ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Special issue of Science Fiction Studies

Deadline: December 31, 2019

We invite papers on the role of nostalgia as a structure of feeling that animates speculative, utopian, and (post)apocalyptic texts across media. Although there has been increasing critical attention to the role of memory in these genres, nostalgia is a neglected topic. We seek papers that explore nostalgia as affect and motif in the genre, following Jameson's description of sf as a mode of "apprehending the future as history" (1982), while discussing seemingly future-oriented texts such William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982). Nostalgia had already been consolidated within mainstream popular culture via George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) which self-consciously harkened back to earlier eras, texts and subgenres, from the space operas of E.E. Doc Smith to the film serials of the 1930s, from Fred Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956) to Frank Herbert's Dune (1965). In contemporary media, Star Wars itself is now one among many rebooted titles, as mainstream science fiction reanimates its own popular history. As Judith Berman argues in "Science Fiction without the Future" (2001), even the stories of Golden Age pulp sf were less about the future than "full of nostalgia, regret, fear of aging and death."

The genre has frequently been preoccupied with the past as it imagines the future even in cinema, evident in films such as Code 46 (Winterbottom 2003) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry 2004) which are driven by almost futile search for the lost object.

Further connections may be detected between nostalgia and gernes such as utopia and dystopia. If utopianism produces future-orientated discourses that seek to transform the present into an idealised future, nostalgia might be described as inverted utopianism that generates an ameliorated, utopianized recollection of the past, as is evident in

nineteenth-century utopias, such William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890) whose post-apocalyptic future betrays a yearning for a pre-industrial, pastoral era. In The Future of Nostalgia (2001) Svetlana Boym contends that nostalgia can function as as a critical form of remembering that is not bound to a single version of the past, enabling texts to revisit the past to animate different realities and futures, a technique central to works such as Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1974) and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1974). Classical dystopias, on the other hand, such as Eugene Zamyatin's We (1920-21) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) often look to the past as a time of more authentic existence, a motif that continues in recent television series such as The Walking Dead (2010-) and The Handmaid's Tale (2017-), especially in their use of flashback sequences.

Most recently, we have seen widescale interest in sf that nostalgically engages with the 1980s, often through allusions to sf of that era. Netflix has been a major agent in this trend, exemplified by the phenomenal success of Stranger Things (2016-), whose 1980s setting is also contemporary with Jameson's theorization of sf and history.

Other Netflix projects indicate an ongoing interest in nostalgia and this particular decade, such as the German series Dark (2017-), which uses time travel and alternative histories to evoke the 1980s as a consequential turning point in history, or the "San Junipero" episode of Black Mirror (2011-), whose recreation of the 1980s in an online virtual afterlife is often described as the only optimistic episode of the series. This recent cycle of sf might be thought of as second-order nostalgia, that is, texts that encourage young audiences to feel nostalgia about a period they did not live through, one they experienced only via media made at this time. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's theorization of "post-memory," we suggest the term "post-nostalgia" as a way to conceptualize the affective and thematic preoccupations of such work.

We invite submissions that explore these complex intersections of nostalgia and sf. We are interested in papers that revisit the dominant perception of nostalgia as a conservative affective response to a contemporary sense of crisis, and we especially welcome those that explore reflective, critical, or transformative examples of nostalgia that enables a dialectic relationship to the past. We encourage papers that explore how and why nostalgia has resurfaced in genres of the speculative at this particular historical moment. We welcome submissions that explore science fiction in any medium. Indicative yet not exhaustive possible topics include:

• sf, nostalgia and cognitive estrangement
• sf, nostalgia and temporality
• sf, nostalgia and media archaeology
• nostalgia, utopia, dystopia
• reflective nostalgia
• post-nostalgia
• nostalgia and (post-)apocalypse
• identity, nostalgia and counter-memory in (literary, film, television) genre fictions
• steampunk, nostalgia and media archaeology
• commodifying nostalgia and the screen industries: rebooting, franchising, cross-marketing
• nostalgia, sf audiences and fandom

This special issue will be guest edited by Aris Mousoutzanis (A.Mousoutzanis@brighton.ac.uk) and Yugin Teo (yteo@bournemouth.ac.uk).

Please send abstracts of 300-400 words by December 31, 2019 to both editors. After an initial review of proposals, selected essays will be invited to submit full drafts (6,000-7,000 words) due in May 2020. The issue will be published March 2021

Oral History Society Annual Conference 2020

July 3-4, 2020

Bournemouth University, USA

Deadline: December 20, 2019

Oral history and the media have an important but complex relationship. The media has long been a significant producer of, and outlet for, oral history. Classic radio and television productions like The Radio Ballads (1958-1964), Yesterday’s Witness (1969-1981), and The World at War (1973-4) pioneered the use of oral history in the media, giving voice to those who would otherwise have been excluded from both the media and the historical record. Since the 1980s, there has been growing use of oral history in TV and radio documentaries and storytelling, with oral histories now forming an important and popular dimension of history and factual programming and broadcasting. However, the methodological, aesthetic, narrative, and ethical decisions behind these productions – such as who to interview, what questions to ask, and what parts of the interviews end up on the “cutting room floor” - often remain hidden.

The relationship between oral history and the media can also be seen in how oral history has been used to explore the histories and experiences of the media itself, with oral history projects charting the development of media companies and organisation. This has coincided with an upsurge of interest in memory and nostalgia related to the experiences of media, such as memories of cinema, books and music.

Elsewhere, the advent of new media and social media has fuelled the growth of digital storytelling, interactive documentaries, as well as serialised audio podcasts which draw heavily on oral history testimony. Whilst these new technologies, formats and channels offer new ways of creating, disseminating and consuming oral history, they also raise vital questions about ethics, participation, expertise, audiences, and formats in oral history practice.

This conference aims to consider the relationship between oral history and the media, both historically and today, by exploring similarities, differences, opportunities and challenges between media practices and oral history practices, from interviewing to editing, audiences to ethics, covering topics such as:

• The Use and Misuse of Oral History in the Media
• Memories of (the) Media: Film, Books, TV, Radio, Theatre, Music.
• The Influence of the Media on Memory: Mediated Memory and Prosthetic Memory
• Oral History, Media and Editing: Soundbites, Vox-Pops and the ‘Cutting-Room Floor’
• Oral History, Media and Interviewing: Intersubjectivity, Questions, and Emotion
• Journalism, Crisis Oral History and Historical Distance
• Oral Histories of the Media (professions, organisations and companies)
• New Media, Social Media and Oral History
• Changing Media and Formats and its implications for Oral History
• Archiving, Preservation and Re-use of Oral Histories in the Media

PROPOSALS

The deadline for submission of proposals is 20th December 2019. Each proposal should include: a title, an abstract of between 250-300 words, your name (and the names of any co-presenters, panellists, etc), your institution or organisation, your email address, and a note of any particular requirements. Most importantly your abstract should demonstrate the use of oral history or personal testimony and be directly related to the conference theme. Proposals that include audio playback are strongly encouraged. Proposals should be emailed to the ORAL HISTORY AND THE MEDIA Conference Manager, Polly Owen, at polly.owen@ohs.org.uk . They will be assessed anonymously by the conference organisers, and presenters will be contacted in January/February 2020

http://www.ohs.org.uk/conferences/conference-2020/

May 7-8, 2020

McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Deadline: December 15, 2019

Organized by the Communications Governance Observatory and the Centre for Networked Media and Performance (CNMAP) at McMaster University

Algorithms and digital platforms play increasingly important roles in governing how we communicate and how we discover and engage with media and culture. The ‘platform turn’ in dominant media systems has significant implications for life opportunities, employment, participation in the digital economy (whose content is distributed and prioritized?), the star system (who is promoted and how? what counts as success?), politics (which and whose perspective is dominant? how has political deliberation and debate been re-mediatized?), international relations (whose view of the world is dominant?) and social relations (how are inequities in representation reproduced and transformed?).

This conference will draw together researchers in Canada and beyond to explore the intersections between media/communications/cultural policy and platforms. All submissions related to this theme are welcome, including research in the areas of arts policy, broadcasting policy, communication rights, Indigenous communication and cultural policy, competition policy, cultural industries policy, heritage policy, internet policy, media policy, speech regulation, privacy, smart city regulation, and platform regulation. We welcome analysis and case studies at all levels of policy-making, including municipal, provincial and federal, and Indigenous and international research.

Confirmed keynote speakers and presenters include Edward Greenspon (Public Policy Forum), Jesse Wente (Indigenous Screen Office), Sharon McGowan (Women in Film and Television-Vancouver, UBC), Laura Tribe (Open Media), Philippe Tousignant (CRTC), David Ogborn (McMaster), Jonathan Paquette (University of Ottawa), Philip Savage (McMaster), Leslie Regan Shade (University of Toronto), Tamara Shepherd (University of Calgary), Ira Wagman (Carleton), and Dwayne Winseck (Carleton).

The conference will consider the following key questions:

• How can Canadian media systems respond simultaneously to the challenge of digital platforms and to calls for a greater diversity of on-screen and off-screen voices?
• How are platforms taking on, or failing to take on, regulatory roles in the fields of communication and culture?
• How does the international political economy of platforms play out in media/communications/cultural policy?
• How does algorithmic governance function as regulation and policy setting in these fields?
• How are regulatory bodies in the field of communication and culture reconceptualizing their work in light of platforms?
• What relationships and interactions do regulators, as well as arts, media, and cultural organizations, have with platforms?
• How are regulatory bodies in the field of communication and culture incorporating platforms to conduct their work?
• How do advocacy, activist, and social justice initiatives intercede in the relationships between platforms and media/communications/cultural policy?
• How do comparative political cultures influence national regulatory agendas? What criteria may enable new comparative research?

This conference welcomes submissions from all researchers, including doctoral and master’s students.

Prospective participants should submit a 300-word abstract, along with a 150-word bio, including title and institutional affiliation, for a 15-20 minute presentation to https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=comcultpolicy2020%23 by December 15th 2019 for peer review. Invitations will be announced by January 15th 2020. Contributions may be invited for a publication project after the conference. Questions may be addressed to Sara Bannerman at banners@mcmaster.ca. Visit the conference web site at http://comcultpolicy2020.ca

The conference will be preserved in an online video archive. Conference participants will have the opportunity to contribute to a white paper outlining policy recommendations arising from the conference discussions.

ICA 2020 Pre-conference

May 20, 2020, 9:00am-5:00pm

Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

Deadline: January 20, 2020

Sponsoring ICA Divisions: Activism, Communication and Social Justice Interest Group; Political Communication Division; Public Relations Division.

Organizers: Filippo Trevisan (American University), Ariadne Vromen (University of Sydney), Michael Vaughan (University of Sydney)

Storytelling is central to the persuasion and mobilization strategies of advocacy organizations, activist groups, NGOs, political parties, and campaigns. However, technological, communicative, and political changes have challenged traditional storytelling practices and incentivized significant innovation in this area in recent years. Changes in technology have transformed the scale and pace at which individual stories can be collected, digitally archived, curated, and then distributed through online platforms. Changes in communication and politics have increased the emphasis on personalized advocacy strategies targeted at affective publics (Papacharissi, 2015), as campaigners seek to navigate an increasingly fragmented and polarised information environment. Researchers today face a challenge in representing both the continuity in the narrative dimension of politics while also interrogating emerging and impactful innovations. This raises important questions about power dynamics and representations associated with changing storytelling practices, roles, and relationships between individual storytellers, organizations, and social groups in a constantly evolving media landscape. These questions are relevant to multiple related fields including, among others, the sociology of political communications (Polletta 2006), policy studies (Jones, Shanahan and McBeth 2014) journalism studies (Polletta and Callahan 2017), and public interest communication.

This one-day preconference pays attention to these questions and brings together researchers from multiple disciplinary perspectives to discuss the impact of changing storytelling practices on individuals, groups, organizations, target publics, and public discourse more broadly. We welcome submissions from theoretical and empirical inquiries that examine the following areas:

• Reconciling conceptualizations of storytelling from intersecting perspectives in political life: in particular interest groups, social movements, NGOs, parties and political campaigns, as well as journalism;
• The impact of evolving digital communication technologies, including but not limited to social media, mobile devices, and database technology on the practice of persuasive storytelling;
• How publics and citizens respond to stories;
• The role of storytelling in response to changing political and media contexts, in particular the evolution of information consumption habits and the rise of “fake news;”
• The significance and impact of advocacy storytelling on the (in)visibility of groups that are traditionally marginalized and under-represented in public discourse (e.g. gender, LGBTQI+, race, ethnicity, disability, etc.);
• The outcomes of storytelling in politics, such as successes or failures in public policy;
• The ethics of storytelling and the power relationship between advocacy organizations and individual storytellers;
• Storytelling in a comparative and global context, such as the diffusion of storytelling practices between political actors and countries, as well as their relationship with culture and media environments;
• Innovative methodological approaches to study persuasive storytelling and analyze its impact.

A PDF copy of this call for papers is available here: https://tinyurl.com/ica2020-storytelling-preconf

Submitting your abstract: Please submit abstracts for 15 minutes paper presentations through this Google Form (https://forms.gle/f5PBbd3KGd4NhdzR7) no later than January 20, 2020. Abstracts are limited to a maximum of 4,000 characters including spaces (approximately 500 words).

Contributors will be selected by peer-review and will be notified of decisions on or before February 1, 2020. Authors are expected to attend the preconference and present in person.

All participants must register. Registration costs will be 50 USD and include coffee breaks and buffet lunch. To register, participants should follow the instructions on: http://www.icahdq.org

Key dates:

• 20 January 2020: Deadline for abstract submission
• 1 February 2020: Corresponding authors notified of decisions
• 1 May 2020: Conference registrations close
• 20 May 2020: Pre-conference starts in Sydney

Location: Please note that this event will take place off-site at the Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney. The pre-conference will conclude at 5:00pm on May 20, leaving participants ample time to travel to Gold Coast for the opening of the main ICA conference in the evening of the following day (21 May).

5th Helsinki Photomedia Conference in 2020

April 16-18, 2020

Aalto University, Finland

Deadline: November 30, 2019

Submit here

The conference brings together international photography researchers, artists and practitioners. It offers various platforms where artistic, philosophical, social and technological approaches to photography can meet.

“Those who write and make images will have to become envisioners” (Vilém Flusser)

The theme “Images Among Us” refers to the roles of photographic images in a world that is vibrant, transitory and overcharged by affects. The contours and borders of media rearrange themselves in virtual and material environments in various platforms and social spaces. The flicker of their dividing lines becomes intermittently vague and distinct. In this dense historical assemblage, the photographic image itself has become disintegrated and embedded in different media.

Evidently, the present condition is difficult to access through our customary photographic categories and thinking. Photographic images are much more than familiar mediators between the world and ourselves. They have become simultaneously comforting and threatening. Photographic operations have become more and more elusive, with photography becoming less and less reducible to its myriad uses and capacities. However, enduring ontological questions on the essence, materiality and origins of photography have become more significant than ever. For example, photographs still possess traces of the evidential currency that has defined much of photography’s history.

Helsinki Photomedia 2020 invites alternative formulations, critical observations, artistic reflections and presentations of photography projects that react to the present photographic condition in various ways, seeking to instigate productive dialogues.

We invite you to address and challenge these concerns from the perspective of your practice, guided by the following intertwined subthemes:

Theme 1. Artistic Practices

What is the role of photographic art in the present media environment? How is the intimacy of singular imaging practices possible within contemporary visual abundance? How can artistic research contribute? Is the task of the artist to describe and understand or to critically engage? What documentary strategies and imaginary fictions have become most pressing?

Theme 2. Technologies & Cultures

The track technologies and cultures is particularly interested in the intertwinements between visual and material photographic practices. Exemplary questions include, but are not limited to: How are our understandings of photographic images altered by technologies, both “old” and “new”? What kinds of cultural effects do specific technologies have, and how in turn do particular cultures form what photographic technologies are understood to be? What is the relation of photographic technologies to various ecological concerns, to issues of privacy, or understandings of ethical use?

Theme 3. Critical Approaches

What does the concept of “critical” mean (or potentially mean) in the context of contemporary photography? What kinds of current critical photographic practices do we find in the realms of gender, migration, climate change, politics and media? How has the problem of critical practices been articulated in social and political theories of photography? How do the production of visual knowledge and critical practices relate to each other in the “post-truth” era?

Important dates

• 30.11.2019 – Deadline for submissions (500 word abstracts) by 23.59 Finnish time (UCT +2:00)
• Notification of Acceptance will be sent in December 2019
• 31.03 2019 – Deadline for conference registration
• 16-18.04.2020 – Conference at Aalto University

After Post-Photography 6 (APP6)

May 28-30, 2020 (to be confirmed)

European University St Petersburg, Russia

Deadline: December 22, 2019

From the beginnings, photography changed the relation of humans to time. In its pictures, the present was translated into a future past. On closer looks however, and with some attention to the practices photography is part of, it turns out that the connections between photography and time are more complex than the common understanding of photographs being an image from the past: When granny for instance shows her album to her grand-children they have a hard time understanding that the old lady besides them should be identical to that young girl on the pictures. And it doesn’t stop there: Product photography for instance often shows us our happy future if only we buy this car, this trip or that outfit. Re-viewing old photographs uncovers details that during the time they were taken the contemporaries were oblivious to. If a photograph of a far away galaxy gets taken today, it shows us what has happened there ages ago. Using the appropriate filters, digital photographs appear as if they were albumen prints or Polaroids.

At the same time, photography itself was never a stable medium. Instead it has constantly been changing and becoming. In particular in the past 30 years, that is, since the introduction of electronic media and digital cameras to the consumer market, photography has been part of ever new practices and processes. Reading QR codes with the camera of a smartphone is a photographic process. Imaging techniques such as computer tomography translate measurements into images with x-ray aesthetics. It is possible to translate ordinary photographs into 3D-prints. Certain genres of video games become increasingly photo-realistic. With deep-fakes, politicians are convincingly made into dictators and actors into pornstars. And with the downturn of previously dominating analog photography, not only certain processes, but photographic papers, emulsions and other materials vanish - sometimes to the dismay of specialized photographers depending on them.

If, on the one hand, the processes, practices and pictures of photography do not fit easily into the plain concept of past, present and future; and if, on the other hand, photography in itself is constantly in motion, it seems that there are no easy or general concepts that explain the relations of photography and time once and for all. Instead, these relations are volatile, convoluted and contradictory, often depending on the applications the uses of the multitude of photographic processes and influencing them in the process. Hence, questions of time and photography do not only concern theorists of photography. Instead they are also at the core of each and any discipline using photography, including, but not limited to, cultural history, history of art, medicine, law, linguistics, astronomy, environmental studies etc.

As with previous conferences, After Post-Photography conferences were and are interested in all kinds of new approaches, discoveries and hypothesis concerning the history and theory of photography. For the 6th issue we also specifically ask for papers that one way or the other deal with issues of time, temporality, timelessness and timeliness in photography in ways similar to those described above. We welcome in particular key studies on specific and concrete subjects, and we explicitly invite not only researchers and practitioners with a background in history and theory of photography, but also cultural historians, art historians, chemists, historians, architects, criminologists or any other discipline that one way or the other is involved in thinking about photography.

Please submit your application, including a short summary of your paper (250- 400 words) in English using the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=app6 no later than 22 December 2019. Note that you should register at the Easychair website in order to submit your application. Should you like to consult with us prior to your submission please get in touch via app@mur.at. We also will be available on Skype for both Russian and English speakers; for the schedule, please see /www.after-post.photography and write an eMail in advance for co-ordination. You can also find the programs and speakers of the previous conferences on that page.

There is no participation fee, neither for speakers nor for guests. Should your paper be accepted we regret that we can’t sponsor travelling or accommodation; but if need be we’re happy to help you finding a place to stay. We will also provide you with an invitation in case you need a visa.

The working languages of the conference are Russian and English; translations from the one to the other are provided. For programs of After Post-Photography conferences since 2015, please see /www.after-post.photography

We would appreciate it if you would circulate the call to your own networks and other mailing lists.

Organising committee After Post Photography 6 Maria Gourieva, Olga Davydova, Natalia Mazur, Daria Panaiotti, Friedrich Tietjen, Jennifer Tucker

Dept of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield

Deadline: December 1, 2019

We are looking to recruit a further French-speaking Research Associate (12 months at 0.8fte) to join our growing team on the FemmePowermentAfrique project, which is assessing the impact of radio on women’s rights and empowerment in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. You will be working on a new part of the project, recently funded by a large GCRF grant, and will be examining radio output using natural language processing, but also gathering listener feedback through social media platforms.

Radio is an essential form of independent information in many regions in Global South. It is extensively used for many purposes including providing news, information, and awareness campaigns, particularly regarding youth and female empowerment. Given its potential influence and its capacity to change behaviour and influence attitudes (for good or bad), it is important to determine whether the information that radio broadcasts is accurate, independent, targeted, or even aligns with listeners’ needs or wishes.

Working in collaboration with Fondation Hirondelle, a Swiss-based media development organisation based in Lausanne, and its radio studios in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, you will be involved in the quantitative and qualitative analysis of data, radio programmes and radio generally. You will be fluent in French. Key areas of investigation will be radio, women, youth, politics, and Mali/Niger/Burkina Faso. Experience in these areas will be beneficial. You will have a good honours degree and will be undertaking or have recently completed a PhD in a relevant area. Familiarity with data management and natural language processing will also be advantageous. Some overseas travel may be required.

To apply, please click here. Closing date - 1 December 2019

For informal enquiries about this job, contact: Dr Emma Heywood - e.heywood@sheffield.ac.uk.

Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Apply here

The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia invites applications for a teaching-track faculty position in Communication to begin in August 2020. Open rank. Ph.D. preferred. This full-time, nine-month appointment requires teaching five courses per year. Writing cases and curriculum materials for internal and external use, and actively serving the Communication area and the Darden School are also expected. Initial appointments are normally for a three-year term, but may be renewed, pending review.

To keep pace with a rapidly changing global world, we seek an engaged colleague interested in transforming the way Communication is learned in business education. All faculty in the Communication (COM) area teach up to two sections of Leadership Communication, a required course in all Darden degree programs – Residential MBA, Executive MBA, and MS in Business Analytics. In particular then, we seek candidates who are able to work collaboratively with a faculty team to design and deliver a common syllabus, lead discussion-based and experiential courses, and model leadership communication in the classroom and the school.

COM area faculty also teach electives, which will depend on both the candidate’s expertise and students’ interests. Current elective courses include: advanced leadership communication; interpersonal communication; strategic communication; and corporate communication. Topics for new business-relevant electives may be proposed and developed. New courses may include, but are not limited to, requested topics such as: communicating to promote diversity, inclusion and belonging, especially in global contexts; mastering current and emerging communication platforms and technologies; visualizing and communicating data; communicating in impromptu and improvisational situations; or negotiating and transforming conflict. Opportunities to teach abroad in one-week Global Immersion Courses are also possible.

In addition to teaching courses in Darden degree programs, Darden faculty are expected and encouraged to engage actively with business practitioners. For example, engagement may take the form of participating in the Communication area’s Darden Leadership Communication Council, teaching in Darden’s Executive Education programs, or independent consulting. COM area faculty are also encouraged to maintain active professional ties through academic conferences and networks, and to generate and share new knowledge, especially related to teaching and learning. Opportunities for summer research and course development funding are available.

Attractive candidates will hold a Ph.D. in Communication or a related discipline. Non-tenure track faculty with a doctoral-level degree are appointed with a professorial rank – assistant, associate, and full professor. Applicants with a master’s degree, strong practitioner experience, and evidence of teaching excellence will be considered, and if hired, appointed as a lecturer. The appointment will follow the University of Virginia guidelines for peer review, renewal, and promotion opportunities, detailed in the policy for “Academic General Faculty – Teaching Track.”

Regularly ranked in the US and internationally among top schools in MBA and Executive Education, the Darden School’s culture values exceptional teachers with an on-going passion for the craft of teaching. Traditionally a case-method school with a general management approach, Darden’s pedagogical style promotes lively student discussion and experiential learning. Most teaching will take place on the historic Grounds at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Some teaching may occur at Darden’s new building in Rosslyn, VA, just across the Potomac from Washington, DC. Currently, instruction may occur in face-to-face courses, or in blended learning formats (face-to-face, synchronous and asynchronous online). The ability to produce video or Coursera-style courses is desirable. For more information about UVA and the surrounding area, please visit UVA Prospective Employees. See also 21 Reasons to Choose Darden.

To Apply:

Please apply through Workday, and search for ‘'Open Rank, Communication Faculty – Darden School of Business​". Complete an application online and see below for documents to attach. Please note that multiple documents can be uploaded in the CV/Resume box. Internal applicants must apply through their UVA Workday profile.

Required Application Materials:

• CV
• Cover Letter – please include how you learned about this position
• Contact information for 3 references
• Evidence of teaching excellence
• Evidence of curriculum materials, scholarship, or thought leadership

Please note multiple documents can be submitted in the CV/Resume Box. Applications that do not contain all of the required documents will not receive full consideration.

The position will remain open until filled. For questions about the application process, please contact Bethany Case, Academic Recruiter, at bcase@virginia.edu. For questions about the position, please contact Lili Powell, Associate Professor and Area Head for Communication, Darden School, at lili.powell@virginia.edu.

The University of Virginia offers benefits for legally-recognized spouses in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The University assists UVA faculty spouses and partners seeking employment in the Charlottesville area. To learn more about those services, please see Dual Career Program at UVA.

The selected candidate will be required to complete a background check at time of offer per University Policy.

The Darden School of Business is committed to fostering a diverse educational environment and encourages applications from members of groups under-represented in academia. The Darden School especially encourages applications from minorities, women, and those with significant international experience.

The University of Virginia, including the UVA Health System and the University Physician’s Group are fundamentally committed to the diversity of our faculty and staff. We believe diversity is excellence expressing itself through every person's perspectives and lived experiences. We are equal opportunity and affirmative action employers. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, veteran status, and family medical or genetic information.

Digital Culture and Education (Special Issue)

Submission deadline (extended): December 31, 2019, 12.00 (GMT)

Notifications: Feb 1 2020 (at the latest)

Aiming for publication mid 2020

5000 – 7000 word articles

This special issue of the Digital Cutlture and Education open access, online journal explores contemporary issues in digital ecopedagogy, particularly in relation to the education of children.

The worldwide youth climate strike on March 15 reflects young people’s growing frustrations with the lack of political response to the escalating ecological crisis. It also reflects the impact of efforts already underway to highlight environmental concerns. The

ecological turn has been gaining ground in social and theoretical discourse since at least the 1970s. During that time environmental education has been a concept in progress. Early debates concerning the notion of eco-citizenship and even the definition of nature itself express the growing realisation that environmental stewardship in the age of the Anthropocene (when humans dominate the earth) is a multi-dimensional cultural project incorporating everything from emotional re-learning of nature connectivity, through to eco-media literacy training, scientific witnessing, philosophical/economic reassessment and citizen action.

Alongside this, the growing ubiquity of digital culture has fuelled concern. In Last Child in the Woods (2008) Richard Louv blames the rise of digital screen culture for what he calls children’s ‘nature-deficit disorder’. Indeed, a 2013 study revealed that only 1 in 5 UK children felt sufficiently connected with nature (rspb.org.uk/connectionmeasure), raising the question of potential consequences for those 40% of the world's species already at risk of extinction and reliant upon human passion and dedication to save them.

Nevertheless, the role that digital culture plays in this crisis is still unclear and also in flux. Büscher’s (2016) concept of Nature 2.0 to describe the emerging digital representations of nature and networked engagements with the natural world points to the growing research interest in eco-digital cultures. Indeed, as Dobrin (2014: 205) observes, digital environments are “themselves natures … environments in and with which humans and non-humans forge relationships”. The ways that digital culture and nature are becoming increasingly enmeshed invites more discussion, particularly in relation to the role that eco-pedagogies play within thesesocial and material assemblages. Recent provocations include Fletcher’s (2017) discussion of the “environmental values behaviour” gap between the mediated appreciation for nature, versus the lack of societal commitment to conservation action.

Whilst nature-relatedness research (Richardson 2015, 2018) indicates that in order to build a joyous connection with nature, children in particular will often need to do so by focusing on the positives, free from the impending fear of environmental collapse. More evidence is required to help better understand the role that digital eco-pedagogy plays regarding these sorts of tensions.

This special issue invites researchers to explore these contemporary issues in digital eco-pedagogy.

Empirical studies are particularly welcome. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Engaging pedagogy with mediated experiences of nature relatedness
• Interplays of real/virtual, action/simulation, inside/outside, the physical world and digital space in environmental education
• Eco-media literacy, including awareness of the creative, economic and material modes of digital production
• Progressive and social constructions of ecological citizenship
• Navigating the limits, as well as the potential benefits of digital nature connections
• The intercultural, multi-dimensional, interdisciplinary and/or inter-generational dimensions to eco-citizenship
• Digital eco-pedagogy and cultural theory
• The digital mediation of inter-species relationships
• Digital representations of climate change e.g. abstraction, versus digital photo-realism
• Links between mediated play, expectations of nature and off-line behaviours
• Digital green-washing
• Testing the educational and social impact of digital nature connections across genres and platforms
• The use of portable, personalised, automated and/or ubiquitous technologies in digital eco-pedagogy
• Digital eco-feminist interventions
• Digital citizen science initiatives
• Collaborative Design of digital nature

5000 – 7000 word paper submission is due Nov 30, 2019. For author guidelines please see: http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/submissions/style-guide/

Please direct your questions to Bronwin Patrickson at floatingblueseen@gmail.com in the first instance, or alternately Alexander Schmoelz at alexander.schmoeltz@univie.ac.at

An ECREA Media Industries and Cultural Production Section Conference

November 22-23, 2019

National Film Archive, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline: June 15, 2019

Sponsored by the Charles University in Prague, the Media Industries and Cultural Production Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), and the Czech Society of Film Studies

The Eighth Annual Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference (SIECE) is following up with the previous year’s topic by providing a forum for discussing the online strategies of public service broadcasters and their possible transformations into a new kind of media services. While critical studies of television in the internet era and of online distribution of audiovisual content more generally have boomed in recent years, there has not been enough attention paid to the specific challenges and opportunities that the internet brings to public service media (PSM). This is even more the case in the small countries of Central and Eastern Europe where PSM have generally limited their online presence to catch-up services and are still looking for more complex solutions to keep up with commercial and global competition. They face enormous difficulties ranging from outdated legal frameworks and financing models, a lack of skills in digital curation or data analytics, unpredictable changes in consumer habits, the impact of social media platforms, and political attacks trying to take advantage of PSM’s insecure position. At the same time, the convergence of television and the internet presents opportunities for new business models, modes of audience engagement, and conceptualisations of public value. The SIECE VIII will strive to bring together international scholars of online TV with media professionals and policymakers to draw a picture of the situation, its roots and contexts, and possible scenarios for future development within East-Central Europe and beyond.

Potential topics for papers and panels include, but are not limited to:

• Public value: how the shift to online TV makes media professionals as well as policymakers and audiences reconsider the core values of public service media possibilities for creating public value outside the designated institutional spaces of PSM
• Industry structures: shifts in the dual TV market and the place of PSM in the emerging online-TV/VOD market competition/cooperation with the commercial and global digital services strategies of overcoming the public/commercial divide (such as the “ecosystem approach”) and their dangers
• Infrastructures: issues of access and digital divide, net neutrality, mobile data, smart TV
• Digital curation and big data: balancing linear schedules with nonlinear catalogues, archival material with new content, personalized recommendation algorithms with top-down editorial selections and curation
• - Online content strategies: development of trans-platform narratives, new promotional content/strategies, novel media formats, and short-form, web-only, spreadable content as a measure to re-connect with under-served (younger) audience groups
• Online audiences: the place of PSM online viewing in “media ensembles” and “use genres” of today’s TV audiences PSM’s own concepts and measurements of online audiences
• “Public social” media or “platformization” of PSM: consequences of interactions and hybridizations between social media and PSM
• - National and supra-national policies/politics vis-à-vis online TV: the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy and its potential impact on PSM online services the place and role of the EBU; territoriality of copyright and geoblocking new dangers PSBs face from their political opponents after transforming into PSM PSM’s open data policy
• - Professional cultures: tensions between TV and internet cultures within the PSM institutional spaces self-conceptions of PSM employees, independent producers and freelance talent up and down the professional hierarchy “industry lores” of PSM decision-makers
• - Transnational flows and globalization: co-production, format adaptation, cross-border circulation, and localization of public service content in the internet era, threats to local content and content diversity

The Screen Industries in East-Central Europe conference investigates the region’s audiovisual media industries from all angles – local, transnational, economic, cultural, social, and political – and through a broad range of original scholarship delivered in the form of conceptual papers and empirical case-studies. We welcome papers and panels exploring these issues from a range of contexts within and beyond Europe. A selection of the conference proceedings will be published in a special English-language issue of the Czech Film Studies journal Iluminace (www.iluminace.cz).

The 2019 Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference is co-organized with the ECREA Media Industries and Cultural Production Section. The conference will be preceded by a PhD workshop organized by the Media Industries and Cultural Production YECREA section, which will be held on 22 November.

The 2019 SIECE Program Committee invites proposals for twenty-minute conference papers and for panels of three or four speakers focusing on any topic related to public service media’s online strategies and within and beyond the East-Central European audiovisual industries. Panels of three to four papers should include a brief summarizing reflection of between five and ten minutes, which will be delivered by an assigned respondent to facilitate discussion. Proposals for conference papers should include a title, an abstract of up to 150 words, and between three and five key bibliographical references, along with the presenter’s name, the presenter’s institutional affiliation, and a concise academic bio. Panel proposals should include a panel title, a short description of up to 100 words on the panel’s focus, and proposals of all of the papers to be delivered (including the information described above). Please submit proposals no later than 15 June 2019 to Petr.Szczepanik@ff.cuni.cz.

Conference attendance is free, and the conference will be conducted in English.

Conference Organizers: Petr Szczepanik, Catherine Johnson, Pavel Zahrádka, Johana Kotišová, Giulia Manica, Maria Michalis, Julia Velkova, Kateřina Svatoňová, and Lucie Česálková, in association with the the Film Studies Department, Charles University, and the National Film Archive, Prague.

Conference Management: Jiří Anger (jiri.anger@nfa.cz; [+ 420] 778 522 720)