ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

September 23-25, 2020

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Deadline: January 15, 2020

The 2nd Biennial Conference on Food & Communication

Keynote speaker: Prof. JOSÉE JOHNSTON, University of Toronto

Food is a key means through which we construct and represent ourselves discursively. Food features as a powerful cultural signifier, often evoking associations with issues of gender, class, race and power. Food-related activities, such as grocery shopping, meal preparation, and eating, along with the public and private spaces in which these activities occur, provide the basis for many of our complex daily communicative practices. Food also is located at the core of many of the most challenging social issues of our time, often manifested in oppressive relations of inequality, and in the placement of food at the center of calls for social justice.

We are witness to major changes in how the relationships between food systems and consumers are constructed discursively.

Not surprisingly, food has been an important focus of research across the humanities and social sciences, from history to sociology, cultural studies, political studies and beyond. This conference extends that focus by providing an international platform that foregrounds the role of communication in the production, distribution and consumption of food. The aim of the conference is to address discourses, texts and communication evolving in relation to both widespread dissatisfaction with existing food systems and to visions for a more sustainable and regenerative future of food.

Scholars are invited to explore the cultural and discursive construction of food. This may include analyses of political and policy texts on food sovereignty, and security, food safety and nutrition, food waste, sustainability and climate change; texts produced by the food industry, including advertising, packaging, labeling, menus, social media and other means of food marketing; consumer and media narratives on “the pleasures of the table”; and texts promoting gastronomic tourism, to name just a few.

Today, cumulative food-related crises and controversies have become central to ongoing attempts to address the health of the global population and the planet. As a result, we are witness to major changes in how the relationships between food systems and consumers are constructed discursively.

In response to these issues, scholars are welcome to explore narratives about the emergence of alternative solutions to, and new imaginaries about, the future of food.

1) Food as cultural signifier / text / medium, including food as:

• Expression of cultural identity
• Cultural capital
• Object of commodity activism
• Expression of cultural appropriateness
• Expression of cultural appropriation
• Basis of ritual and community bonding

2) Representations of food, including:

• Journalistic and documentary coverage of the food and agricultural industries
• Food as the focus of entertainment television (narrative cinema, reality TV, celebrity programs, etc.)
• Food in social media
• Commercial communication about food (advertising, PR, lobbying, industry narratives)
• Political discourses (e.g., food safety, sovereignty, security; sustainability; regenerative agriculture; access to food; food deserts; animal welfare; etc.)
• Scientific and technical communication

3) Public knowledge (and lack of knowledge) about food, including:

• Food literacy (health, nutrition, safety and risk, etc.)
• Environmental impacts (e.g., waste, pollution, climate change)
• Cultural origins, history, appropriation

4) The mediation of food activism:

• Communication for direct action (protest, demonstration, petition, boycott, etc.)
• Commodity activism

5) Imaginaries about the future of food, including:

• New sources (e.g., insects, algae, in vitro meat)
• Genetic engineering of plants and animals
• Hydroponics
• Aquaculture
• Transparency, traceability, blockchain, etc.

Abstracts of 300-500 words and queries can be submitted to: foodandcommunication@fdv.uni-lj.si

Abstracts may also be submitted via the web page below where further information can be found: www.foodcommunication.net

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in March 2020.

Associated costs Fee

Fee for conference attendance is 120 EUR and will cover the cost of food and drink during the conference plus materials.

An optional conference dinner costs 35 EUR (three courses of local dishes and local wine). Dinner will take place on Thursday evening, September 24th 2020 at Gostilna na Gradu.

Travel and accommodation costs will need to be covered by participants themselves.

Dr. Andreja Vezovnik, University of Ljubljana, Chair of Local Committee (contact person)

Dr. Ana Tominc, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh, Chair of Program Committee

May 26-27, 2020

University of Oslo, Norway

Deadline: January 31, 2020

The role of the media is a contentious issue in the contemporary Middle East. Analysts and actors agree on its overall importance, but how journalism shape political dynamics is a matter of dispute. Some see a positive change in new communication technologies and the multitude of voices. Others lament a combustible mix of lies, instrumentalization and polarization that is turning societies apart. In the political science literature, social media have often been analysed as mobilization vehicles, while mainstream media are primarily understood as instruments of power in the hands of regimes. The recent wave of protests in the Arab world has seen popular anger directed against both media and reporters.

At the same time, some journalists have sided with the street. In this conference, we take a closer look at the interaction between media and politics and the active part that journalists may play. We expand the analytic scope from the media as mobilizers in upheavals to their role as intermediaries between state powers and citizens and interpreters of public affairs. The conference marks the end of a three years’ research project on journalism in Tunisia and Lebanon, evolving around these themes.

Our aim is to broaden the view and draw comparisons across the region. We invite papers that engage with issues such as journalists as power brokers, the tensions between rights and security, religious polarization and electoral mobilization, to name a few. The scope spans from traditional news outlets to digital media and citizen journalism.

Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2020, full papers by 1 May. The organizers will cover travel and accommodation costs for the selected presenters.

Further information: Kjetil Selvik, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, kjik@nupi.no; Jacob Høigilt, University of Oslo, jacobhoi@uio.no.

Proposals Submission Deadline: February 15, 2020

Full Chapters Due: April 29, 2020

Submission Date: August 7, 2020

Editors

• Lídia Oliveira, DigiMedia, University of Aveiro
• Ana Carla Amaro, DigiMedia, University of Aveiro
• Ana Melro, DigiMedia, University of Aveiro

Introduction

With the importance of cultural heritage for territories in particular, and for States and societies as a whole it must be a topic that integrates the agenda of main public policies. Furthermore, cultural heritage is what keeps entire populations unified, it is the element that makes individuals feel part of a community. This widespread knowledge would allow the maintenance, sustainability, and preservation of main material and immaterial cultural artifacts.

Objective

Cultural Heritage is a broader concept that includes the concepts of Territorial Innovation and Development, Culture, Rural, and digital cultural heritage, as well as the topics and tools that help cultural heritage to be preserved.

The goal is to analyze how this preservation and sustainability occurs countries and, on one hand, how it contributes to territorial innovation and, on the other hand, how technological tools contribute to those preservation and sustainability, as well as for the dissemination of cultural heritage.

Target Audience

The main context will be in Cultural Heritage and its preservation, maintenance, and sustainability. These topics would be of great importance to the fields of Territorial Innovation and Development, Public Policies and Digital, Media and Technology fields. Research centers in those areas, Universities are the main markets of this book.

Recommended Topics

The book will focus on the importance of cultural heritage for territorial innovation and it intends to cover a wide range of topics:

• Cyberculture;
• Communities (online and offline);
• Social innovation;
• Sustainability;
• Public policies;
• Territorial development;
• Information and communication technologies;
• Networks;
• Internet of Things;
• Cultural heritage;
• Territorial innovation.

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before February 15, 2020, a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 2,000 words clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by February 29, 2020 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by April 29, 2020, and all interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions at http://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/ prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Cultural Heritage and Its Impact on Territory Innovation and Development. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process.

All proposals should be submitted through the eEditorial Discovery®TM online submission manager.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference), "Medical Information Science Reference," "Business Science Reference," and "Engineering Science Reference" imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2021.

Important Dates

• February 15, 2020: Proposal Submission Deadline
• February 29, 2020: Notification of Acceptance
• April 29, 2020: Full Chapter Submission
• June 12, 2020: Review Results Returned
• July 10, 2020: Revisions Due From Authors
• July 24, 2020: Final Acceptance Notification
• August 7, 2020: Final Chapter Submission

Inquiries

Ana Melro: anamelro@ua.pt

DigiMedia - Digital Media and Interaction, Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro, Portugal

Popular Culture Studies Journal

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Proposals now due January 24, 2020

Publish date: April, 2021

Guest editor: Liz W Faber, Elizabeth.Faber@mville.edu

We are seeking submissions for the April 2021 special issue on robots and labor in pop culture.

Much of the conversation about robots and Artificial Intelligence for the past 100 years has focused on whether robots could/should replace human workers. With this in mind, we are interested in a broad examination of how pop culture has imagined robots in the workforce, from classics like the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Jetsons to more recent works such as C. Robert Cargill’s 2017 novel Sea of Rust. Considerations of all genres, media, and critical lenses are welcome, and we are particularly interested in stretching the boundaries of how labor is defined.

The Popular Culture Studies Journal is an open-access academic, peer-reviewed, refereed journal for scholars, academics, and students from the many disciplines that study popular culture, as well as the fans and general public with an interest in popular culture texts, practices, and industries. The journal serves the MPCA/ACA membership, as well as scholars globally who recognize and support its mission based on expanding the way we view popular culture as a fundamental component within the contemporary world.

To be considered for this special issue, please send a proposal of no more than 250-300 words to the guest editor, Liz W Faber, at Elizabeth.Faber@mville.edu. Proposals must be received by Friday, January 24, 2020. Full essays will be due in August, 2020, and final drafts will be due December, 2020.

Questions and topic inquiries for this special issue can be directed to the guest editor, Liz W Faber (Elizabeth.Faber@mville.edu).

October 2-5, 2020

Braga, Portugal

Deadline: January 5, 2020

The Re/media.Lab – Laboratory and Incubator of Regional Media is calling for proposals for a panel submission to the 8^th European Communication Conference: ”Communication and Trust: Building Safe, Sustainable and Promising Futures” to be held in Braga, Portugal, October 2-5, 2020. The panel aims to reflect on the Challenges for Local Journalism in Disinformation Times.

Fake news has recently gained prominence as the way media content is presented and consumed on social networks. The pressure of fake news tends to favor audience’s quick and superficial perception, with little incentive for more careful reflection, in which emotion and polarization play an additional role. In local contexts, the existence of offline social networks supported by close social ties may strengthen the occurrence of endogamic contexts that difficult changes and diversity.

Our group is interested in receiving abstracts proposing a theoretical and experimental approach to fake news in local journalism highlighting the following issues:

a) Disinformation and fake news in local and communitarian contexts.

b) The risk that close ties inside local communities induce an endogamic perception of public life, including effects such as like-minded thoughts. polarized bubbles or the closure of the agenda process.

c) The role and perception of local journalists on the issues related to disinformation and fake news at the local e communitarian levels.

d) The role played by perception of the public on the issues related to disinformation and fake news at local and communitarian levels.

e) Presentation, description or suggestion of original local media-literacy strategies as an element of prevention and combat against disinformation in these contexts.

f) Presentation, description or suggestion of ombudsman strategies as an element of preventing disinformation in these contexts.

g) Presentation of new or reformulated theoretical, experimental and methodological approaches to the studies of disinformation processes in local contexts.

To comply with the ECREA guidelines, individual abstracts of 500 words can be submitted. Abstract titles are limited to 30 words. All abstracts must be written in English and up to10 authors can be included. The presenting author must be listed first and only one author can be nominated as the presenting author.

Please send your abstract to João Carlos Correia at the University of Beira Interior (jcorreia@ubi.pt ) and Pedro Jerónimo (pj@ubi.pt ) until January 5. This will enable Re/media.Lab committee to peer review contributions ahead of the ECREA deadline on January 15.

The 2020 conference is organized by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the University of Minho. For more information: www.ecrea2020braga.eu

Information on the Re/media.Lab: www.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/remedialab/

Special issue of TMG - Journal for Media History 

Deadline: January 15, 2020

Transnational journalism history acknowledges that cultural forms are produced and exchanged across borders. It focuses on the interactions between agents, ideas, innovations, norms and social and cultural practices beyond national boundaries, as well as the way these interactions affect the incorporation and adaption of new ideas, concepts, and practices into national frameworks. By moving back and forth between the national and transnational level, the connective and dialectic nature of these movements is emphasized. It thus treats the nation as only one level or context among a range of others, instead of being the primary frame for analysis.

This special issue aims to critically interrogate and go beyond the national frameworks within which historical developments of journalism are generally studied. Due to its institutional organization and topical focus, journalism historiography has traditionally been confined to national boundaries. This holds true for studies restricted to the development of journalism in one country, like most press histories, as well as studies that take nations as units for comparative research. Differences and, to a lesser extent, similarities in professional practices and news coverage are usually discussed as autonomous developments and ascribed to national peculiarities. The special issue intends to bring together papers that open new venues for research that move beyond this national boundary. We therefore invite articles related to transnational journalism that (particularly, but not exclusively) focus on:

• Theoretical and methodological reflections on transnational journalism
• Transnational journalistic networks
• Journalists or publishers who were influential “transfer agents”
• Transnational impact on journalistic genres
• Adaptation of foreign examples in a national context
• Case studies of transnational reporting
• Case studies that rely on Digital Humanities methods, for example, text mining or network analysis

Practical guidelines

We ask interested researchers to submit an abstract of max. 350 words which clearly outlines a research question, relevance of the topic, a theoretical/historical framework, justification of research material and approach, and main argument.

Please send your proposals to the editors: Frank Harbers (f.harbers@rug.nl) and Marcel Broersma (m.j.broersma@rug.nl).

Deadline: please hand in your abstract no later than 15 January 2020. Authors will be notified of acceptance by the end of January 2020.

Tentative timeline

The authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to contribute a full article (max. 8000 words, excluding references and bibliography). The deadline for the full papers is approximately 29 May 2020.

TMG - Journal for Media History is an open access peer reviewed academic journal, published in the Netherlands. Its aim is to promote and publish research in media history. It offers a platform for original research and for contributions that reflect theory formation and methods within media history. For more information and author guidelines, see: https://www.tmgonline.nl/

Gorizia (Italy), March 28-31, 2020

Deadline (extended): January 18 , 2020

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths, University of London)
• Barbara Klinger (Indiana University)
• Robert Fischer

Living in the Material World: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Past and Present Media Ecologies

Since the late Sixties, the notion of “media ecology” has become a crucial part of the academic debate. Fostered by Neil Postman’s theories, media ecology has configured itself as a meta-theoretical ground on which the media are considered as technological environments, capable of shaping our senses and perception. Throughout the years, several insights on such topic have been developed, involving the interrelationships between technological networks, information, and communication (Altheide 1995; Nardi and O’Day 1999; Tacchi, Slater & Earn, 2003; Hearn & Foth, 2007); the notion of “media practice” within these networks (Mattoni 2017); the role of culture in their evolution (Gencarelli 2006; Strate 2008; Polski 2013); etc. We could say that new branches stemmed out from the methodological framework proposed by Postman, in which McLuhan’s legacy appears to be fundamental. Some of them stress the role of materiality in the construction of Medienverbund (Kittler, 1986), media environments and media cultures, others focus on the creation of power/knowledge networks (Parikka 2007, 2010, 2011, 2014): in all of them, every medium is considered as a complex system among other complex systems, with which it develops cultural and practical grids.

The entanglement between the concept of media ecology and the notion of network has become massively relevant for the European debate ever since Félix Guattari’s published his Les Trois Écologies (1989), “Postmodern Deadlock and Post-Media Transition” (1986), and “Entering the Post-Media Era” (2009): here, the media “ecologies” (plural!) are the material contexts in which the processes of subjectivity construction take place.

This notion has been further elaborated by media theorists such as Matthew Fuller (2005) and Michael Goddard (2018), who stress the role of media assemblages, dispositives, and networks concerning the dynamics of subjectivity construction.

In our CFP we aim to explore the multi-faceted realm of past and present media ecologies in order to develop a transdisciplinary approach to their epistemological ground, which will be fostered by the five sections of our school (Cinema and Contemporary Arts, The Film and Media Heritage, Media Archaeology, Porn Studies, and Post-Cinema).

Cinema and Contemporary Arts – On the Edge of a New Dark Age-Media Ecology and Art Strategies

In the modernist framework of technological enthusiasm and faith in progress, technology had been seen as one of crucial forces for society to evolve as it never had before. More recently, this utopian view has been flipped in its dystopian twin: since the 1990s, technological determinism has been the flipside of the coin of several conceptions of media ecologies and environments (particularly in reference to Marshall McLuhan’s and Neil Postman’s understanding of the term), moving the attention from the advantages to the consequences of technological progress in modernized societies. In this view, the so-called Age of Information could be seen as a paradoxical counterpart of the Age of Enlightenment as made visible by the Internet. Whereas, for a long time, it has been argued that putting more information in people’s hands would have inherently fostered their understanding of public issues and increased their participation in social life, the current technologically advanced societies have largely proved their incapability to provide a large and spread condition of equality, social justice and common good (Marx, Smith 1994).

In this view, the state of confusion which we live in, the increasing lack of political awareness, the concerns for the climate crisis, and the commercial exploitation of public spaces via the use of digital media, can be seen as some of the constitutive aspects underlying the current “technologically driven authoritarianism”. As recently suggested by James Bridle’s New Dark Age, acknowledging that the more we rely on the media-networked environment, the less we know its deep social and political implications calls for a critically aware response: developing a “systemic literacy” is the first step to go beyond the purely functional understanding of technology and “to understand the many ways in which technology itself hides its own agency – through opaque machines and inscrutable codes as well as physical distance and legal constructs” (Bridle 2018: 8). >From a different standpoint, many theoretical orientations in humanities, visual culture studies and social sciences have investigated affectivity, focusing on the body and collective experience as oppositional tools to the technology-driven neoliberal modes of performativity. In the wake of the interest of feminist and queer theories for body and emotions, they focused on the “formative power” of affect “cast forward by its open-ended in-between-ness (...) integral to a body’s perpetual becoming” (Gregg-Seigworth, 2010).

All of these considerations lead us to put into question how, in the current Information Society, knowledge flow through media and bodies and beyond representation. Instead of being taken for granted, while thinking at automated information as more reliable than our own experience (“automation bias”) and progressively losing our ability to imagine a future, digital networks and platforms must be re-assessed and re-appropriated as tools to “rethink the world”. In this vein, the Cinema and Contemporary Arts section’s call for papers for the XVIII MAGIS Spring School aims at fostering the debate by gathering theoretical and practice-based reflections on how and by which “yardsticks” can we pinpoint new artistic strategies and tactics to reshape our approach to technology and actively redefine our position in the current media environment.

The Cinema and Contemporary Arts section will thus welcome proposals related (but not limited to) the following sub-topics:

–Artists, artworks and art movements concerned with the concept of media-ecology;

–The “new materialist energies” at work within contemporary arts (t.i. how art has critically addressed digital materialism);

–The political ecology of knowledge practices based on body and affectivity (Massoumi, 2002 : 255);

–Feminist and queer strategies at work against the technologies of governmentality; the queer utopian impulse (Muñoz, 2009);

–The strategic and tactical potential of art in de-commodifying time and the moving image;

–The production of urban and domestic space by digital media and how it affects the public sphere;

–Digital colonialism and post-colonialism.

The Film and Media Heritage – Historicizing Platforms: Sources and Streams

Against the background of the increasing success of streaming as an everyday mode of film experience and the new platform economy (Dal Yong Jin, 2015; Marc Steinberg, 2019), the workshop discusses the history of dealing with film sources and materials in the last decades – from 16 and 35 mm copies to VHS, laser disc and DVD/Blu-ray to streaming platforms. The focus is on changes of the supposedly stable entity of "the film" under the influence of shifting technologies and practices. This includes the materiality and appropriation of cinematic sources as well as the revision and making available of these.

These changes are not only worth considering with regard to coming into contact with films (going to the cinema and travelling to retrospectives compared to inserting a disc and going/staying online), but also to writing about/during films (vague memories from notes written in the dark compared to an analysis frame by frame and to the current applications and algorithms for indexing, annotations, etc.) and for a resulting canon formation. The development from film stock and copies to streaming platforms leads from the establishment of film as a moving image in public spaces and the artefacts of home cinema to – again – moving images (and sounds), which as computer-based streams are no longer bound to fixed screening locations. Hence, the changing mode of “film viewing outside of theatrical precincts” (Barbara Klinger, 2006) changes both: the mode of film experience and the source that makes this experience possible.

Media Archaeology – Ecologies of Perception

Drawing on a media-ecological perspective, the focus of the 2020 edition of the Media Archaeology section will be on “ecologies of perception.” What Luciana Parisi ten years ago described as “technoecologies of sensation,” (2009) today has developed into a new form of rationality, one which is not only concerned with current environmentalist challenges, but that also opens up possibilities for reconsidering processes of “technocapitalist naturalization” (Massumi 2017). Ecology, from this point of view, signifies the need to rethink “the capacities of an environment, defined in terms of a multiplicity of interlayered milieus and localities, to become generative of emergent forms and patterns” (Parisi 2017). Today’s “general ecology,” Erich Hörl writes, “characterises being and thought under the technological condition of a cybernetic state of nature” (2017). Our section picks up on the suggestion that this expanding paradigm calls for new descriptions, including a rigorous historization of sense-perception and sensation, as well as a reflection on their ethical and aesthetical implications. In a time when media increasingly operate at a micro-temporal scale “without any necessary – let alone any direct – connection to human sense perception and conscious awareness” (Hansen 2015), it opens up a horizon for asking “how to re-think or even reinvent media as a form of earth re-writing” (Starosielski/Walker 2016).

Our aim is to bring together papers on the following three, interrelated, topics:

First, the relation between media and communication technologies and social movements. “The media ecological framework is particularly suited for the study of the social movements/media nexus,” Treré-Mattoni (2015) has observed, “because of its ability to provide fine-tuned explorations of the multiplicity, the interconnections, the dynamic evolution of old and new media forms for social change.” From within this framework, we are keen to hear on investigations of various forms, or dispositifs, of subjectivation in the face of newly emerging social forces or social resistance.

Second, the role of media infrastructures in shaping our ways of perceiving the world. Today, we are increasingly thinking and living under conditions of an effective “programmability of planet earth.” (Gabrys 2016). We thus need to pay attention to the complex consequences of media becoming environmental and environments becoming mediated. From this point of view, action and resistance, as well as dynamic relations between human and non-human entities, need to be framed and shaped on a wider range of scale. Joanna Zylinska, in this context, for example, reclaims a “minimal ethics” for the Anthropocene: “swap the telescope for the microscope,” she writes. “It is a practical and conceptual device that allows us to climb up and down various spatiotemporal dimensions” (2014). We ask: what would a minimal ethics for an ecology of perception entail?

Third, the complex linkages between media as technology and environmental issues in more-than-human worlds, including “the concrete connections that media as technology has to resources […] and nature” (Parikka 2013; 2016). Special focus will be dedicated to the capitalist “production of the obsolete” (Jucan 2016); “finite media” (Cubitt 2017); the effects or remains of what Parikka called the “anthrobscene”; and the question what a speculative ethics of “slow (media) violence” (Parikka) and “matters of care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017) might entail.

The Media Archaeology section welcomes proposals relating (but not limited) to the following sub-topics:

–Ecologies of perception;

–Media archaeological approaches to the concept of media ecology, its materiality and infrastructures;

–The role of media affordances in building a media ecology;

–The role of computational design;

–Critical considerations of (un)sustainable media;

–Obsolescence, and/or the reconstruction of the materiality of past media ecologies;

–The complex relations between media technologies, natural environments, and the multifaceted temporalities they entail;

–The role of dynamic instrumentalisation of nature in biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology etc.;

–The nexus between media ecologies and social movements: interactions in a liquid production and fruition context;

–Tele-technologies for contemporary social movements (e.g. memes, meme-platforms, meme-generator, flashmobs, Anonymous operations etc.);

–Dispositifs of subjectivation;

–Speculative ethics, and matters of care;

–The “minimal ethics” for “more-than-human worlds”;

–The notion of “slow media violence” and “matters of care”;

–Geologic matter and bio-matter, deep times and deep places of media in mines and rare earth minerals.

Postcinema – Vulnerable Media

The Postcinema Section invites contributions on the topic of Vulnerable Media. This conceptual framework wants to explore how current and emergent media technologies, distribution platforms, formats or artefacts negotiate affects between users and digital interactive interfaces, in particular, how such media hide or show, contain or generate forms of vulnerability.

An expanding infrastructure serves to manage our emotional experience by tracking, quantifying and supervising, or by shaping that experience through its interfaces, as we connect and share in affective spaces of social media. These media which maintain and nurture our “mediated intimacies” (Attwood, Hakim, Winch 2017) are at the same time vulnerable to engendering processes of physical and emotional disconnect. Arguably, these media formats and objects shape contemporary “structures of feeling” (Williams 1961) and relational emotions (Ahmed 2004) and help regulate affect in capitalist societies (Illouz 2007).

Such affective technologies extend beyond individual self-improvement, leading to intimacy as a governing concept in the relation between state and citizens. Vulnerable media here point to security gaps, hacks, and technologies that enable surveillance and manipulation through governments and companies such as Cambridge Analytica on a global scale, as well as socio-cultural issues, such as exploitation in e-sports or gamergate, comicgate etc.

From global tracking and surveillance, data collection scandals to powerful and proprietary algorithms, quasi-monopolist blackboxed platforms, progress on AI and machine learning systems, as well as data collection lead to subjective feelings of vulnerability. These developments have also renewed discourses on what it means to be human: where does the ‘meatsuit’ end can consciousness be programmed?

In the realm of emergent media the future is tied to issues of instability, change and obsolescence. The race for novelty and technological innovation always entails an unending trajectory towards obsolescence. The speed of change in these practices reflects their inner fear of being “left behind”, paradoxically condemning emerging technologies to a permanent state of ephemerality. Such vulnerability is embodied, for example, by the so-called “impossible archives” (Fanfic archives & the Wayback Machine) which challenge normative understandings of memory and historicity, presenting us with issues of unstable preservation in light of “update or die” logic, “glitches”, “bugs” and “dying” media formats.

The Post-cinema section welcomes proposals on the following topics:

–Who is being made vulnerable:vloggers or creators (Lange 2007); YouTube or TikTok stars, users/viewers (Bridle 2017);

–Where and how is vulnerability manifested or hidden: in industrial features and vulnerable affordances; TikTok and surveillance (Allana 2019); vulnerable aesthetics; video games as “structures of feeling” (Anable 2018);

–The vulnerability of ‘failing’: YouTube-videos with zero views; video games as “the art of failure” (Juul 2013); old and forgotten media; creators managing channels with just a handful of views;

–The politics and ethics of “vulnerability:” cultural discourses and philosophical questions emerging from affect in new/digital: social networking service (SNS) between macrosocial control and microphysical rewriting of the self (Stella 2009); social media affect and democracy; covert media recordings, privacy and consent;

–The affect of vulnerable media: vulnerable ways of seeing, representation and self-representation; the digitization of bodies (see Brodesco and Giordano 2018); cybertypes and inequalities in the digital realm; digital divides; gamergate, comicgate;

–The vulnerability of digital technologies and ecology: media dependence on natural resources; vulnerable humanity and vulnerable earth (Cubitt 2017; Zylinska & Kember 2012); waste and preservation management of data;

–Thevulnerable materiality of digital media:data storage and data centers; data infrastructure and exchange;digital carbon footprint energy.

Porn Studies – Pornographic subjectivities: Sexuality, Race, Class, Age, Dis/Ability

The 2020 edition of the Porn Studies section of the MAGIS – International Film Studies Spring School aims to investigate pornography as a dispositive of subjectivation (Foucault 2001), that is as a complex and heterogeneous assemblage of technologies, institutions, discourses, practices, ideologies (Agamben 2009) able to create subjectivity through «a mixed economy of power and knowledge» (Rabinow and Rose 2003). The main goal of the section is therefore to understand what kind of subjects are produced by pornography and how they are constructed, with particular attention to the intersections between sexuality and race, class, age, dis/ability.

Drawing loosely on Jacques Derrida’s philosophical reflections, we could say that pornography-as-dispositive is informed by a carno-phallogocentric logic, that is by «the scheme that governs the production of the subject in Western culture» (1992). According to Derrida, this subject is produced by means of a process of exclusion (of other subjects) and through the construction of a structural Otherness.

Pornography has always established complex and contradictory relations with this scheme. On the one hand, pornography (or, a specific kind of pornography) seems to reiterate (and reinforce) the logic of carno-phallogocentrism, in that it seems to create the quintessential «sovereign subject»: white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, young, and (upper) middle-class. On the other, pornography (or, another kind of pornography) seems to undermine the carno-phallogocentric scheme from the inside, deconstructing some of the central nodes on which it is based, building instead heterotopic spaces in which subjects seem to develop new and decentralized subject positions.

With this in mind, we invite proposals that explore, but are not restricted to, the following topics:

–Pornographic representations of race, class, age, dis/ability, present and past;

–Pornographic stereotypes about race, class, age, dis/ability and their «changing historical contexts» (Rosello 1998);

–«Marked bodies» (Holmes 2012) in pornography;

–Re-appropriation of representation by decentralized subjects;

–«Oppositional modes of production and perverse viewerships» beyond «the framework of visibility politics organized about the nexus of positive-negative images» (Nguyen 2014);

–Essentialist vs. constructivist readings of race, class, age, dis/ability and naturalization vs. denaturalization of difference in pornography;

–Fetishization of race, class, age, dis/ability in pornographic production;

–Industrial niches (such as, for instance, interracial, “chav porn”, granny porn, disability porn, etc.) and commodification of race, class, age, dis/ability within long-tail economy (Anderson 2004);

–Stars and performers, present and past (for example, Jeannie Pepper, Lexington Steele, Nina Hartley, Long Jeanne Silver, Brandon Lee, Asa Akira, etc.)

–Specialized films, film series, websites, platforms channels and categories on porn aggregators based on race, class, age, dis/ability.

We invite you to send us proposals for papers or panels. The deadline for their submission is January 18 , 2020.

Every proposal _must be_ addressed to a specific section of the Spring School.

Proposals should not exceed one page in length. Please make sure to attach a short CV (10 linesmax). A registration fee (€ 150) will be applied. For more information, please contact us at goriziafilmforum@gmail.com .

University of St. Andrews, School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies

Salary: £33,797 - £40,322 per annum, pro rata

Start Date: 1 August 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter

Fixed Term for 11 months (until 1 July 2021)

The Department of Film Studies seeks to appoint an Associate Lecturer for a 11-month period from 1 August 2020 to 1 July 2021. The role will involve convening and teaching a range of modules at the undergraduate and masters levels. Candidates should also be prepared to take on some administration duties and provide initiative and student for undergraduate activities such as screening series and careers events.

The successful candidate will show evidence of outstanding teaching in several areas of the discipline, ability and exp erience in the performance of administrative tasks, and the flexibility and range to be able to support the Department in its various teaching activities.

We would particularly welcome applications from candidates who display innovation in teaching practice, with the proven ability to teach across the spectrum of film studies subjects with awareness of the intersections of other media and screen cultures.

To make informal enquiries about this position, please contact Head of Department, Dr. Leshu Torchin (lt40@st-andrews.ac.uk) or Dr Lucy Donaldson, Director of Teaching (lfd2@st-andrews.ac.uk).

The University is committed to equality for all, demonstrated through our working on diversity awards (ECU Athena SWAN/Race Charters; Carer Positive; LGBT Charter; and Stonewall). More details can be found at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/diversityawards/.

Closing Date: 3 January 2020 Please quote ref: AOAC1086RXHM

Further Particulars: AOAC1086RXHM FPs.doc

School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies

Salary: £33,797 - £40,322 per annum, pro rata

Start Date: 1 August 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter

Fixed Term for 11 months (until 1 July 2021)

University of St. Andrews, School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies

Salary: £41,526 - £51,034 per annum

Start Date: 1 August 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter

We are seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Film Studies to join our department and contribute to a vibrant environment of research, teaching, and public engagement at the University of St Andrews. The successful candidate should demonstrate: evidence of outstanding research that complements departmental strengths; a commitment to excellence in teaching; the ability to take on significant administrative roles; and the initiative, innovation, and range to support the department in public engagement and student activities.

This role involves producing excellent research, convening and teaching a range of modules at the undergraduate and masters levels, supervising both undergraduate and postgraduate students, and contributing to the administration of teaching, research, and public engagement in the department.

To make informal enquiries about this position, please contact Head of Department, Dr. Leshu Torchin (lt40@st-andrews.ac.uk) or Dr Tom Rice, Senior Lecturer (twtr@st-andrews.ac.uk).

The University is committed to equality for all, demonstrated through our working on diversity awards (ECU Athena SWAN/Race Charters; Carer Positive; LGBT Charter; and Stonewall). More details can be found at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/diversityawards/.

Closing Date: 3 January 2020

Please quote ref: AC1093HM

Further Particulars: AC1093HM FPs.doc

School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies

Salary: £41,526 - £51,034 per annum

Start Date: 1 August 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter

Closing Date: 3 January 2020

Proposal deadline (extended): February 1, 2020

Co-editors:

• Jessica M. F. Hughes, Assistant Professor, Millersville University, jessica.hughes@millersville.edu
• Mariaelena Bartesaghi, Associate Professor, University of South Florida, mbartesaghi@usf.edu

This is a call for an edited volume on Disability in Dialogue. We invite chapter proposals (1500-200 words) that employ discourse studies methodologies to analyze disabled dialogues and dialogues about disability for a volume of interest to dialogue, communication, disability and discourse scholars.

Everyday dialogues are consequential. Spoken, written and digital discourse in conversations, public hearings, assessment measures, social media sites, organizational manuals, and institutional policies defines disabilities, grants certain bodyminds access, and excludes others. It is through dialogue as embodied inter-action that disability dis/appears and that disabled identities are constituted and that we experience ableism and manage impairment. Disability is also a way of knowing. Disabled dialogues realize our understanding of dis/ability and communication.

As with ‘disability,’ there are many discourses of ‘dialogue.’ For us, ‘dialogue’ calls attention to interaction (whether face-to-face, digital, or temporally distant), asymmetries (of knowledge, status, access), dilemmas, tensions, problems, voices, and affective experience. Analyzing disability in dialogue is a method for theorizing these and other dimensions of discourse to account for disabled ways of knowing, thinking, perceiving, and being in the world.

This collection was first conceived in light of the following questions. How might we center disabled perspectives to theorize dialogue? What sorts of ways of communicating does disability afford? How does disability shape dialogue and vice versa? What does it mean to identify as disabled, to claim an experience in terms of disability, to belong within a discourse, to access a diagnosis? How does the dis/appearance of disability rearrange the past, present, and future and redefine relationships and experiences? What kinds of moral accounts accompany disability in dialogue? What might be the power of dis/ability and what sort of power is it? How is ableism constituted in dialogue? What kinds of dialogic moments have the most potential to dismantle ableism and make the world a more inclusive place for all bodyminds?

We invite chapters that raise these and other questions about disability in dialogue. Chapters should start by defining dialogue and then offer empirical analyses that pay close attention to spoken, written, and/or other semiotic forms that constitute dialogue, in order to guide us in an examination of the consequentiality of disabled dialogues and discourse about disability.

Submission proposals are due February 1, 2020 and should include

• Name(s), affiliation and contact information of author(s)
• A 150 word bio
• Chapter title
• A 1500- 2000 word description of your proposed chapter plus references

Notices of acceptance will be sent by March 31, 2020. Full chapters are due October 1, 2020.