Call for Presentations

4th Global Conference

Friday 2nd May – Sunday 4th May 2014
Lisbon, Portugal

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Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field of academic study on the issues of gender in its social and cultural contexts. Since its emergence from feminism, gender studies have become one of the most deliberated disciplines. The following project aims at an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives on the issues of femininities and masculinities in the 21st century. It invites ground-breaking research on a plethora of topics connected with gender, to propose an interdisciplinary view of the frontiers and to stake out new territories in the study of femininities and masculinities.

Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

1. Representations of Femininities and Masculinities
- Femininities and masculinities in history and the history of gender
- The representation of gender in culture, art, film, literature
- The representation of gender in popular culture and media
- Gender in the relation to politics, law and social studies

2. Gender Borders and Transgressions
- Performativity of gender
- Female masculinities/male femininities
- Androgyny
- Transgender issues
- The body and its transgressions

3. New Directions in Feminisms and Masculinity Studies
- New perspectives in masculinity and boyhood studies
- Men in feminisms
- Third wave feminism, womanism
- Postfeminism, post-feminism and postfemininity
- Lesbian feminism
- Eco-feminism
- Cyberfeminism
- Individual feminism
- Feminist disability studies

4. Global and Regional Perspectives on Gender
- Gender and race
- Gender and nationality
- Gender and (post)colonialism
- Case studies of gender issues in local/regional/national perspectives
- Global masculinities/ femininities
- Gender across borders

5. Investigating the diffusion of feminism and feminist theory in non-West contexts
- Teasing out the tensions between competing feminisms
- The politics of representation: examining the “white woman’s burden” to voice/uplift her sisters of colour
- De-centring the onus of western feminism ‘as’ feminism proper
- Postulating masculinities in changing world-order
- Negotiating the back-story: the history of homosociality in pan-Asian societies

6. Gender in Relationships
- Motherhood/fatherhood
- Gender and family
- Matriarchy/ patriarchy
- Sororophobia and matrophobia
- Misogyny and misandry
- Female genealogy
- Gender and maturity

7. Gender in Experience
- gender in visual and performance arts
- gender in advertisement
- gender mainstreaming
- gender in psychotherapy
- gender, health and illness
- gender and the ethics of bodies and embodiment
- gender and education
- gender, education and equity
- gender in religion
- gender and NGOs

We welcome not only academic research presentations, but also case studies and creative proposals (creative writing, drama, visual art, performance, etc.)

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between two and possibly all three groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between evil, women, femininity and/or violence and/or femininities and masculinities.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 8th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: FM4 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:
Barbara Braid and Malwina Degórska: barbara.braid@gmail.com
Rob Fisher: fm4@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the At the Interface programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

me >  At the Interface > Evil > Monstrous Geographies > Call for Presentations

Call for Presentations

3rd Global Conference

Wednesday 14th May – Friday 16th May 2014
Lisbon, Portugal

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This conference focuses on the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic? From historical landscapes of purgation and judgement to contemporary topographical manifestations of the War on Terror and “enhanced interrogation,” and from haunted houses and ancient burial grounds to GM crops and biological futurescapes of cloning and purposeful mutation, geographical locations may act as the repository or emanation of human evil, made monstrous by the rituals and behaviours enacted within them, or by their peculiarities of atmosphere or configuration. Whether actual or imagined, these places of wonder, fear and horror speak of the symbiotic relation between humanity and location that sees morality, ideology and emotions given physical form in the house, the forest, the island, the nation and even far away worlds in both space and time. They may engage notions of self and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, normal and aberrant, defence and contagion; they can act as magnets for destructive and evil forces or become the source of malevolent energies and forces themselves. Alongside this, there exist the monstrous geographies created by scientific experimentation, human waste and environmental accidents, creating sites of potential and actual disaster such as Chernobyl or the Fukushima nuclear plants and , the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil disaster, and the devastated coastline of Tohuku, Japan. These places raise diverse post-human quandaries regarding necessities in the present leading to real or imagined futures of humanity and habitation.

Encompassing the factual and the fictional, the literal and the literary, this project investigates the very particular relationships and interactions between humanity and place, the natural and the unnatural, the familiar and the unfamiliar, and sees a multitude of configurations of human monstrosity and evil projected, inflicted, or immanent to place. Such monstrous geographies can be seen to emerge from the disparity between past and present, memory and modernity, urban and rural and can be expressed through categories of class, gender and racial difference as well as generational, political and religious tensions.

 Presentations, papers, reports, performances, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

Monstrous Cartographies:
~Terra incognita
~Real and Mythic lost lands: eg., Atlantis, D’yss, and Shangri-La
~Utopias/Dystopias, future cities in time and space
~Malevolent regions: eg., Lemuria, Bermuda Triangle, Transylvania
~Sublime landscapes
~Bodies as maps and maps as bodies, eg. Prison Break

Monstrous Islands:
~As sites of experimentation. Dr. Moreau, Jurassic Park etc As a beacon for evil: eg., Manhattan in Godzilla andCloverfield
~As site of ritual evil and incest: eg., Wicker Man, Pitkin Islands, Isle of the Dead
~Imperialist intent and construction: eg., Prospero’s Island, Hong Kong, Hashima

Monstrous Cosmographies:
~Evil planets and dimensions
~Comets, meteorites and beings from unknown worlds
~Worlds as dark reflections/twins of Earth
~Planets and alien landscapes that consume and mutate earthly travelers

Monstrous Environmental Geographies:
~Polluted lakes and landscapes
~Landfills, oil spills and mining sites
~Melting icecaps and landforms at risk from global warming
~Land impacted by GM crops and associated experimentation
~Sites of starvation, disaster and pestilence
~De-militarized zones and no-man’s lands

Monstrous Religious Sites & Ritualistic Monstrosity:
~Armageddon, Apocalypse and final battlegrounds
~Hell, the Underworld and Valhalla
~Eden, Purgatory, Paradise, El Dorado, Shangri La
~Sites of religious ritual, sacrifice and burial
~Houses and haunts of murderers and serial killers

Monstrous Landscapes of Conflict:
~The land of the enemy and the other
~Sites of attack and retaliation.
~Sites of revolution and protest
~Concentration camps, prisons and other sites of incarceration
~Sites of genocide, battlefields and military graveyards
~Border crossings
~Ghettos, shanty towns and relocation sites
~Urban and rural, cities, towns and villages and regional and national prejudice
~Minefields and sites of damage, destruction and ruin
~Arsenals, bunkers and military experimentation

Uncanny Geographical Temporalities:
~Old buildings in new surroundings
~Buildings with too much, and those without, memory
~Soulless Architecture
~Ideological architecture, palaces, museums etc
~Places held in time, UNESCO sites and historical and listed buildings
~Old towns and New towns, rich and poor
~Appearing and disappearing towns/regions, eg., Brigadoon, Silent Hill.

Monsters on the Move:
~Contagion, scouring and infectious landscapes
~Monsters and mobile technologies: phone, video, cars, planes, computers etc
~Fluid identities, fluid places
~Touring Monstrosities, dreamscapes and infernal topologies

Architectural Monstrosity
~Mazes and labyrinths (with or without the Minotaur)
~Unsettling/revolting geometries (E.A. Abbot’s Flatland, H.P. Lovecraft’s City of R’lyeh)
~Monstrous/abject building materials (bones, concrete, excrements, the corpse in the wall)
~The architecture of death (hospices, death row, funeral homes, slaughterhouses)

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between two and possibly all three groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Cybercultures and/or transmedia narratives, immersive worlds and/or monstrous geographies.

What to send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: MG3 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Rob Fisher: mg3@inter-disciplinary.net

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Call for Presentations

2nd Global Conference

Saturday 10th May – Monday 12th May 2014
Lisbon, Portugal

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The practices, sensibilities, issues and events that define the teen experience may vary across time and place, but collectively they inspire the development of a visual culture whose richness and diversity speaks volumes about the relationship between teens and their world. The Teens and Contemporary Visual Culture Project aims to facilitate a better understanding of how visual culture functions as a means of creative expression for teens, a bell-weather for teen perspectives and tastes, an historical benchmark of teen experiences and a potent tool for teaching and learning (whether in the classroom or through the didacticism of storytelling).

The project Steering Group invites proposals for presentations, performances, interactive workshops, readings, screenings, installations, reports on research, and pre-constituted, theme-driven panels. We are particularly interested in breaking the pattern of academic conferences by welcoming non-academic participants and by encouraging non-traditional approaches to presentations. The project will explore themes that include, but are not limited to:

Representation:● Portrayals of teenage life and teen cultures (mainstream, sub-cultures, counter-cultures)
● Identity issues concerning race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality
● Impact of “big” events (death and mortality, pregnancy, addiction, marriage, mental illness, disability, etc.) on teens

Storytelling and Aesthetics:● Studies of particular series, films, etc.
● Historical perspectives on teen visual culture
● Responding to/setting trends in teen fashion, music and pop culture
● Narrative studies
● Adapting stories between media and across cultures
● Making and breaking generic conventions
● Impact of star persona/celebrity
● Factors in the phenomenon: why some teen programming goes viral and others fail
● Assessments of the messages, meanings and cultural significance of specific texts, storylines and characters

Production:● Teens as producers (e.g teens in writers’ rooms and creative teams; teens as producers of fan fiction, videos and art; teens as campaigners/correspondents seeking to influence storylines, etc.)
● Technologies of production, distribution and marketing (e.g. the impact of multiplatform experiences and social media)

Reception:● Teen audiences and patterns of consumption
● Cross-cultural reception studies
● Fan communities
● Teens and celebrities
● Teens as celebrities
● Controversies and moral panics
● Regulation and censorship
● The appeal of teen visual culture for adults, and its implications

Uses and Implications:● Why teen visual cultures matter
● Visual culture as a teaching tool
● Research methods and strategies for studying teens and visual culture do

Presentations will also be considered on any related theme.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between two and possibly all three groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Teenagers, visual culture, and/or urban popcultures, subcultures and/or storytelling.

What to send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 8th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: TCVC2 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Ann-Marie Cook: amc@inter-disciplinary.net
Dr Rob Fisher: tcvc2@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

CALL FOR PAPERS - 2nd INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES - COIMBRA 2014

2nd International Graduate Conference in English and American Studies

“Interventions: Private Voices and Public Spaces” || 2 – 3 May 2014 || Faculty of Humanities, University of Coimbra (Portugal)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS - 2nd INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES - COIMBRA 2014

2^nd INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE CONFERENCE

IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

“Interventions: Private Voices and Public Spaces”

2-3 May 2014      Faculty of Humanities – University of Coimbra (Portugal)

Following on from the 2012 graduate conference, “Discourses That Matter,” in this second edition we continue to examine how English and American Studies as academic fields matter in the current state of affairs. However, we will be taking our previous theme one step further by introducing the issue ofspace and extending our inquiry into matters of subjectivity, privacy, and surveillance. Both the free access to digital information and the post-9/11 security politics have brought to the fore pressing questions of legitimacy that demand a reconfiguration of the public/private dichotomy. This question is actually not new, bearing in mind feminist critics’ powerful argument that the private has always been political, which made access to public space a condition to full citizenship. The dangers entailed in the world of network technologies, the recent WikiLeaks scandals, the revelation of a domestic spying program in the U.S., and suspicions of its existence in other countries, have made us realize the fragility of the balance between personal privacy and public authority, and how easily instances of surveillance sideslip into instances of ‘surviolence.’ On the other hand, the denunciation of private instances of violence or oppression through their exposure in the public space (documentaries, photojournalism, photography, social media), the mobilization of citizens across space through social networks, the invasion and occupation of public space by protesting citizens, migratory movements from postcolonial to postcapitalist spaces (and the entailed disruption of assigned social space), artists turning private bodies into public spaces or occupying public spaces for their artistic interventions, are some of the many instances that complicate our perception of the right to privacy, the limits of public policing, and the creative possibilities around the issue of space.

How can we contribute to a timely and necessary reflection on the reconfiguration of the public/private dichotomy, and how can English and American Studies intervene in this debate? How have literary and cultural studies approached these subjects? Where do we draw the line between public and private nowadays? What spaces are not public? What voices are still private? Is there such a thing as the privacy of public spaces? Is it always negative when private spaces become public? Is it desirable that public spaces are appropriated by private causes? What is the role of social media in our thinking of private/public spaces? What impact do these matters have on the body? And how can interventions be considered as acts of performativity?

As interdisciplinary academic fields concerned with entities bearing a common imperial legacy, English and American Studies hold a privileged position for understanding today’s world. From this vantage point, we will try and find how interventions in public and private spaces take place and shape our realities.

We invite proposals in the Humanities and Social Sciences from graduate students and early career scholars for 20-minute presentations; papers should address one or several of the following areas:

- English and American Literatures                            - Comparative Literatures and Cultures

- Ethnicity and National Identities                             - Postcolonial Studies

- Visual Studies                                                        - Media, Communication and Cybercultures

- Cultural Studies                                                     - Gender and Queer Studies

- Discourse Analysis                                                  - Performativity Studies

Students who are beginning to pursue their MA or PhD degrees are also welcome to participate in aroundtable, where research projects can be briefly introduced and discussed (max. 10 minutes). Our aim is to provide an informal setting based on cross-institutional collaboration, so as to enable dialogues about current research projects and future working life.

Abstracts for presentations should be limited to 300 words, and be accompanied by the author’s name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and subject area according to the list above. Students wishing to participate in roundtables should send a summary (100 words) of the topic they wish to discuss, along with the author’s name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation.

Paper proposals and roundtable summaries should be sent to our e-mail address atgradconf2014@gmail.com. Only one submission per participant per category will be considered.

The conference will be held in English.

December 20, 2013: Deadline for submission (a confirmation e-mail will be sent).

January 13, 2014: Notifications regarding paper proposals.

March 31, 2014: Deadline for regular registration.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.gradconf2014.blogspot.com/  

6th Global Conference: Evil, Women and the Feminine Friday 2nd May - Sunday 4th May 2014 Lisbon, Portugal Call for Presentations: Despite the attempts of feminists the conjunction between evil and the feminine seems unbroken. Established as secondary, derivative and hence inferior, women have been long suspected of being the source of human (though more often masculine) miseries, always in cahoots with the forces of evil and destruction. Paradoxically, at the same time, some have also been put on the pedestal and lauded as ideals of purity and dedication, yet these paragons only proved the rule that, on average, the feminine/woman equals imperfect and transgressive. Mischievous, beguiling, seductive, lascivious, unruly, carping, vengeful and manipulative - these are only a few of the epithets present in cultures and literatures across the world. In grappling with our understanding of what it is to be and do 'evil', the project aims to explore the possible sources of the fear and hatred of women and the feminine as well as their manifestations and pervasiveness across times, cultures and media. Evil, Women and the Feminine seeks to engage fruitful academic discourse over the core theme of evil and monstrous women, and the variations thereof. Although this type of discourse can lend itself to a feminist theoretical standpoint, the conference does not necessarily align itself as such and welcomes a variety of theoretical and critical approaches, such as - but not limited to - queer studies, post-structural, Marxist, psychoanalytical, anthropological etc. Among the core themes to be explored at this years conference explored are: - Murderess', terrorists, child-killers, kidnappers, abusers, serial killers - Monstrous motherhood in literature and film: monstrous births and infanticide (Beowulf, Alien, Rosemary's Baby, etc. - Archetypical fears: feminine blood and castration - Portrayal of Evil Woman in Literature: from Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth to Kessey's Sister Ratched. - Psychoanalytic perspectives: "Vagina Dentata" etc - Historical perspectives of female evil - Women and/in Power: Cleopatra, Messalina, Isabella of Castile, Mary Tudor, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Lucia Borgia, Eva Peron, etc. Were these women truly evil or did they merely try to survive in a man's world? - Holocaust and Nazi witches: Irma Grese or the "Bitch of Belsen", Ilse Koch Born, Witch of Buchenwald and others; - Evil women in the visual arts - Cultural and racial stereotypes - Mythological icons: Medusa, Jezebel, Delilah, Lilith, Harpies, Sirens, Hel, Eris - Female revenge: women who took revenge on their unfaithful husbands or ungrateful children. From mythology to real life: Kriemhield, Medea, Clytemnestra, Katherine Knight, Maria Savez, etc. - Evil females in children's books and cartoons. Step-mothers are supposed to be the most evil women in the world of fairy-tales and Disney cartoons but is this really so? - Ethical studies - Beauty as threatening or evil: from the times of witch-hunts female beauty was considered dangerous. Do we still feel threatened by a female beauty? - Fantasy: evil women in strips and video games; - Folklore: female Vampires, witches, witch-hunts, pact with a devil - Evil Women in/and Religion: Dark Goddesses and Counter-Readings The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between two and possibly all three groups - and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between evil, women, femininity and/or violence and/or femininities and masculinities. What to Send: 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords. E-mails should be entitled: EWF6 Abstract Submission. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend. Organising Chairs: Natalia Kaloh Vid: nkv@inter-disciplinary.net Rob Fisher: ewf6@inter-disciplinary.net The conference is part of the At the Interface programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference. Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/evil-women-and-the-feminine/call-for-papers/

2nd Global Conference:Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond Wednesday 14th May âАУ Friday 16th May 2014 Lisbon, Portugal

Call for Presentations:

The Global Research Project on Transmedia was launched in Sydney, Australia in January 2013 with a programme that brought together researchers, educators, industry practitioners and other stakeholders across the professional and disciplinary spectrum. (The programme is available online at http://tinyurl.com/bnysnt4  .) Discussions highlighted critical issues concerning techniques for user engagement; research, pedagogy and curriculum design; and evaluative techniques for complex and dynamic user engagement. The conversations highlighted the diversity of transmedia projects and fostered a greater appreciation of the ways in which alternative reality gaming, narrative and non-narrative multiplatform productions and social media projects fall under the transmedia rubric. For our follow up event in Lisbon, Portugal we welcome proposals for presentations, panels and interactive workshops that continue the dialogue by attending to themes that include:

Innovation in Transmedia Design and Production
-Aesthetics and creativity in production designs and trends
-Technologies of platform production
-Social networking trends and their impact on transmedia development
-Narrative development models and the mechanics of transmedia storytelling: emergent forms, formats, practices
-Non-narrative transmedia models
-Case studies

Education
-Research methods for studying transmedia
-Institutional acceptance of transmedia in the curriculum
-Different disciplinary approaches to transmedia
-Teaching transmedia
-Teaching with transmedia
-Training future transmedia producers (i.e. pedagogies for writing, design, platform management)
-Case studies

Transmedia Audiences/Users
-Defining and valuing modes of audience/user engagement: dwell time, sharing, user-generated content, and beyond
-Convergence, fragmentation and participatory culture
-Understanding the relationship between 'producer' and 'user'
-Studies of transmedia audiences, especially in cross-cultural contexts
-Uses and limitations of web analytics

Industry Performance, Funding and Sustainability
-Interdisciplinary approaches to identifying opportunities for a range of project scopes and levels of production from grassroots to global industry (self-funding, crowdfunding, arts organisations, broadcaset, global PR, etc.)
-Transmedia production business models, particularly strategies that take transmedia seriously as performance rather than as marketing offshoot
-Cultural policy as a means of promoting innovation and industry sustainability
-Case studies

The project Steering Group invites proposals for presentations, interactive workshops, screenings, installations, reports on research, and pre-constituted, theme-driven panels. We are particularly interested in breaking the pattern of academic conferences by welcoming non-academic participants, especially industry professionals, and by encouraging non-traditional approaches to presentations.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sess
ions between two and possibly all three groups âАУ and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Cybercultures and/or transmedia narratives, immersive worlds and/or monstrous geographies.

What to send:

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: TM2 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Ann-Marie Cook: amc@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: tm2@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the 'Critical Issues' programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume. All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/transmedia-storytelling-and-beyond/call-for-presentations/