Call for Papers

Media, American Culture, and Global Perspective: Images, Ideas, and Illusion

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia

March 31, 2023

Deadline for submission: January 20, 2023

• The 2023 Croatian Association for American Studies conference will be hosted by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, in Rijeka, Croatia, on March 31, 2023.

• Key-note speaker: Denise Pilato, professor emerita, Eastern Michigan University

• Talk title: TBA

The topic of this year’s conference is “Media, American Culture, and Global Perspective: Images, Ideas, and Illusion.”

American mass culture has been a force dominating global culture for a very long time. The West’s long-exercised control over the world’s media systems, which survey and control the economy, affect human consciousness, and implement ideologically tainted reality, is no secret. However, one of the distinguishing features of the present period and our computationally intensive environments is the production of a new communications geography—the torrential flow of data and images, characterized by global networks with international, non-stop flow of information. Paradigm-shifting tech advancements, from smartphones and social media to AI-powered algorithms and analytics, deliver targeted information by favoring explosive emotional responses from readers as consumers, creating ever shifting and increasingly contested mediascapes in the process.

During the pandemic, our rapidly increasing dependence on the use of digital technologies, including both positive and negative aspects consumed by global audiences, revealed our vulnerability to the consumption of bias ideas and propaganda fueled by both legitimate media outlets and overseas bots, along with important facts and essential information. Adapting to the constantly changing digital landscape, which continues to expand with the amount of daily data produced, measured in zettabytes, demands critical assessment and an increased measure of media literacy. Everyday digital images are consumed by global audiences who mediate meaning through diverse cultures, values, traditions, and life experiences. Some images appear as globally ubiquitous regardless of the audience; however, they may connote vastly different meanings. Although English remains the dominant global language, new technologies deliver questionable linguistic and cultural translations to all corners of the world.

This conference focuses on the relationship between media technology and culture and examines the changing landscape of our global community by looking at cultural impacts of media. We encourage participants to rethink the role of the media through the lens of cultural encounter and critically assess our place in the inherent tension that mediates human experience in a technologically controlled world.

We will address the following questions: How is media-related technological progress tied to assumptions about gender, race, and culture? In what ways does technological infrastructure mobilize cultural values? How do we identify bias, truth, and falsehood in images perpetuated on a global scale? What are the consequences of media industries and the politics of communication on the politics of space and place? Why do ideas and illusions generated by some images influence our communities and our individual selves more than others? Why do our minds and first impressions never change, even when presented with facts?

With these initial questions in mind, we invite contributions that would tackle any of the following problems (or add other relevant ones) in the U.S.-context and in the comparative perspective:

• media imperialism
• the implication of the media for transcultural encounters
• questions of language and domination, translation as mediation, and transculturation
• the role of communication technologies in reconfiguring contemporary cultural identities
• power, boundary-making, and exclusion processes tied to cultural ideologies and biases in algorithms, news, and advertising for demographic-specific media consumption
• gender identity promoted, manipulated, and challenged through global images and culture-specific ideologies
• recognition of diverse perspectives in global images, including values grounded in race, religion, gender, geopolitics, and other cultural lenses
• effective tools for the exploration and deconstruction of ubiquitous images
• how can images promote understanding and build positive connections as well as cause misunderstanding resulting in disruption
• the impact of media culture not only as technology but also as a culture represented in literature, film, gaming, advertisement, history, and art that presents an interdisciplinary approach to the academic experience
• overproduction of information (TMI, clickbait, news fatigue, fake news, etc.) along with constant context-switching environments
• fragmentary consumption of news and the promotion of a sense of immediacy and emotional responses
• long-tail economics leveling field, wherein all information consumed digitally seem to be of equal importance
• temptation of data-led decision-making in newsrooms and implications of audience targeting in the building and undermining of democracy (social media influencing elections, free-speech debates)
• post-pandemic burnout, tuning out of social media, and the Great Resignation
• challenges for media futures in the age of metaverse(s) and singularity

Titles and abstracts (no longer than 250 words) of 15-minute presentations, accompanied by one-paragraph CV, should be sent to the conference organizers by February 1, 2023, to all the following e-mails: Lovorka Gruić Grmuša (lovorka.gruic.grmusa@ffri.uniri.hr), Sanja Runtić (sruntic@ffos.hr), and Petra Sapun Kurtin (petra.sapunkurtin@ffri.uniri.hr). Notifications of acceptance will be sent by February 5, 2023.

The conference fee is 30 euros. The fee is waived for the CAAS members in good standing. The fee for non-waged participants (students, postdocs, etc.) is 20 euros. Selected papers will be published in a peer-reviewed, open-access publication. The details about the publication process will be given in due course.

We look forward to seeing you in Rijeka at the Croatian Association for American Studies 11th annual conference.

For the Academic Committee,

Lovorka Gruić Grmuša
Petra Sapun Kurtin
Sanja Runtić

For the Academic Committee,

Sven Cvek, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Dubravka Đurić, Singidunum University, Serbia 
Aleksandra Izgarjan, University of Novi Sad, Serbia 
Klára Kolinská, Charles University, Czech Republic
Marko Lukić, University of Zadar, Croatia
Valentina Markasović, University of Osijek, Croatia
Timothy Petete, University of Central Oklahoma, U.S.A.
Rajko Petković, University of Zadar, Croatia
Denise Pilato, Eastern Michigan University, U.S.A.
Jelena Šesnić, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Selma Veseljević Jerković, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina