtual

University of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota, USA

 

The University of St Thomas Art History, English, Museum Studies, and Creative Writing & Publishing graduate programs will host a virtual interdisciplinary conference on Friday, April 23, 2021. While papers addressing any aspect of literature, film, art history, architecture, museum studies, new media, and cultural studies will be considered, the graduate programs particularly welcome proposals for papers exploring the conference theme across all time periods, media, and geographical regions. We are also seeking creative writers to read original work related to the conference theme.