ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories, University of Brighton

Deadline: January 6, 2020

The Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories (CMNH) at the University of Brighton invites applications for AHRC/TECHNE fully funded doctoral studentships commencing October 2020 on topics concerning the cultural significance of the past for lived experience, social relationships, politics and identities in the present and in the future.

Trans/interdisciplinary in ethos, the CMNHoffers supervisory expertise to students working in and across a range of disciplines including history, cultural studies, literature, memory studies, social anthropology, cultural geography, art, media, film and visual studies, performance studies, critical theory, sociology, psycho-social studies, critical heritage studies, and narratology.

CMNH has particular research interests in the following thematic areas:

• Heritage in the Twenty-First Century;
• Medical Histories, Memories and Life Narratives;
• Complex Temporalities in Post–Conflict Spaces;
• Reparative Histories: Radical Narratives of 'Race' and Resistance;
• The Northern Irish Troubles: Histories, Memories, Silences in Conflict Transformation;
• History and Cultural Memory of Twentieth-Century Wars;
• Histories of Culture, War and Conflict in the Modern Middle East;
• Culture and Conflict of the Global Sixties: Cold War, Decolonisation,
• Third-Worldism, Transnational Solidarity

Applicationsfor PhD studies in these areas, and on topics that address the relation between powerful or official memories, narratives and histories and those which give expression to subordinate, marginalised and neglected historical experience, are especially welcome.

Proposals concerned with any practice that produces understandings and representations of ‘the past’ (including oral history, life history/life writing, remembrance and commemoration, critical archive practice, public history and heritage, autobiography, and history-making in popular culture as well as academic scholarship), and that relates to the interests of individual supervisors, are also welcome.

PhD students play a central role in the Centre and successful applicants will benefit from an exciting and supportive research culture with many opportunities for participation in our collective work. For further details about the Centre's thematic research areas, research interests and activities, staff and current research students, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/mnh

These studentships are offered by the TECHNE doctoral training consortium via the University of Brighton’s Doctoral College. For information about the awards, eligibility and application process, and to download application forms, go to https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/postgraduate-research-degrees/funding-opportunities-and-studentships/dtp-ahrc-techne-general.aspx

For information on TECHNE see http://www.techne.ac.uk

Applications supported by the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories have had a very good success rate in previous years. For advice on an application and potential supervision contact Prof Graham Dawson

G.Dawson@brighton.ac.uk  or Dr Deborah

Madden D.Madden2@brighton.ac.uk

Deadline for applications to the University of Brighton: 6 January 2020

Final deadline for applications supported by the University of Brighton to TECHNE: 20 February 2020.

March 28-31, 2020

Deadline: December 31, 2019

FilmForum 2020: XVIII Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School, Porn Studies Section

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.

The deadline for the submission of papers and panel proposals is December 31, 2019.

Proposals should not exceed one page in length. Please make sure to attach a short CV (10 lines max).

The conference fee is €150.

Selected papers will be considered for an edited collection within the book series “Mapping Pornographies: Histories, Geographies, Cultures” (Mimesis International, Milan-London).

Address questions and proposals to: goriziafilmforum@gmail.com, e.biasin@libero.it, g.maina@gmail.com, federico.zecca@uniba.it.

The Porn Studies section of the Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School is now one of the most important conferences in the field of porn studies, opening space for innovative approaches and methodologies for investigating the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. Drawing together the work of leading scholars from around the world (including Peter Alilunas, Feona Attwood, Lynn Comella, Kevin Heffernan, Peter Lehman, Alan McKee, John Mercer, Susanna Paasonen, Eric Schaefer, Clarissa Smith, Thomas Waugh, Linda Williams) as well as emerging scholars, the School has mapped a transformed landscape of sexual representations and coordinated a new wave of research. The section is also specifically focused on the relationship between production and dissemination of knowledge and related industrial/archival/artistic practices: artists, performers, archivists, curators, and media practitioners in general have been involved in the debate through screenings, curator talks, artist talks, and panel discussions (among others, the School has hosted talks by directors such as Bruce LaBruce, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Anna Span).

Northwestern University, Quatar

Deadline: November 20, 2019

Salary: Highly competitive

Contract Type: Permanent

Northwestern University in Qatar invites applications for a full-time faculty position in strategic communication. The position is attached to the Executive and Graduate Education program. The appointment start date is August 1, 2020. Northwestern University in Qatar is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive academic community. We are especially interested in candidates who have experience working with diverse student populations.

Candidates must have a Ph.D. in strategic communication or a related field, and must provide evidence of an active research program. The appointee will be expected to teach graduate courses as well as some undergraduate courses in the Journalism and Strategic Communication program, and supervise undergraduate projects, master's theses, and capstone projects related to strategic communication. There are opportunities to develop new graduate and undergraduate courses in line with the candidate’s own research interests and teaching expertise.

NU-Q offers substantial support for teaching and research, including significant internal funding and ample support in applying for external research grants. The candidate will also have opportunities to engage with Qatar’s industry and third sector and to collaborate with Education City schools, which include Georgetown University in Qatar, Weill-Cornell Medical College in Qatar, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, and others.

The appointee’s service responsibilities will include supporting the director of the Executive and Graduate Education program in the development and administration of traditional and online courses in the School’s new master’s degree programs.

Compensation includes a highly competitive salary, generous overseas benefits and allowances, free housing, as well as significant research and faculty development support. Academic rank will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. The appointed candidate and immediate family members will benefit from significant assistance and support in moving to Doha and making a successful transition to life in Qatar.

NU-Q is Northwestern’s first international campus and is a journalism and communication school grounded in the liberal arts. It is housed in one of the most advanced and well-equipped media and communication facilities in the world. As part of the Education City project in Qatar, NU-Q is a thriving hub for independent research and teaching excellence. NU-Q has a highly diverse community with nearly 400 students from more than 50 countries. Over 70% of our students are women and a great proportion come from the Global South. NU-Q graduates are employed by top media and strategic communication institutions in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. Students benefit from generous travel and research grants.

Our campus is located in Doha, Qatar, a culturally diverse cosmopolitan urban center, home to over two million persons representing 94 different nationalities. Doha hosts a diversity of racial, ethnic, and expatriate communities.

Applications received by November 20, 2019 will receive the highest priority. The search will continue and applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

To apply, please upload the following materials via the apply button here: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BWC480/faculty-position-in-strategic-communication

• a letter of application, with a section addressing the applicant’s research program and goals
• CV
• teaching philosophy statement (no more than two pages), with a section that addresses diversity and inclusion in the teaching environment
• contact details of three (3) referees
• Two (2) published samples (no more than 25 pages).

Shortlisted candidates may be asked to submit additional evidence of excellence in teaching, research and service.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer of all protected classes including veterans and individuals with disabilities. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Hiring is contingent upon eligibility to work in Qatar.

Digital Media Winter Institute 2020 | iNova Media Lab

January  27-31, 2020 I 9h30 - 18h

Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: January 13, 2020

We are pleased to invite you to SMART Data Sprint 2020!

The fourth edition of SMART Data Sprint brings together an international program with keynotes and practical labs by Tommaso Venturini (médialab of Sciences Po Paris) and Bernhard Rieder (University of Amsterdam). Venturini is a researcher at the CNRS Centre for Internet and Society, an associate researcher of INRIA and a founding member of the Public Data Lab. His keynote talk and practical labs are going to explore visual network analysis. Rieder is an associate professor in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam and a researcher at the Digital Methods Initiative. He will give a keynote on mapping value(s) in artificial intelligence (AI). The SMART Data Sprint is part of the Digital Media Winter Institute 2020 (DMWI).

In the first week of DMWI, from 27 to 31 January 2020, participants from around the world will come to Lisbon to attend keynote lectures, short talks, parallel sessions of practical labs and join applied research projects. Experts and scholars will invite participants to work collectively on issues involving internet memes and platform censorship, Anti-Feminist and Anti-LGBT Discourses, Method maps and Cross-Platform Digital Networks. Other opportunities for hands-on experimentation with methods are on the schedule with the following practical labs:

• YouTube Research & Ranking Culture
• Gephi for exploring digital networks
• Trends Studies & Digital Methods for Innovation
• Raw Graphs for data exploratory analysis
• Getting to know a list of data extraction tools (and what to do with it!)
• Getting to know a list of text analysis tools (and what to do with it!)
• Querying App Stores
• Visual Network Analysis
• Images Networks
• Visual social media analysis
• Vision APIs

To participate in the SMART Data Sprint 2020 is necessary to submit an application, until January 13, and pay the attendee fee. All information can be retrieved in the iNova Media Lab's website or the #SMARTdatasprint research blog. Please note that the SMART Data Sprint is also offering partial scholarships.

Also scheduled for the Digital Media Winter Institute 2020, from February 3 to 6, the workshop "Tracking, visualizing and accounting for the networks of (dis-)information with the web crawler Hyphe", taught by Mathieu Jacomy will be promoted. Jacomy is a techno-anthropologist at the University of Aalborg, TANTLab, a former researcher engineer at médialab of Sciences Po Paris and co-founder of Gephi software. The proposal of the workshop is to study and apply the Hyphe webcrawler and understand both information and misinformation issues on the web. Participation in the workshop also requires prior registration by January 20, 2020.

For further information, please access the links: http://smart.inovamedialab.org/2020-digital-methods

http://smart.inovamedialab.org/workshops/2020_networks-of-disinformation

Learn more about the data sprint approach in this video: #SMARTDataSprint

The Velvet Light Trap Issue #87

Deadline: January 31, 2020

Historically, media studies scholars have shied away from sports-related media texts due to a variety of perceived challenges: the sheer volume of texts (there’s always something on), their inaccessibility (the texts are ephemeral and controlled by corporate archives), the ambivalence of sports cultures (at once masculine and mainstream), and more. Additionally, other fields have long dominated sports scholarship, with communication studies and sociology shaping the academic discourse and asserting their own approaches. To mitigate these challenges, media studies scholars have applied alternative approaches to understanding sports media, such as critical-cultural analyses that account for sports media constructions of difference via gender, sex, and race—and athletes’ abilities to contest those differences. There have also been deft examinations of the media industries’ economic and ideological dependence on sports; historiographical accounts that mine a wealth of underexplored repositories and sources; and audience studies that foreground the reception and consumption of the sports genre.

While these studies placed sports media squarely in the foreground, others have used sports as a case study to illuminate broader trends in media studies. For example, scholars have recently revealed the key role sports broadcasts played in the innovation and diffusion of color television, while others have considered the pivotal role broadcasting, licensing, and franchising rights played in the conglomeration and consolidation of cable networks and providers. Others have addressed gaps in audience and fan studies by engaging with under-studied sports fan cultures.

Velvet Light Trap #87 seeks to deepen media studies understandings of sports. Given our current era of destabilization (of texts, genres, technologies, industries, distribution models, franchises, policies, etc.), sports undoubtedly remains a stimulus of—and, at times, barrier to—change in the media industries. As such, we invite a variety of media scholars—not just those who specialize in sports media—to reconsider and engage with sports in new and dynamic ways, asking, for example: How have production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of sports media changed over the last century and how are those changes reflected in the wider media ecology? What is the afterlife of sports media and how have those practices impacted scholarship, pedagogy, and future production practices? Where do radio and podcasting fit into the history of sports broadcasting? How are new media technologies (streaming platforms, video games, etc.) responding to, reacting against, or complementing linear sports channels and networks?

We welcome submissions that push the boundaries of current sports media literature and/or use sports media as key case studies, exploring any of the following themes:

• National broadcasting and industrial histories
• Early film histories and the continuing theatrical exhibition of sporting events
• Sports as a key media market sector
• Identification and identity politics (race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, nationality)
• Place and space [localism with franchises and coverage; (trans)nationalism with Olympics]
• Changing role of agents and agencies
• Franchising, ownership, and management
• Publicity, promotion, and marketing
• Activism and community engagement
• Ephemerality and textual analysis
• Distribution, exhibition, and transnational flow of sports media
• Archival perspectives, footage libraries, and audiovisual asset management
• Regulation (copyright, retransmission rights, horizontal integration)
• Labor, compensation, and ecological concerns
• Production techniques
• Genre analysis (non-fiction, narrative, & documentary)
• Pedagogical applications
• Video games (licensed games and eSports)

Submission Guidelines:

Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, formatted in Chicago Style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to vltcfp@gmail.com by January 31.

About the Journal:

TVLT is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographical approaches from the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism. While TVLT maintains its traditional commitment to the study of American film, it also expands its scope to television and other media, to adjacent institutions, and to other nations' media. The journal encourages both approaches and objects of study that have been neglected or excluded in past scholarship.

Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Texas at Austin coordinate issues in alternation, and each issue is devoted to a particular theme.

TVLT's Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Hector Amaya, Ben Aslinger, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Aymar Jean Christian, Lisa Dombrowski, Raquel Gates, Dan Herbert, Dolores Inés Casillas, Deborah Jaramillo, Meenasarani Murugan, Safiya Noble, Debra Ramsay, Bob Rehak, Bonnie Ruberg, Neil Verma, and Avi Santo.

TVLT's graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz, and Janet Staiger (emeritus).

March 13, 2020

Toronto, Canada

Deadline: November 29, 2019

https://www.mcluhancentre.ca/logout

SUBMIT: An extended abstract in English (500 words) and short biography (max 200 words)

CONTACT: Julie Yujie Chen at julieyj.chen@utoronto.ca

Digital capitalism is a terrain of intensifying social conflict. Work is increasingly shaped by technologies such as platforms and algorithmic systems, which standardize and reorganize the labour process, incorporate managerial tasks, and devise new forms of value generation. By decomposing or outsourcing jobs, technologies are being used to make workers increasingly replaceable. New surveillance techniques are used to control and discipline workers, and new forms of despotism in the digital workplace are on the rise. But workers don’t passively obey the rules of the digital economy. In recent years, repertoires of tactics inherited from the industrial era have been revived, adapted, and extended by digital workers to fuel new struggles in the contemporary economy. Look no further than drivers in the ride-hailing industry in the streets of the world, domestic workers and freelancers in North America and Asia, food-delivery couriers in Europe and Canada, warehouse workers in urban peripheries across the globe, software engineers from China to California, and game designers and other digital media workers in cities across North America.

The ubiquitous penetration of digital technologies in warehouses, workshops, offices, and app-based workplaces is met with novel workarounds and solidarity-building techniques. Both overt organizing and covert resistance connect workers in traditional sectors like hospitality as well as in booming industries such as logistics, online crowdwork, or the urban gig economy. Scholars from multiple disciplines and labour activists have started to shape the debate around digital worker struggle, but questions remain: What are the new challenges and potentials brought about by the new wave of autonomous decision-making technologies? Which new forms of class composition boost solidarity and organizing in the digitally-mediated work environment? What roles do technologies, cultures, geographies, and infrastructures play in worker organizations? How can tactical media be deployed towards workers’ goals? How do workers log out from or subvert digital labour?

Building on the success of the 2018 edition, Log Out! 2 brings together critical research on how workers from different sectors of digital capitalism across the world confront, negotiate, and disrupt the technologically-mediated conditions of work that structure and mediate their lives. We are interested in both empirical and theoretical contributions that address worker organizing and unionization, strikes, work refusal, algorithm hacking, tactical interventions, as well as the material and political economic components of resistance. Worker knowledge is critical to understanding labour politics: we welcome contributions from members of worker collectives and labour unions.

Log Out! 2 is funded by the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology and organized by the McLuhan Centre working group on digital labour. It will take place at the University of Toronto on March 13, 2020.

Confirmed speakers include Jack Linchuan Qiu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Sareeta Amrute (University of Washington and Data & Society). The conference will also host a roundtable of worker-led organizations, including Foodsters United, Game Workers Unite!, VICE Canada Union, and more to be confirmed.

​Results will be announced in mid-December 2019. Limited funding for travel and accommodation will be made available for selected speakers, with a preference for students, workers, independent or precarious scholars, and speakers from the Global South. In your application please indicate if you need financial support.

The organizing committee for Log Out! 2 is composed of Julie Yujie Chen, Nicole Cohen, Alessandro Delfanti, Greig de Peuter, Julian Posada, Brendan Smith.

November 12, 2019

Policy Observatory, Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster (UK)

The event is free, but advance registration is required: https://bit.ly/2MHHRH0

4:30pm – 5:00pm: Welcome drinks

5:00pm-7:00pm: Panel debate and discussion with the audience

7:00pm – 7:45pm networking drinks reception.

For decades, public service broadcasting has been at the heart of British culture, providing original British drama, trusted news and current affairs, entertainment and original comedy, as well as investing in popular children’s programmes, arts, documentaries and wildlife programmes. Obligations around UK content, diversity, quality and universality have ensured both a thriving creative industry and a range of programming available throughout the UK which reflects British values.

Recent trends in television viewing and production now threaten to undermine the contribution of PSB. A recent report by Ofcom highlights the popularity of new streaming services and their impact on traditional TV consumption, particularly among 16 to 34-year-olds.

While the plethora of new platforms and streaming services offer an unprecedented array of viewing and listening choices, they pose a unique challenge to many of the public policy objectives of PSB. As global content providers, almost all currently located in the United States, they cannot provide the same volume and range of UK content. Moreover, while PSB budgets diminish, the streaming giants continue to invest very large sums of money in new and lavish productions, thereby creating inflationary pressures for talent and production staff based in the UK.

This event will examine some of the urgent policy and regulatory questions being raised by new platforms and new global players in the audiovisual market. In particular:

• What are the particular cultural, economic and democratic contributions of PSBs that are under threat?
• How can they benefit from the new digital environment, in particular in responding to new technologies and new subscription competitors?
• What measures should governments be taking, if any, to protect and promote the national public interest by supporting PSBs?
• What regulatory interventions should be considered to sustain the contribution of PSBs?
• How are these challenges being addressed by European policymakers, and what are the implications of Brexit?

Speakers:

Professor Steven Barnett, CAMRI, University of Westminster;

Mrs. Bérénice Honold, Adviser International Affairs at the German Federal Film Board (FFA);

Mrs Lucile Petit, Head of Department VOD, Distribution and New Services, at the French regulator Conseil Supérieur De L’Audiovisuel (CSA);

The European Commission, The Audiovisual and Media Services Policy Division of DG Connect (TBC);

Channel 4 (TBC)

Dr. Maria Michalis, Deputy-Director of CAMRI, University of Westminster

Chair: Professor Naomi Sakr, CAMRI, University of Westminster

Communication Studies Department, Boston, MA USA

Apply here

The Department of Communication Studies at Emerson College seeks a faculty colleague with expertise in the field of global communication. This full-time appointment may be for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or for a renewable term Executive in Residence, depending on the candidate’s qualifications and current position. Appointment begins on August 20, 2020.

Emerson College is committed to an active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in the college’s intellectual, social, cultural, and geographical communities. Emerson endorses a framework of inclusive excellence, which recognizes that institutional excellence comes from fully engaging with diversity in all aspects of institutional activities. Therefore, we strongly encourage applications from candidates who can demonstrate through their teaching, research, and service that they can contribute to our excellence in this area.

We seek a colleague who can enrich global communication perspectives in one or more areas of the department’s curricula. By “global communication” we mean primary engagement with issues and stakeholders in specific countries or regions as well as those with international, transnational, and intercultural dimensions. Global communication represents a core educational commitment we wish to develop and enhance across the curriculum rather than a distinctive curricular area. Possible existing courses for the successful candidate could include: Crisis Communication, Leadership, Conflict and Negotiation, International PR and Global Communication Management, Management and Communication, Public Affairs Matrix: Media, Politics and Advocacy, Sports as Soft Power, and Health Communication Campaigns. The faculty member will also have the opportunity to develop new courses.

In addition, we seek a candidate who could participate in all facets of the operation of the Center for Global Communication, a partnership between Emerson College and Blanquerna-Ramon Llull University School of Communication and International Relations, Barcelona [ECBCGC]. This could include, but not be limited to, the organization of national and international academic/professional meetings as well as conferences, the contribution to research efforts, and the development, expansion, and strengthening of networks of scholars and practitioners spanning across countries, academic disciplines, and cultures.

The department offers undergraduate majors in communication studies, political communication, public relations, and sports communication as well as a master’s in public relations. In addition, the department offers a number of minors and houses Emerson College’s basic oral communication course. Annually, the department participates in the international GlobCom project, a multicultural global communications competition involving 15 universities in 15 countries on five continents. The department also has immersive programs in public diplomacy, political communication, public relations and civic engagement programs in several countries, including Mexico, Canada and Australia. Finally, global opportunities exist for research and teaching in Spain, Mexico, Australia, and other locations nationally and internationally

Emerson College’s Department of Communication Studies has continuously been recognized as one of the top Communication & Media Studies programs in the United States by College Factual, a market leader in providing college rankings. It represents one of the oldest communication programs in the country, with roots reaching back to Emerson’s founding as a school of oratory and expression in 1880.

Emerson College is the nation’s only four-year institution dedicated exclusively to majors in communication and the arts in a liberal arts context. Its main campus is located in the center of the dynamic multicultural city of Boston, in close proximity to major publishing houses, arts institutions, and research centers. The college also has campuses in Los Angeles and the Netherlands. Emerson College enrolls over 4,400 graduate and undergraduate students from more than 52 countries and all 50 states.

Required Qualifications:

● Master’s degree or equivalent degree in communication or a related field. For tenure-track assistant professor consideration, a Ph. D. in communication or a related field is required;

● Evidence of successful classroom teaching at the university level. In particular, candidates should demonstrate professional and/or academic experience in teaching or working with diverse populations and in multicultural settings;

● Content expertise in the areas specified above;

● For assistant professor consideration, a record of active, ongoing scholarly research (or promise thereof) is expected.

Preferred Qualifications

● Experience in global engagement (corporate, non-profit, NGO, governmental, academic).

Applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, a teaching philosophy statement, evidence of teaching effectiveness, contact information for three references, and (for candidates interested in a tenure-track, Assistant Professor appointment) a research statement and at least one sample publication. Each material should be saved as a separate PDF or Word doc. and uploaded into the upload section where it requests your CV. Although the upload section just shows "upload CV" - you should upload all materials in this section as the separate documents. 

Edited by Mats Bergman, Kęstas Kirtiklis, Johan Siebers

Models of Communication offers a timely reassessment of the significance of modelling in media and communication studies. From a rich variety of different perspectives, the collected essays explore the past, present, and future uses of communication models, in ordinary discourses concerning communication as well as in academic research.

This book challenges received views of communication models and opens up new paths of inquiry for communication research. By zooming in on the manifestations and purposes of modelling in ordinary discourses on communication as well as in theoretical expositions, the essays collected in this volume cast new light on the problems and prospects of models crafted for the benefit of communication inquiry. Complementing earlier studies of models of communication, the volume digs deep into fundamental epistemological and ontological questions concerning modelling in the communication disciplines; but it also presents several novel models that promise to be of practical use in empirical studies of media and communication.

The book is intended for communication scholars and students of media and will also be of interest for related disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.

Purchase here.

May 7-8, 2020

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

Deadline: January 20, 2020

The emergence of radio introduced profound changes in public communication, changing patterns of information dissemination at local, national and international levels. While in the early 1920s broadcasting was mostly operated by small stations listened to by a small group of people who owned radio sets, before the end of the decade large stations had already emerged on the scene, aiming to reach nationwide or even international audiences. The audio medium soon became a central instrument in the construction and dissemination of national cultures and shared identities. While this was obviously the case in the interwar dictatorships, in Western democracies broadcasting (first radio and later on television) also took centre stage in the dissemination of popular culture and was seen as a powerful tool of propaganda and of creation of national identities (MacKenzie, 1986; Douglas, 1999; Scannell & Cardiff, 1991; Hilmes, 2008) as well as of imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). In the case of the Imperial nations this role was extended overseas with radio becoming the most important medium for uniting the home countries with those living in the far reaches of the empires, though not unproblematically.

A growing body of literature on the history of imperial and colonial broadcasting, as well as of sound, have been contributing to the understanding of the role of radio technologies, broadcasting and music in the 20th century in forging audible and sonorous empires. However, the ways in which different imperial countries used radio to create a sense of nation and colonial identities among those living in different geographies and historical periods remains an open question that may well require different theoretical and methodological approaches, questions and answers. Firstly, how did different imperial projects engage with broadcasting, and how did they use radio as both an imperial and colonial tool across different geographies? How has broadcasting been incorporated and appropriated (similarly and differently) within different colonial settings alongside the rise of the anti-colonial liberation movements? How did different imperial nations embrace technological transformation in the field of broadcasting and of sound in order to achieve their goals? Which were the different broadcasting programming strategies adopted by distinct imperial nations and colonial rules in different territories? In which way have conditions and choices in radio reception shaped imperial and colonial broadcasting? Which were the broadcasting and sound practices that posed resistance to imperial and colonial radio strategies and policies? What role did the audio medium play during decolonization and how did broadcasting institutions change and adapt in the aftermath of colonialism?

The conference “Crossing Borders with a New Medium: Radio and Imperial Identities” seeks papers that tackle these and other issues of (inter)national and cross-border broadcasting practices and policies in different colonial settings. It aims to discuss how radio purposively served the idea of Empire while also serving as a tool to fight colonial rule alongside the rise of pro-independence movements.

Hence, papers dealing with the following topics will be highly appreciated (non-exhaustive list):

• Radio and national identities;
• Imperial and colonial broadcasting institutions;
• Radio professionals in imperial and colonial broadcasting contexts;
• Programming in international broadcasts;
• Reception of Imperial and colonial broadcasts;
• Technologies used for international broadcasting;
• Radio, ethnicity and race;
• Radio and practices of resistance;
• Broadcasting and colonial subjectivities;
• Radio and colonial independences;
• Radio and decolonization;
• Media entanglements in imperial contexts;
• Intermedial approaches to radio history in colonial contexts;
• Media systems in colonial and decolonial settings;
• Radio and music market in imperial and colonial contexts;
• Challenges of oral history.
• Sources and archives dealing with broadcasting in colonial settings;

All presenters selected will have a 20-minute slot to present their work, followed by Q&A.

How to Submit?

Please send a title and a 400 word abstract in Word or Pdf format before 20 January, 2020 (deadline) to broadcasting.empire@gmail.com .

Author name(s), institutional affiliation(s) and contact information should be sent on a separate file or on the body of the e-mail.

Authors will be notified of acceptance on 7 February 2020.

Conference fee

Full fee: 100€ (early bird) / 130€ (includes lunches and coffee-breaks)

Reduced fee for students: 50€ (early bird) / 65€

The conference will be hosted by the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at Universidade Católica Portuguesa and will take place within the framework of the research project “Broadcasting to the Portuguese Empire: Nationalism, Colonialism, Identity” funded by FCT and FEDER.

For more information about the project visit: https://www.broadcastingempire.com