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Sunday, January 21, 2024

CFP: #ICSSR Sponsored International #Conference on Backwash: #Voices on Environmental #Colonialism and #Post-colonials from the Global South-Centre for #Australian Studies, Bankura University

 



Concept Note:






Slowly but surely, the contemporary world order is shifting – from the West dominated unipolar order to a multipolar promise with its tilt towards the Global South, especially Asia. This shift of centre of geo-political gravity began primarily in the Asian Century and necessitates a re-ordering of narratives, a re-writing of histories, an acceptance of non-metropolitan perspectives, and invoking a backwash – of voices formerly considered residual and irrelevant. . . One of the formative moments of that hegemony began on a warship in 1941 when Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt made their Joint Declaration of “hopes for a better future of the world”, which would provide the basis for the later Charter of the United Nations in 1945 and its grand rhetoric of committing to the rights of “all the men in all the lands”. The New World Order thus created fortified only the Anglo-American alliance and the hold of imperial and proto-imperial powers that aimed to rule the world as a post-colonial alibi, the Charter having provided the legal basis for anticolonial and anti-imperial movements across the Global South.

Coined in 1969 by Carl Ogelsby who argued that “the North’s dominance over the global South . . . [has] converged . . . to produce an intolerable social order” in relation to the Vietnam War, the term “Global South” gained traction in 1974 with the United Nations ‘Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order’ and became synonymous with the Third World after the 1980 Brandt report drew an imaginary line based on GDP per capita. The imaginary of the Global South has had little to do with physical location and latitude. India located in the northern hemisphere qualified for the “South” and Australia and New Zealand located in the southern hemisphere became honorary recruits to the “North”. While the term Third World went out of favour post Cold War, the 134 countries strong Global South comprising a conglomerate of postcolonial countries like India has since grown in geo-political stature and constitutes today a diverse and distinct coterie of countries having disparate interests and yet braided by common motivations and interests, through their diverse identities. It is such a Global South brand that India and Australia, among other nations, have recently envisioned and aimed to collaborate in creating, for instance through the first and second ‘Voice of Global South Summit’(s) held in January and November 2023 respectively to materialise the vision of a more equitable and inclusive global economy and politics, based on sustainable development and economic growth with the desire to create and sustain a more multipolar world order. 

In the Introduction to The Global South Atlantic (2018), Joseph R. Slaughter and Kerry Bystrom label the Global South as “a geopolitical region … yet at the same time … also a vision, an ideal or aspiration of solidarity and interconnection” (04) and a network of “transactions, and systems of interchange and imagination that have historically defined the South Atlantic (and that continue to drive its futures) but are obscured or suppressed by the hegemonic North Atlantic orientation of knowledge production and the division of disciplines tasked with producing it” (Slaughter and Bystrom 04). While Nour Dados and Raewyn Connell believe that the term critiques imperialism, neo-imperialism and social inequity in a geopolitically divided world, having morphed into a tool to problematize Eurocentric epistemologies post Industrial revolution in international activism and academia, the publication of Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000) led to the eruption of  non-Eurocentric literatures that have since aimed to redress the history of capitalism across geographies.

Environmental colonialism, apparently rooted in positioning the developing nations at the receiving end of the blame game, seems to consider the environmental crisis to be an unprecedented phenomenon, erasing centuries of resource exploitation initiated by the European merchants and companies who steered the first phase of globalisation or capitalist expansion of Immanuel Wallerstein’s “world system”. While indigenous island peoples of oceanic islands like the Canary Islands faced extinction, Richard Grove contends that forest clearances and collapse of ecological balances in the Europe-desired “Edenic” islands like Mauritius and St Helena led to the extinction of the dodo and to humans becoming denatured. Ironically the  exploitative colonial system also established the first conservation protocols, propagated notions of sustainability and espoused protection of fragile planetary island-ecosystems for future generations. The narrative of environmental colonialism, derived from Pierre Poivre’s theoretical linking of deforestation in the islands to decline in rainfall and regional climate change, and germinating from the 1764 Tobago Ordinance, argues that the “historical lesson to be learned, perhaps, is that … global environmental well-being is generally an accounting irrelevance.” (Grove 55). Contemporary environmentalism aimed to “save” Africa and bled the neocolonial colour-characteristic of Western environmentalism. 

Thus while settler colonialism has often unequivocally displaced centuries-old indigenous entanglements with the environment, has the apparent Western withdrawal post independence in such decolonised nation spaces mitigated underdevelopment, exploitation and environmental injustice? Aligned to Anne McClintock’s version of postcolonialism as a “history of hopes postponed” (92), it is imperative that the post-colonials find their voices -- not as a mere rejoinder or collage of write-backs to colonialism but as one which retrieves and espouses the centuries-old indigenous nous of the planet.

In an era of intersections of contrapuntal relationships between environment and humans, in which environmental justice paradigms seem applicable only to indigenous and postcolonial communities who have been and continue to be dependent on the use/exploitation of vulnerable environments for their survival, the need of the hour seems to be enfranchisement of transitional decolonised communities and nations of the Global South and initiating discourses at global and glocal levels in the Global South – to “write back” and repudiate  the xenophobic, economic and colonial inequalities often set as templates across mainstream commercial, governmental and environmental formulations.  Since at least Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing of the fence, whitewashing of histories and the past have became a favourite pastime across geographies. But with every onward wave of colonialism from the Global North and its subsequent whitewashing, a backwash has laid bare both the reality and barely habitable truths of unsettled, indigenous and island communities.This conference, scheduled a couple of months after COP28 (UN Climate Change Conference - United Arab Emirates, 30 Nov - 12 Dec 2023) aims to look at environmental colonialism, its afterlives and postcolonials emergent from the Global South, climate change and race and vulnerability, and explore the backwash. “Postcolonials” could be thought of as a counter-category to “universals”. The term “backwash” creates a susurrus – of  waste and residue in the aftermath of the colonial deluge, yet also an attempt to turn the tide when it comes to alternative imaginings of the future braiding the planet and its humans, limned sometimes in the under-acknowledged positions of countries, territories in the Global South surviving through resilience and adaptive capacity, and the radical premise of alterity to the regime of “developments”.

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           SUB THEMES:

•          Climate Colonialism/ Environmental Colonialism 

•          Representations of Climate Colonialism / Environmental Colonialism in Literature

•          Nature and Indigenous Communities

•          Global Warming and Beyond

•          Us and Climate Change

•          Postcolonial Writings responding to Environment and Climate Change 

•          Global South and the Environment\

  • Garbage-fiction

•          Pollution 

•          The age of speed, and plastic

•          1.5 Stay Alive

•          Propaganda and Denial of Climate Change

•          Ecological Consciousness and Climate Change 

•          Climate Exodus, Climate Refugees

•          Climate of Doubt

•          Climate Change and Cultural Entropy

•          Eco-literacy in the Global South

•          Eco-literatures from the Global South

•          Climate and Microclimates

•          Climate Change and rural communities in the Global South

•          Climate Change and grassroots activism

•          Climate Blueprint 

•          Environmental Justice and the Global South

•          Environmental Law and Climate Change

•          “Backwash” in imagining Environmental Responses

•          Climate Change and Ocean Peoples

 

Highlights of the Conference: 

 

Key Note Address

Dr Ruth Morgan

Associate Professor & Director, Centre for Environmental History, School of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

 

Plenary Address I:

Dr Paul Sharrad 

Fellow of the University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.

 

Plenary Address II:

Dr Helen Pringle 

Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

 

Call for Papers: 

Abstracts (not exceeding 250 words) may be emailed to:

centre_australianstudies@bankurauniv.ac.in

 

EXTENDED Deadline for sending of abstracts           : 26 January, 2024

Selection of abstracts would be conveyed by                : 29 January, 2024

 

Registration Fees:       2000 INR (Indian delegates)

                                    1000 INR (Research Scholars)

                                    500 INR (Postgraduate students)

                                    50 USD (International delegates)

         20 USD (International delegates presenting papers via video-link)

Accommodation:

The convenors have received approval of conference support from Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Ministry of Education, New Delhi.

Hence, the conference team is happy to provide partial support for both hotel accommodation (with breakfast & dinner) on a twin-sharing basis for a stay of 2 nights at Bankura and transport between the conference venue at Bankura University Main Campus and the hotel, to all delegates.

Registration Fees with accommodation:

2000 INR + 800 INR (Indian delegates)

1000 INR + 800 INR (Research Scholars)

If you need accommodation, please contact the conference team beforehand. Please drop a mail here with your requirements: 

centre_australianstudies@bankurauniv.ac.in

Publication:

Selected papers will be published in a blind peer-reviewed Edited Volume / Conference proceedings by a reputed publisher.

Chief Patron of the Conference:

Professor Goutam Buddha Sural, Vice Chancellor (Acting), Bankura University 

Convenors: 

Professor Sarbojit Biswas, PhD                                                                                                               

Jt. Coordinator, Centre for Australian Studies & Head, Department of English, Bankura University, Bankura, WB, India. (sarbojitbiswas@bankurauniv.ac.in)

&

Dr Ipsita Sengupta                                                                                                                           

Jt. Coordinator, Centre for Australian Studies & Associate Professor, Department of English, Bankura University, Bankura, WB, India. (ipsita444@gmail.com)

 

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Call For Papers: Free Publication on Pathographical Ecopoetics (Edited Volume)-2024



Book Title: Pathographical Ecopoetics 

Editors: Jayjit Sarkar & Anik Sarkar

The ‘ailing body’ is a recurring image in contemporary mediascapes which variously represent the human and nonhuman condition in the Anthropocene. Bodies that suffer, that lie tormented, that are ill or in pain, that wither and are abandoned, that have been killed and whose immobile remains haunt the living, have been envisioned across multiple mediums for a number of reasons. Images of tormented bodies, in their entangled tribulations whether they are distressed mentally or physically have an immediate affect on the viewers. Some graphical ones may illuminate a collective suffering, be it about those who are agitating for a political cause— to stop wars, or to declare one; to demonstrate displeasure for a particular law, or their agony for the absence of one. Such depictions aim to influence the way we perceive our current predicament, seeking to disrupt the collective indifference toward the gravity of environmental warnings. The visual as well as textual narratives comprising of ailing bodies may serve as potent reminders for drawing attention to societal and planetary issues, urging audiences to reconsider their stance and take meaningful action in response to these urgent concerns. A pathography, Anne Hunsaker Hawkins writes “is an extended narrative situating the illness within the author’s life and the meaning of that life” (Hawkins 13). What connects a pathography, “a form of autobiography or biography that describes personal experiences of illness treatment, and sometimes death” (Hawkins 13), with the school of ecopoetics is the phenomenon called poiesis: the Greek for the act of coming into being or the act of creation. The word “pathography” comes from the Greek pathos meaning pain and graphia meaning writing, and the word “ecopoetics” comes from the Greek oikos meaning home and poiesis meaning creation. A pathographical narrative is different from the typical pathological reports and medical surveys although, it may be confused for one.

For Hawkins: Pathographies not only articulate the hopes, fears, and anxieties so common to sickness, but they also serve as guidebooks to the medical experience itself, shaping a reader's expectations about the course of an illness and its treatment. Pathographies are a veritable gold mine of patient attitudes and assumptions regarding all aspects of illness. These narratives can be especially useful to physicians at a time when they are given less and less time to get to know their patients but are still expected to be aware of their patients' wishes, needs, and fears. (Hawkins, 1999, 127-129) Away from the “hegemony” of medical records and the disinterested study of the ill, the pathography accounts for the lived experience of the suffering subject. Pathographical ecopoetics, furthers this study by considering the broader framework of intra- and interrelations with the environment that entangle the ill bodies, as and when they are diagnosed, sick, diseased, and ailing. In another sense, pathographical ecopoetics is being-with or creation-with the natural surroundings during illness. It is also different from general autobiography, as it moves away from autopoiesis to what Donna Haraway would call sympoiesis (or “making-with”). Illness becomes a condition for sym-poiesis— the humanist closed self to open itself to the other in order to create or to just be with the surrounding, animate or inanimate alike. Pathography cannot be called as a “medical history”, but an alternate historiography—a personal account of the body in pain, but it is also not “totally” free from medical history (Sarkar and Basu, 2019, xv). Neither is pathography free from its immediate environment in which it is borne and experienced, as the natural world and its mystifying orders of action are difficult to code but are felt and remembered by the body which suffers. We invite papers that explore pathographical accounts which are also respondent with ecopoiesis, exhibiting “creations-with” the natural surroundings during illness.



Some areas that the papers can explore, but not limited to:

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Disabilities Studies

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Filmmaking

Pathographical Ecopoetics and the Modern Novel

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Poetry

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Medical Humanities

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Art

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Autobiography

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Illness Narrative

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Posthumanism

Pathographical Ecopoetics and Zoontologies

 

If interested, please send a 300-500 word abstract to pathographicalecopoetics@gmail.com by March 30, 2024. Selected abstracts will be notified by April 15, 2024. 

Essays of 5000-6000 words are anticipated by August 30, 2024. The book shall be published by a major international press.

Contact Email: pathographicalecopoetics@gmail.com

Recent book by the editors: The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Liverpool University Press)

Link: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-films-of-apichatpong-weerase....

Recent paper by the editors: “In Search of a Pathographical Ecopoetics: A Study of Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating” in Journal of Ecohumanism

Link: https://ecohumanism.co.uk/joe/ecohumanism/article/view/2993

 

Bibliography 

Haraway, Donna. Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.

Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker. “Pathography: Patient Narratives of Illness”. The Western Journal of Medicine 171, no. 2, 1999, pp. 127–129.

Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker. Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography. Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1999.

Sarkar, Jayjit and Jagannath Basu eds. The Portrait of an Artist as a Pathographer: On Writing Illnesses and Illness in Writing. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2021.

Friday, January 19, 2024

CFP: Deadline Extended-Two-Day International Conference on New Media and its Publics in India- SRM University AP- (Travel allowance and Accommodation will be provided) April 2024

 Call for Papers

As the thriving conduit of contemporary socialities, ‘New media’ has etched itself firmly as a potent and mesmerizing force. Almost as if it were a sorcerer, new media has also called into being its very own publics – publics that exist virtually in constant response to the unbound mediatic stimulus, but yet remain materially embedded in the larger structural categories and power hierarchies that shape social dynamics. While the term ‘new media’ continues to invite commentary and dialogue, its reality and purchase cannot be denied. In Postcolonial (and neoliberal) countries like India, the place, and effects of media, both new and ‘old’ become even more distinct. Does new media deepen democracy? Does it offer space to challenge and even overcome the barriers of caste? Are new visibilities emergent on the precarities faced by India’s marginalized communities – women, tribal groups, religious minorities, Dalits, migrant and informal sector workers? How inclusive is the horizon of new media? In what ways does it re-inscribe inequality and social prejudice? On the other hand, how has new media offered emancipatory avenues for self-expression and networking?We also need to ask whether new media, particularly social media, can or should function as an alternative or supplement to the larger, structural form of “old” media. One of the important features of the new media is its capacity to remove the demarcation between the producer and the consumer. Does the absence of gatekeepers situate new media as a significant tool of the public sphere for the emancipation of the marginalized, oppressed, ignored or invisibilized or does it make the new media just another unregulated tool for wielding power? Perhaps another debate around new media or Web 2.0A could be concerning its biological interventionist nature. The overwhelming provocation rising before us today is the need/inclination/lack of tools to separate the virtual from the physical. In the middle of political fantasies of total digitalization in developing economies to converting these available technological resources into propagandist and surveillance machines, we are continuously in the throes of ever-evolving algorithms devising, designing, dictating a future for us. Is the paranoid desire to elude digital policing infrastructures the new definition of human beings? Will there be a widespread digital dystopia before we arrive at the Sixth Mass Extinction? How do we find ways to dissociate ourselves from the concreteness of these digitally charged symbiotic relationships? The conference offers a platform for exploring, debating and reflecting on the social challenges thrown up by the digital and technological prowess of new media. We invite proposals that engage these questions and offer stimulating readings of our present from diverse vantage points. 


>Topics include, but are not limited to:   
  • New and ‘Old’ Media: Negotiations and Mediations
  • Representation and New Media.
  • Press and New Media.
  • Censorship and New Media
  • Digital Activism and New Media
  • Democracy, Expression and New Media
  • Games, Simulation Design and New Media
  • Political Campaigns and New Media
  • Posthumanism and New Media
  • Gender and New Media
  • Ontologies of New Media
  • Public Health and New Media
  • Entrepreneurship and New Media
  • Ethics, Morality and New Media

  Guidelines for abstract and paper submission  • Abstracts within 500 words and a brief bio-note should be sent to newmediapublic24@gmail.com by February 5th, 2024.

Selected papers will be published in an edited volume of a reputed publishing house.   Registration Fee Details:

  • Faculty Members: INR 1000
  • Research Scholars: INR 750
  • UG/PG Students: INR 500

 

Travel allowance and accommodation will be provided by the organizers

  Important Dates: 

  • Deadline for abstract submission: February 12, 2024
  • Intimation of Acceptance: February 20, 2024
  • Last date for Payment of the Registration Fee for Selected Abstracts: March 5, 2024.

Full name / name of organization: 
Department of Liberal Arts SRM University-AP


Contact email: 
 
Convenor:
Dr. Asijit Datta

Co-convenors:
Dr. Sapna Mishra
Dr. Partha Bhattacharjee

Thursday, January 18, 2024

CFP: Special Issue Call for Papers 'The Human and the Machine: AI and the Changing World'-2024






If we are to believe the entertainment media, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is destined to go rogue and take over the world, destroying humanity as we know it. In reality, the growing accessibility of AI is seeing its use normalised and it is becoming a useful tool to improve and alter society. Artificial Intelligence has been an area of research since the 1950s and hinges on machine functions that learn from humans or independently. Despite its long history, contemporary advancements in AI systems, like Midjourney and Chat GPT, are fuelling fresh discussions about its pervasive impact on diverse industries, from healthcare and communication to engineering and art.


Existing research has documented AI's capabilities in various sectors. It can synthesise big data, enhance creativity, streamline production, and personalise content. For instance, platforms like Chat GPT have proven effective in educational settings, while DALL-E 2 has expedited the creation and deployment of advertising materials. In the business domain, data analysts leverage AI for consumer behaviour analysis, including product reviews and purchase intentions. For public relations professionals, AI automates routine tasks like media list creation and meeting scheduling, thereby enhancing efficiency. Overall, AI has wide applicability across industries with obvious advantages.

However, AI is not without its challenges. It has been critiqued for potentially causing job losses, breaching privacy, infringing copyrights, and perpetuating false information. There's a growing concern that as machines take on roles in cultural production, even when working alongside their human counterparts, issues around human agency and rights come into focus, particularly when AI systems are perceived as biased or lacking a nuanced understanding of global contexts. For instance, in journalism, concerns have been raised that using AI will compromise norms and values, while in advertising and public relations, the move to using virtual influencers has posed issues of inauthenticity. Such ethical concerns continue to be raised around professional practice and the use of AI, and therefore, pose challenges to the willingness of people to embrace AI.

While the public's response to AI has often been tepid due to its complexities and uncertainties, its undeniable influence on language and social relationships underscores its relevance in communication research. It is against this backdrop we extend an invitation for contributions to this special issue that considers the relationship between artificial intelligence and communication. The focus is on how AI is influencing the communication and media industries, ranging from public relations and journalism to marketing and entertainment media (e.g. screen production, artistic practice, podcasting). We aim to address questions such as, how is AI impacting the production and consumption of media content, how might AI shape communication and culture, is AI displacing human resources, and what impact will AI have on authentic human interaction.

Topics in the special issue may include (but are not limited to):

• AI and authentic human interaction
• AI and journalism/public relations/advertising/marketing (or other communication industry)
• AI and personalization of media content
• Chatbots and virtual humans
• AI and cultural development
• AI, diversity, and inclusion
• AI media production and/or consumption practices


Publication Timeline
29 January 2024, abstracts due (200-300 words)
22 April 2024, full manuscripts due (6-7000 words)
Publication: October 2024


Please send submissions and correspondence to: co-editors Matthew Guinibert (matt.guinibert@aut.ac.nz) and Angelique Nairn (angelique.nairn@aut.ac.nz) with the subject ‘ICC-X’. 
Please visit Intellect’s website www.intellectbooks.com/journal-editors-and-contributors to follow its house referencing guidelines.


About the co-editors:


Dr Matthew Guinibert is a senior lecturer and Head of Department (Brand, Digital Communication, and Public Relations) in in the School of Communication Studies (SCS). His expertise in digital media spans visual communication, UI/UX design, technology-enhanced learning, and the strategies that underpin the use of digital media.


Dr Angelique Nairn is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies (SCS). She is also the Associate Head of School for Research. Angelique has been involved in a myriad of research projects that have hinged on organisational communication, identity construction, rhetoric, and/or the creative industries. She teaches courses in the public relations department, specialising in digital public relations and persuasion.