The Twenty Seventh Annual Conference of the
Arab-US Association for Communication Educators (AUSACE)

Kuwait University, Kuwait

28-30 October 2023

THEME: Changing Media Landscapes: Convergence and Fragmentation

Media platforms have developed at an unprecedented rate recently, disrupting traditional
models for publishing, broadcasting, and advertising and creating a need for identifying new
models. As media become more fragmented and at the same time converge, implications can be
seen across several different areas, such as the way people access media, how media are
marketed, and how the media industry is changing.

We would like to invite humanities and social science scholars to contribute to our edited volume, ‘Oceans Seas and Shorelines in Film’, to be published in 2024/25 by Routledge in the Oceans Seas and Shorelines: a natural and cultural environmental history series.

Film is the most influential of all of the cultural media, combining powerful audio and visual formulas to recreate the world for the purpose of telling a story. It implicitly and explicitly conveys important aspects of real and imagined social change and exchange within a variety of environmental contexts, but the role of the environment and the impact of human agency on the environment has rarely been a focus of critical enquiry. 

Since their inception dating back to as early as 1829, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have continuously represented the notion of possibility and hope for African Americans. As an initial action, these organizations emphasized the educational improvement of Blacks at the elementary and secondary levels. Since the creation of the first HBCU, these institutions of academic excellence have transformed exclusively into postsecondary institutions, ultimately forming a network where thousands of African descendants could obtain an education that they otherwise could not afford due to years of educational suppression and segregation in higher education.

Bob Dylan's Blues: Blues Poetics and American Memory I am seeking  abstracts between 200-400 words for a panel on Dylan's incorporation, use, and revision of blues music especially in the context of theorists of blues poetics such as Houston Baker, Angela Davis, and Fred Moten. Most existing scholarship on Dylan's use of blues music remains informed by the work of writers and critics such as Sam Charters, Michael Gray, Greil Marcus, and Alan Lomax. This work often favors a conceptualization of the blues as a distant,  pre-modern source of "authentic" soundings.

    What is DiCon?

Diverge: to separate. Converge: to meet. In mathematical terms, the prefix marks the difference between infinity and defined. The Literature and Writing Studies department at California State University, San Marcos seeks papers and creative works that expand, transgress, problematize, and rethink hegemonic boundaries and definitions. 

The Gaskell Journal seeks a new Reviews Editor. As well as publishing peer-reviewed articles, this annually produced academic journal features 2-4 book reviews, of works focused on Elizabeth Gaskell but also on Victorian literature and culture more generally. The reviews editor’s role is to identify suitable books for review, contact publishers to request a complimentary review copy, and appoint appropriate reviewers. As well as engaging with our regular reviewers, this also involves making new contacts in relevant scholarly fields. The reviews editor must then keep in contact with the reviewer to ensure that the review is completed in good time, and meets house requirements, before forwarding it to the journal editors.

The next Film-Philosophy Conference will take place physically on campus at Chapman University, California, USA. 

This year’s event will feature a special screening of Marlon Fuentes’s critically acclaimed film Bontoc Eulogy (1995) followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

August Wilson in Context

Edited by Khalid Y. Long and Isaiah Matthew Wooden

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: “FORGING THE MEDIEVAL” IN INSTITUTIONS

Proposals for short essays (c. 3500-8000 words) are warmly welcomed, on the topic of “forging the medieval” in institutions. In galleries, museums, schools, universities, libraries, archives, or other institutions, how is the medieval past forged? How is it created and curated, presented and (mis)represented, through the institution’s objects and the concept of the institution itself?

About the contribution and cluster:

Concept note:

Conference Date/Location: March 25 - 26, 2023; DeKalb, IL

Deadline for Proposals: February 28, 2023

*Registration is now Open! https://mcllm7.wixsite.com/mcllm/registration-travel-planning * 

The 31st annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, is currently accepting proposals for 20-minute presentations from individuals and panels.

Continuous human presence in Low Earth Orbit, increasing expansion of techno-scientific infrastructures beyond Earth, and the extractivist ambitions of the commercial 'New Space' sector call for a reconsideration of the conventional analytical frameworks used to describe emergent (extra)terrestrial political, ecological, and social processes. On these accelerating investments, Vidmar has stated “the interplay between natural and social phenomena in the highly contested yet vastly open-ended Universe gave rise to an ecology of (trans)planetary systems – biological, technological and intellectual” (Vidmar, 2020, EASST.net).

This panel investigates Italian American transnational and transgenerational depictions of memory and ethnic identity through visual culture. Our goal is to invite scholars to reflect on diverse media and forms of representation, drawing attention to artists, authors, and performers who used visual components to narrate their hybrid identities and relationships to trauma, diaspora, and postmemory. Names like Fasanella, B. Amore, DiSalvo, Stella, and Scanga, come to mind, as artists who gave form to visual tropes of memory narrating their experience as first and second generation Italian Americans. 

Call for Abstracts and Proposals

Abstracts and proposals are called for research presentations, paper presentations, panels and position paper proposals. All abstracts and proposals must be submitted electronically though the chair persons listed. Only a complete submission is eligible for review. A confirmation email will be sent once the abstract or proposal has been received.