CFA: International Conference on 'AI and Society", School of Liberal Arts, Alliance University, Bangalore. Dates: 1-3 March 2024

Concept Note and Submission Details:

The blinding glare of AI makes us squint in a combination of hope and fear. We have to take pause and redirect the glare through the prisms of diverse domains and disciplines, to take advantage of the perhaps still-too-human ability to detach and reflect, immerse, and observe, both at the same time. The reflective part of the conference not only steers away from the enchantment of grand questions and grand paranoia, but invites the best combination of breadth and specificity, accessibility and depth, freedom and discipline. The immersive dimension, on the other hand, asks us to submit to the most eclectic manifestations of AI: whether it is about talking to a therapy bot, co-creating AI art, using AI mechanisms to generate historical narratives and research documents, using AI devices to encounter health and climate hazards, diving into an AI-generated metaverse, and many other aspects. Such immersions are meant to usher in new possibilities of reflection. While recent incarnations like ChatGPT force us to take stock of the disruption brought about by the generative paradigm, we will also acknowledge earlier inflections that AI brought about in recommendation systems, translation engines, image-processing, cultural understandings, socioeconomic growths, among many others. Are some of these inflections such as therapy bots and AI-driven media poised for their own respective singularities? Is there a possibility of building an intersectional alliance with AI so that the singularities do not emerge as all-pervading, imperial, and dictatorial entities around us?

What makes this collective exercise in contemplation unique is the meeting ground it offers for theorists, practitioners, critics, and enthusiasts. Located in Bangalore, which is India’s de facto AI capital, this is envisaged to be a one-of-a-kind exchange involving a thriving AI community of academic experts drawn from the world over. Slicing through the jargon of technological advances, the arcane dialect of academia, and the authentic vernacular of consumers and users, the conference does not presume a pre-existing language for communication, but instead hopes to arrive at one. Concerning these arguments, the conference invites Ph.D. scholars, postdoctoral fellows, independent researchers, and faculties from different educational and research institutions to contribute abstracts on the following sub-themes (but not restricted to):

• AI and philosophy

• AI and Cultural Studies

• AI and Political Science

• AI and Psychology

• AI, Science and Technology, and Science and Technology Studies (STS)

• AI and Media

• AI, Design, and Art

• AI, Translation Studies and Machine Learning

The range and scope of topics have been kept wide enough to enable conversations and inputs from actual stakeholders of AI (technocrats and policymakers). 

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Submissions should be able to underline why the research problems concerned matter beyond their sub-disciplines. Interested contributors need to submit an extended abstract of 800-1000 words and the timeline of submission is 31st January 2024. The contributors will be informed about the outcome of their submission on/by 15th February 2024. 

After the conference, selected presenters would be invited to submit chapters for conference proceedings. 

Please send the abstracts to both 

Dr. Ravi Chakraborty (ravi.chakraborty@alliance.edu.in) and 

Dr. Sayan Dey (sayan.dey@alliance.edu.in).

CFP: Interdisciplinary conference on iving in the Era of Neo-Orientalism: Complicating Muslim Identities in a Post-9/11 World-O.P. Jindal Global University, Delhi- NCR, India

 Mode of the conference: Online

Muslims are often portrayed as either victors or vanquished in post-9/11 literature. These narratives address the estrangement of a Muslim either by reiterating the Orientalist representations of Islam or by subscribing to Neo-Orientalist representations of an “acceptable Muslim” who chooses national identity over religious identity in Western liberal societies. Neo-Orientalism is more than ‘sue generis’ to Orientalism—it embodies newer ways of alienating Muslims in modern society. Ali Behdad and Juliet Williams describe it as a “continuity between contemporary and traditional forms of Orientalism”  that complicates everyday living in Muslim life. Popular opinion often rests on the fact that the alienation of ‘post-9/11 Muslim’ is the result of failed American diplomacy in the Middle East or the racialization of Muslims in the United States after the Twin Tower attacks. This conference attempts to bring together scholars who inquire into this Muslim alienation in varied global productions across Muslim and non-Muslim cultures in contemporary times.

 

While there is considerable scholarship on Neo-Orientalism, what remains largely undiscussed are the ways in which Muslims grapple with the effects of Neo-Orientalism in contemporary global literature. Therefore, this conference seeks to achieve two things: First, it aims to delve deep into the origins of contemporary orientalism/post-orientalism debate—the religious, political, and social constructs of liberal democracies that encourage and detest neo-Orientalism at the same time. Second, it aims to explore ways in which contemporary literature has represented Muslims and Muslimness in the neo-Oriental age. The purpose of this conference is to bring together experts (literary, political, social, and cultural) who engage with discourses that complicate the representations of Muslims in the post-9/11 world. This note seeks papers, but not limited to the following areas:

 

• Postcolonialism and Neo-Orientalism
• Liberalism and Orientalism
• Islamophobia in secular democracies
• Muslims responding to the pandemic of islamophobia worldwide
• Muslimness or everyday Islam in modern societies
• The politics of moderate Islam as a neo-colonial and neo-liberal enterprise

Keywords: Literature, Political Science, Anthropology, Terrorism Studies, and Islamic Studies

Please submit an abstract of 300-500 words and a short bio to Priyadarshini Gupta at priyadarshini@jgu.edu.in and/or to Mosarrap Hossain Khan at mhkhan@jgu.edu.in by December 15, 2023.  We also encourage prospective conference presenters to email us with any queries.

Keynote Addresses:  

Dr. Hamid Dabashi (Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA)

Dr. Ali Behdad (John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

Dr. Tahir Abbas (Professor of Radicalization Studies, Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University, The Hague, Netherlands)

Dr. Nadira Khatun (Assistant Professor of Mass Communications, School of Communications, XIM University, Odisha, India)

Selected papers accepted from the conference will be published as a collection of essays in an edited book by a major publisher.