Month: January 2006

Here are some CFPs that are relevant to cross-media researchers:

Trans –: Negotiations and Resistance, 19th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference, Association of English Graduate Students

***Abstract Deadline: January 20th, 2006***

University of Southern California, Los Angeles
April 7 – 8, 2006

***CFP***

Trans- is a prefix circulating with increasing frequency, not only in the titles and subject matter of our intellectual and creative work, but also in the terms we use to define academic and creative selves. Trans- articulates projects that intersect with, but also work across multiple disciplinary affiliations. This conference does not seek to reductively unify the reach and potential of trans- work. The work of trans-, irrespective of specific invocations, might be viewed as a unified movement of transition, a movement between, or a movement across, and therefore beyond the terms that trans- operates within. This movement between, across, beyond is not necessarily an easy process. Trans- work is only able to map alternate spaces through negotiation and resistance. What does trans- negotiate and resist? What resists and negotiates trans-? Why should and do we care about the work of trans-, the movement of trans-, and the creation of alternate spaces that trans- implies?

This conference poses trans- as a question to be explored from a multiplicity of positions, politics, and performances, utilizing multiple mediums, methods, and genres. Participants may be inclined to invoke the prefix and terms directly, or prefer to perform trans- work without directly referencing the prefix. Both proposals, and a combination / revision of the two, are welcome.

Some examples of terms and questions that potential conference papers may want to consider are:

transnational, transgender, transdisciplinary: What kinds of spaces, institutions, constellations, or new possibilities do we seek to create when we attempt to negotiate between and resist given identificatory categories such as gender, race, or nationality? To what degree are the discreet categories that we seek to challenge also held in place by the efforts of trans-?

What are the benefits or drawbacks of employing transhistorical, transfeminist, or transnational methods in our work? Why do employ these approaches and what are their goals?

translation, transfiction, transgenre: How can we imagine negotiations and resistance as emerging at the level of the text, and discourse in general? What are the politics of translation and how do we negotiate and use them? How are generic categories—film, poetry, performance, fiction, memoir, etc.—affected / resisted when we identify work as transgeneric or when we create transgenre work?

transcribe, transfix, transact, transcend(ence), transcription, transfigure, transmission: What trans-es seem out of fashion, less “of the moment,â€? and why? Has trans- ever been in fashion?

transgressions, transformations: What does it mean to negotiate between or across disciplinary boundaries? Must work that effectively transcends or transgresses other types of boundaries also necessarily be transdisciplinary?

What are the differences between trans– and interdisciplinary work and what are the political stakes of that distinction?

Of course, the above terms and questions will transcend the temporary boundaries we’ve given them. In fact, we encourage critical and / or creative work that translates, transforms, transgresses, or works at answering some of the aforementioned questions. We seek proposals that will contribute to a truly transdisciplinary conference, including projects that attempt to transcend creative and critical boundaries.

Potential papers should run 15-20 minutes. Please e-mail an electronic one-page abstract (250-words, double-spaced), including your name, affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail address to: uscaegs@gmail.com

Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Association of Internet Researchers

*** Abstract Deadline: February 7, 2006 ***

The Internet works as an arena of convergence. Physically dispersed and marginalized people (re)find themselves online for the sake of sustaining and extending community. International and interdisciplinary
teams now collaborate in new ways. Diverse cultures engage one another via CMC. These technologies relocate and refocus capital, labor and immigration, and they open up new possibilities for political,
potentially democratizing, forms of discourse. Moreover, these technologies themselves converge in multiple ways, e.g. in Internet-enabled mobile phones, in Internet-based telephony, and in computers themselves as “digital appliances” that conjoin communication and multiple media forms. These technologies also facilitate fragmentations with greater disparities between the information-haves and have-nots, between winners and losers in the shifting labor and capital markets, and between individuals and communities. Additionally these technologies facilitate information filtering that reinforces, rather than dialogically challenges,’narrow and extreme views.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Our conference theme invites papers and presentations based on empirical research, theoretical analysis and everything in between that explore the multiple ways the Internet acts in both conve/rging and fragmenting
ways – physical, cultural, technological, political, social – on local, regional, and global scales.

Without limiting possible proposals, topics of interest include:

– Theoretical and practical models of the Internet
– Internet convergence, divergence and fragmentation
– Networked flows of information, capital, labor, etc.
– Migrations and diasporas online
– Identity, community and global communication
– Regulation and control (national and global)
– Internet-based development and other economic issues
– Digital art and aesthetics
– Games and gaming on the Internet
– The Net generation
– E-Sectors, e.g. e-health, e-education, e-business

Abstract Deadline: February 7, 2006

Creative Translation: Film Adaptation, (dis)junctions: lost in translation

April 7-8, 2006
University of California, Riverside

*** Abstract Deadline: February 10, 2006 ***

This panel will consist of papers discussing various concerns of film adaptations. What problems arise when adapting a work of literature to a screenplay? How do various adaptations of the same work use the primary text differently in their adaptations? What role does fidelity play in screenplay adaptation? What problems in auteur/authorship arise in screenplay adaptation? Etc.

Papers addressing alternative forms of media and literature (i.e. video games, television shows, comic books) which have been adapted to film are also welcome, as are papers which address issues of “remakes.â€?

Please send 250-300 word abstracts to maggie.gover@yahoo.com by February 10, 2006. Please include your department affiliation and specify any a/v needs.

NARRATIVE KNOWLEDGE/NARRATIVE ACTION, 2006 Thomas R. Watson Conference

October 5-7, 2006

*** Abstract Deadline: MARCH 1, 2006 ***

The sixth biennial Thomas R. Watson Conference in Rhetoric and Composition will address the multiple ways narrative informs theory, research, and teaching in rhetoric and composition.

Plenary Panels:

Narrative Knowledge: Arthur Danto. Michael Ruse. Ruth Behar.

Narrative and Literacy: Jonathon Rose. Thomas Newkirk. Deborah Brandt.

Narrative and Identity: Kathleen Stewart. Nedra Reynolds. Glynda Hull.

Narrative and Multmodality: Gunther Kress. James Gee. Cynthia Selfe.

Narrative Action: Victor Villanueva. Beverly Moss. Nancy Sommers. Sondra Perl.

Comix 101: Art Spiegelman. Author of Maus, Maus II, and In the Shadow of No Towers.

Proposals:

We invite proposals for 20-minute individual presentations or 75-minute panels that consider some aspect of the conference theme, including

–Narrative as a way of knowing and making meaning. Narrative as social action.
–Narrative and key disciplinary concepts, e.g., identity, agency,literacy, culture, process, reflection, genre.
–The role of narrative in writing courses.
–The ways narrative shapes practice, theory, and rhetorics of research.
–The historical narratives we construct about disciplinary development.
–The influence of interdisciplinary narrative theory and research on our teaching and research practices.
–New narrative genres and the relation of narrative to multi-modal literacies

For information concerning proposals, please visit the conference
website: www.louisville.edu/a-s/english/watson/

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: MARCH 1, 2006

Inquires: 502-852-6801 or Watson@louisville.edu

Debra Journet, Director, 2006 Watson Conference. Cynthia Britt and Alana Frost, Assistant Directors, 2006 Watson Conference

Television and Film Narratives, SSNL Session at the 2006 MLA Convention in Philadelphia

***Abstract Deadline: March 6, 2006***

The panel aims to attract a range of papers by scholars working in narrative and/or media studies. Proposals are specifically invited for topics within the following fields of interest, but other papers foregrounding the concept of narrative in television or film texts are also very welcome.

— Recent film adaptations of novels: for example the plethora of recent Jane Austen adaptations in the form of both movies and television series across world entertainment media in Britain, the USA, and India. — Papers analysing the construction of television news narratives — both in television news reports and in politicians’ spin-doctoring (i.e. re-narrating) of news events in their attempt to achieve media advantage or damage limitation. This process has become particularly intense in news reporting both in the USA and in Britain during the war in Iraq. — Narratological considerations of the representation of reversed story sequences in the medium of film (this topic was the focus of a recent lively discussion of the film _Memento_ and related texts on the online Narrative list).

Please send a 1-page abstract and brief vita to Hilary Dannenberg at hilary.dannenberg@uni-bayreuth.de by March 6, 2006.

Panel Title: Film Genre and Criticism, Midwest Modern Language Association

*** Abstract Deadline: March 31, 2006***

This panel will consider film’s capacity to revisit and revise genre in a critical fashion. How do genre forms and conventions inhibit or enhance a film’s critical potential? What does a film gain by combining and redefining genres and subgenres? Abstracts for this panel should explore the interconnections between film genre and criticism through analyses that perform critical redefinitions themselves.

Some possible topics to consider include:

-the connections between genre formations and questions of nationality, culture, class, race, and gender

-the relative capacity for cultural transformation through “high culture” genres and “low culture” genres

-the criticism implicit within and about certain genres

-the critical function of synthesizing or questioning genres

-the ways in which film adapts and reconstructs genre from literary works

-filmmakers who have defined or revitalized genres: Akira Kurosawa, James Whale, Fritz Lang, etc.

-filmmakers who have redefined or challenged genre work: FranE7ois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, etc.

-filmmakers who have combined disparate genres within their work: the Coen brothers, Pedro AlmodF3var, Quentin Tarantino, etc.

Please send 150-300 word abstracts to Greg Wright at wrightg2@msu.edu. The deadline for abstracts is March 31, 2006.

The M/MLA conference will be held November 9-12, 2006, in Chicago, IL, at the Palmer House Hilton. Please visit the M/MLA website for more information about the 2006 conference.