CFP: Matter(s) of Fact, 20th Annual Graduate Student Conference at Western University, Ontario -March 15-17, 2018

Call For Papers:

“What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.” –

Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism

In his treatise Rhetoric, Aristotle details three principal means by which an orator can attempt to persuade an audience: by appealing to credibility and authority (ethos), by engaging the emotions of the audience (pathos), and by deploying logic and fact (logos). While Aristotle believes that presenting a strong body of proof is the most effective way of persuading people given what he argues to be humanity’s natural inclination towards Truth (Rhetoric I.1, 1355a15f.), he also concedes that those who have a masterful command of rhetoric can use their skills to arouse incendiary emotions, distract attention away from the subject, and override the rationality of any given audience. In drawing attention to the problematic manipulability of truth perceptions, Aristotle invites us to consider the epistemological affinity between belief and experience, as well as the ethical implications of all forms of communication.

Coinciding with such diverse phenomena as the rise of digital culture, the upsurge of political populism, and the hyper-technologization of modern life, competing narratives of factuality and truth have gained frontline visibility in our day-to-day reality. The discussions surrounding truths and facts have even inspired the Oxford English Dictionary to declare “post-truth”—an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”—as 2016’s Word of the Year. This parallels, in a supremely ironic way, the fabricated epigraph that Jean Baudrillard uses to open Simulacra and Simulation, the insight of which resonates even stronger now in our day with the accelerating digital age: “The simulacrum is never what hides the truth—it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” In the age of artificial intelligence, social media, and reality television, the notions of simulacra and creation of narratives impact ever more strata of our lives and bring to the fore questions such as: What kind of “new reality” exists in the era of post-truth, and how is that translated in cultural production? Is postmodernity, given its constant interrogation of realities and truths, the most productive way of helping us make sense of shifting epistemes? What responsibilities and challenges arise with the novel ways that knowledge—and perhaps by extension, truth—is produced and communicated? Are we, indeed, in an era of “post-truth”? Are we done with facts?

Furthermore, in the realm of narratives and material production, questions around literariness and fiction arise: if fiction is inevitably infused with a certain degree of reality, then is fiction, in turn, able to modify the Real? How are facts integrated into fiction and what happens when fiction interpenetrates with facts? In what ways can we speak about literariness as a post-factual regime? What have been some of the literary strategies deployed towards fictionalizing facts, truth, or epistemes? On the flipside, in what ways has fiction been historicized as fact, truth, or “real”? How have these polyvalent strategies evolved, if at all, over time?

This conference invites papers on literary, historical, and theoretical investigations of narratives, hermeneutics, and myths of facts and truths. Topics of discussion may include but are not exclusive to:

1) Myths and narratives: literary/historical/theoretical intersections of mythification; postmodernism and truths; hyperreality; simulacra-as-truth; rhetorics; “Post-truth”; hermeneutics of suspicion; populism and propaganda; emotion vs. logic; demagoguery and xenophobia; opportunistic narratives; the trans/de-valuation of facts-as-truths and truths-as-facts; truth-value; philosophy of language; trans-human, post-human, alternate ecologies

2) Wikileaks and whistleblowing in the digital age: digital humanities; ethics in the digital world; truth in the digital age; piracy and hacking; AI; AI and paranoia narratives

3) Critique of institutions: (post-)faculties; ideology, institutions and institutionalization; writings on art history and literary history; approaches to history writing; museums and art history; capitalism; avant-garde theory; culture industry and the Frankfurt School.

4) Material culture in the post-truth era: virtual objects; mythical and/or “real” and/or virtual artifacts; material culture and virtuality; artifacts and their faculties; art forgery; facts and things; representation of objects, objects as representation; surrealism and its legacies.

Related fields of interest may include but are not limited to: Comparative Literature and Literary Theory; Critical Theory; English, French; and Spanish Studies; Studio arts; Sociology; Anthropology; Political Science; Queer Theory and Gender studies; Interdisciplinary Studies; Digital Humanities; Cultural Studies; Linguistics; History; Philosophy; Film and Media studies; etc.

We are asking those interested in delivering 15 to 20-minute presentations to submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to themattersoffact@gmail.com by January 3, 2018. Please include your name, abstract keywords, institutional affiliation, technical requirements, and a 50-word bio in your email. Abstracts and presentations in English, Spanish, and French are welcome.

Abstract submission deadline: January 3, 2018

Expanded versions of conference presentations will be considered for publication in The Scattered Pelican, the peer-reviewed graduate journal of Comparative Literature at Western University.

Contact Info: 

Busra Copuroglu
bcopurog@uwo.ca
Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature
Western University
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Arts and Humanities Building Room 3R02
London, Ontario

Contact Email: 

themattersoffact@gmail.com

URL: 

https://mattersoffactblog.wordpress.com/

CFP: Love in Translation - Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature Graduate Conference, March 2-3, 2018

New Brunswick, New Jersey

Keynote by Professor Sandra Bermann (Princeton University)

Translation workshop by Professor Susan Bernofsky (Columbia University)

The biennial graduate student conference at the Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature seeks to understand how love figures in and is transfigured by translation. The conference invites participants to think about how love disrupts and transforms the ways in which literary imagination functions across languages, time, space, borders. Some of the questions we aim to address are: How is love translated? Can love be a methodology in translation? Is it a hindrance or is it generative? Is love a theme or a product of translation?

Graduate students interested in presenting their research at Love in Translation are asked to submit an abstract of 300 words that addresses the conference theme.

• Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Love and the ethics of translation
• Love and literary pedagogy as translation
• Love in the text
• Love, translation, popular culture
• Love, translation, world literature
• Love, translation, activism
• Love, translation, gender
• Love, translation, environment
• Love, translation, genre
• Love, translation, borders (textual, epistemic, geographical/geopolitcal)

The deadline for paper proposals is 11:59 PM on December 15th, 2017. Please e-mail all proposals to Conference Co-Chairs Penny Yeung or Rudrani Gangopadhyay at rucomplit2018@gmail.com . All submissions should include the title of the paper, the abstract, and the name, affiliation, and email of the author.

Contact Info: 

Rudrani Gangopadhyay and Penny Yeung

Conference Co-Chairs

Contact Email: 

rucomplit2018@gmail.com

URL: 

https://loveintranslationconference.wordpress.com

Travel Grant Funded Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Conference - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA May 31-June 2, 2018

This Year's Theme: Interventions

The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) invites proposals from its members for participation in its sixteenth annual meeting. You must be a member to submit, but we always welcome new members and encourage past members to renew their membership. Proposals on all topics of relevance to cultural studies with be considered, with priority given to proposals that critically and creatively engage this year's highlighted theme.

For our 2018 conference, “Interventions,” we solicit proposals that intervene in the theory, practice, teaching, or conception of cultural studies. We are also interested in how cultural studies itself intervenes in existing social, cultural, and political formations. Cultural studies is poised to play a key role in how we understand our fraught politics, fragile environment, and fragmented economy.

We wonder, as we look back at the legacy of what Stuart Hall called the First New Left, if it is time for something like a new socialist project? Greece’s Syriza, Spain’s Podemos, and the Democratic Socialists of America all signal potential energy for new economic models. But Brexit, Trump, and the resurgence of reactionary ethnonationalism alert us to the fact that empty calls for intervention are often answered by the basest forms of cultural repression. Additionally, a vast array of social struggles do not find any place within the current economic frame. These emancipatory movements--anti-racism, anti-imperialism, anti-war, the New Left, second-wave feminism, LGBT liberation, multiculturalism, and so on--emerged at roughly the same time as the field of cultural studies, and it is through cultural studies that we might intervene to claim space for them. As highlighted by tensions within the 2016 Democratic primaries and general election in the U.S. over the intersection of class- and identity-based politics, the intervention of emancipation is as unfinished as the welfare state is diminished by the “neoliberal revolution” (Hall). Today’s counter-hegemonic movements face some of the same impasses, but with a new urgency; now more than ever, we need an intellectual intervention to help craft new tactics and strategies, to generate new syntheses of economic protection and political and cultural emancipation, and to draw on the lessons of the past and build solidarity for the future.  

This year’s Cultural Studies Association conference will follow a one-day symposium on Wednesday, May 30th, hosted by the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon entitled “Karl Marx at 200: The Future of Capitalism and Cultural Studies.” We invite CSA members to attend the symposium, which features a lineup of established Marxism/Cultural Studies scholars who have been invited to circulate pre-written papers for the event. We hope this will provide an opportunity to use the bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth to think about the role of culture in capitalism and how culture resists and reshapes the economy, as well as the contemporary relevance of Marx’s intervention and the role of Marxism in what Hall called “Cultural Studies and its theoretical legacies.” The CSA conference extends these themes beyond Marxism specifically to consider the intervention of cultural studies in general and the intellectual and creative labor of cultural studies in particular. How does culture construct, contest, and constitute new capital formations? How does it intervene in economic conditions in multiple and heterogeneous ways? Conversely, what is the role of the economy in shaping culture? What is the role of cultural studies as critical praxis in the present economic time?

Topics that might be addressed include but are not limited to:

• The privilege of interventions; what it means to intervene
• The materiality and spatiality of intervening
• Work and labor--public intellectual work, physical labor, post-industrial labor, the work of culture
• The culture industry and creative labor
• Social media campaigns and their relationship to so-called real world interventions
• Media interventions, fake news, and resistance to/ reinforcement of current hegemonic forces
• Intersections of intellectuals and activists
• Revolution or reform? Socialism or barbarism?
• Art and social action
• Literary, cinematic, and other textual interventions
• Capitalism, culture, and technology
• Strike! Riot! Strike!
• The politics of anti-fascism
• Historically specific interventions for equality and justice
• Pedagogies of cultural studies
• Interventions in sustainability, climate change, and the environment
• Market-led globalization and cultural resistance
• Securitization and militarization; the threat of the nuclear option
• Nation-making, nationalism, and rethinking the national form
• Immigration and the movement of people across national borders within the U.S. and globally
• The movement for Black Lives and its intervention in media, culture, and the academy.

We welcome proposals from scholars from any discipline, inter-discipline, or scholarly field. The CSA aims to provide multiple and diverse spaces for the cross-pollination of art, activism, pedagogy, design, and research by bringing together participants from a variety of positions inside and outside the university. Therefore, while we welcome traditional academic papers and panels, we also encourage contributions that experiment with alternative formats and intervene in the traditional disciplinary formations and exclusionary conceptions and practices of the academic (see session format options listed below). We are particularly interested in proposals for sessions designed to document and advance existing forms of collective action or catalyze new collaborations. We encourage submissions from individuals working beyond the boundaries of the university: artists, activists, independent scholars, professionals, community organizers, and community college educators.

Important Dates:

Friday, October 13, 2017: Submission System Opens (Membership and Registration also open. You must be a member to submit!)

Friday, February 16, 2018: Last Date for Submissions

Friday, March 2, 2018: Notifications Sent Out

Friday, April 20, 2018: Early Registration Ends and Late Registration Begins (Registration fees increase by $50 for all categories.)

Friday, May 11, 2018: Last day to register to participate in the conference--your name will be dropped from the program if you do not register by this date.

LOCATION

The 2018 conference will be held at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. The closest airport is Pittsburgh International Airport (23 miles). Lodging options, which will include campus housing and a CSA hotel block in the Pittsburgh/Carnegie Mellon area, will be shared at a later date.

SUBMISSION PROCESS AND TIMELINE

All proposals should be submitted through Easy Chair using the links supplied on the member page for the Annual Conference. Submission of proposals is limited to current CSA members but new members are welcome. See the benefits of membership and become a member: Membership Application.

INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIPS include three complimentary conference registrations annually for students. Graduate students who wish to submit proposals are strongly encouraged to speak with their Department Chair or Program Director about institutional membership and where possible, make use of the complimentary registrations. Full benefits of institutional membership are described here:

http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/institutions.

The submission system will be open by October 13, 2017. Please prepare all the materials required to propose your session according to the given directions before you begin electronic submission. All program information--names, presentation titles, and institutional affiliations--will be based on initial conference submissions. Please avoid lengthy presentation and session titles, use normal capitalization, and include your name and affiliations as you would like them to appear on the conference program schedule.

In order to participate in the conference and be listed in the program, all those accepted to participate must register before May 11, 2018.

Register here.

TRAVEL GRANTS

CSA offers a limited number of travel grants, for which graduate and advanced undergraduate students can apply. Only those who are individual members, have been accepted to participate, and have registered for the conference are eligible to apply for a travel grant. Other details and criteria are listed here:

Travel grants may be found here.

For More Details: Do Visit:

http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=169

International Conference on Media , Culture and Ethics @ BITS Pilani,February 9-10, 2018

Greetings from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani! It is indeed our pleasure to announce that we are organizing an International Conference on Media, Culture and Ethics during February 9-10, 2018 at BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus.

The aim of the conference is to provide an opportunity to the researchers, scholars, academicians and practitioners from different parts of the world to understand and discuss the issues related to media, culture and ethics. The conference will try to draw guidelines of cultural behavior based on academic deliberations.

Prospective authors are hereby invited to upload abstract by clicking on “Online Submission of Abstracts” link given below. Authors are requested to note that in case of multiple papers, each paper is needed to be registered and uploaded individually, and registration id is unique for each paper. Full contact information (name, affiliation, e-mail ID and Tel etc.) of the corresponding author must be provided. Abstracts will be reviewed by the technical committee, and the acceptance of abstracts will be notified on the conference website. 

Conference Theme

Media and popular culture percolate in all aspects of our waking time. The unrelenting exposure predominantly guides our perception of reality, the formation of our values, our beliefs and attitudes and above all it defines self and society. This has become extraordinarily powerful educating agent among majority of the population. The speed with which it is influencing the society has blinded us. Hence, it becomes imperative to have the complete and true reflection of the cultures in which the stories are set. Authenticity and ethical guidelines also need to be employed seriously to the propagation of content through different forms of media. As the professional practitioners, it is of utmost importance not only to know our content and its relevance in today's context but also be good human beings, ethically cognizant of our responsibilities for others and world at large.

Culture is the belief system of a particular group, region or nation. The way content is circulated through films or other important forms of the media can have both positive and negative impact on different segments of society. Hence, there is an urgent need to study the nuances associated with the information being distributed and shared through different forms of the media and this conference would provide a platform to discuss the challenges and the possibilities to arrive at certain conclusions regarding the present status quo.

Objectives

• To explore the media and its influence on society and culture 
• To understand the role of media in development, communication and nation building 
• To identify the extent to which media engineers and distorts our perceptions 
• To find out the impact of news channels on the mind of general masses 
• To understand different formats of the print and electronic media 
• To unravel the ethical dilemmas in different cultures and media practices 
• To draw guidelines of cultural behaviour based on academic deliberations 

Key Areas/Tracks

• Communication and Culture 
• Media Ethics 
• Culture and Society 
• Journalism 
• Literature and Media 
• Radio and Television 
• New Media 
• Films 
• Advertising Communication 
• Corporate Communication 
• Intercultural Communication 
• Music, Art and Drama 
• Theatre 
• Media Literacy 
• Legal Rights and Issues 
• Political Communication 
• Intercultural ethics 
• Ethics in Communication 
• Ethics across cultures 

Abstracts related to the theme of the conference are invited in the following format: 

Word limit: 250 – 300 

Font: Times New Roman, 12 points with 1.5 spacing 

Key words: 4 - 5 

Referencing Style: MLA 

Title page: Title of the paper, Author/s name, affiliation, contact details and a brief bio-note of 3-4 lines. 

Selection Criteria: Relevance to the conference theme, originality, clarity, methodology and findings. 

Note: In case of any difficulty in uploading multiple abstracts, please feel free to contact us atmce2018@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in.

The deadline for the Abstract submission is October 15, 2017.

Contact Info: 

Convener

Prof. Sangeeta Sharma

Associate Professor,

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

BITS Pilani,Pilani Campus(Rajasthan)-333031,

INDIA

E-Mail :mce2018@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

sang@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

Ph:+91-1596-515609

Mobile:+91-9351388400

All correspondence may please be sent to mce2018@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

URL: http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/mce2018/

Fake News and Weaponized Defamation: Global Perspectives(with Travel Grants), California, United States,January 26, 2018

Concept Note:

The notion of "fake news" has gained great currency in global popular culture in the wake of contentious social-media imbued elections in the United States and Europe. Although often associated with the rise of extremist voices in political discourse and, specifically, an agenda to "deconstruct" the power of government, institutional media, and the scientific establishment, fake new is "new wine in old bottles," a phenomenon that has long historical roots in government propaganda, jingoistic newspapers, and business-controlled public relations. In some countries, dissemination of "false news" is a crime that is used to stifle dissent. This broad conception of fake news not only acts to repress evidence-based inquiry of government, scientists, and the press; but it also diminishes the power of populations to seek informed consensus on policies such as climate change, healthcare, race and gender equality, religious tolerance, national security, drug abuse, poverty, homophobia, and government corruption, among others.

"Weaponized defamation" refers to the increasing invocation, and increasing use, of defamation and privacy torts by people in power to threaten press investigations, despite laws protecting responsible or non-reckless reporting. In the United States, for example, some politicians, including the current president, invoke defamation as both a sword and a shield. Armed with legal power that individuals- and most news organizations - cannot match, politicians and celebrities, wealthy or backed by the wealth of others, can threaten press watchdogs with resource-sapping litigation; at the same time, some leaders appear to leverage their "lawyered-up" legal teams to make knowingly false attacks - or recklessly repeat the false attacks of others - with impunity.

Abstract Deadline: September 25, 2017
Completed Paper Deadline: January 5, 2018
CONFERENCE Date: January 26, 2018

Papers should have an international or comparative focus that engages historical, contemporary, or emerging issues relating to face news or "weaponized defamation." All papers submitted will be fully refereed by a minimum of two specialized referees. Before final acceptance, all referee comments must be considered.

Accepted papers will be peer-reviewed and distributed during the conference to all attendees. 

Authors are given an opportunity to briefly present their papers at the conference. 

Accepted papers will be published in the Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law, the Southwestern Law Review, or the Southwestern Journal of International Law. 

Authors whose papers are accepted for publication will be provided with round-trip domestic or international travel (subject to caps) to Los Angeles, California, hotel accommodations, and complimentary conference registration. 

Publication:

The Journal of International Media & Entertainment Law is a faculty-edited journal published by the Donald E. Biederman Entertainment and Media Law Institute at Southwestern Law School, in cooperation with the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law, and the ABA’s Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries.

​The Southwestern Law Review and the Southwestern Journal of International Law are honors publications edited by students at Southwestern Law School.

Contact Info: 

Dr. Michael M. Epstein, Supervising Editor, Journal of International Media & Entertainment Law - Southwestern Law School

Contact Email: Jimel@SWLaw.edu

URL: 

http://www.swlaw.edu/curriculum/honors-programs/law-review-journals/journal-international-media-entertainment-law