Calls for Papers

Symposium: “What’s New about New Media? The Technology of Protest Past and Present”

Department of History
Carleton University, Ottawa Canada
May 15 and 16th 2014.

From the G8 demonstrations to the Occupy Movements, Idle No More, and revolutions in the Middle East, the last few years have witnessed a phenomenal upswing in the use of social media in popular protest. Social technology has played an important role in mobilizing grassroots opposition and, according to some scholars and pundits, it has served to politicize a broader base, bringing about greater participation in and new forms of civic action. Activists use platforms like Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to raise consciousness around lightning-rod issues. New technologies aid in the organization of demonstrations. They help mobilize emotions, map out logistics, and after all is said and done, they catalogue and document opposition success and further challenges. Social media’s democratizing potential is not without its detractors, however, and alongside concerns for the protection of privacy and surveillance, skeptics question whether networked publics really can serve as meaningful spaces of protest and opposition.

In lending shape to everyday opposition, cataloguing images of excess and exuberance, and circulating them in networked publics, there can be no doubt Web 2.0 is writing a history of the present. Yet aside from the thorny issue of impact, it is worth asking how new is new media in the way it shapes protest and opposition? This two-day symposium takes a longue durée approach to this question. It aims to bring together early modern
historians with modernists and media/communications scholars to interrogate what is in fact new, different, and unique about how “old” and “new” media have structured, popularized, given voice to, and helped mobilize protest and opposition across time and space.

We will discuss pre-circulated papers of 15 pages in length. Each paper should demonstrate a conceptual engagement with the interplay of time and place-specific media and their relation to public sentiment and opposition. We will also have two keynote addresses, one from a communications scholar, the other from an historian.

Themes may include:

• vernacular forms of protest across time and media
• protest and public engagement, diverse publics, counterpublics
• protest and affect
• protest as performance, the staging of opposition, counter protest and
• solidarity
• visualizing or mapping violence, resistance, and identity
• media, self, and subjectivity – forging activist or oppositional selves
• networks of opposition and collusion
• rethinking the local, the regional, and the global
• mediatized protest: archive, database, scrapbook
• media, protest, and public/social memory

Please forward a short CV and a 1-2 page paper abstract to the following address by January 15th, 2014.

Dr. Jennifer Evans
Associate Professor and Graduate Chair
Department of History
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, ON
K1S 4P6

Email: newmediaconference@carleton.ca
WWW: http://hate2point0.com/new-media-cfp

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Teaching German Film and Television: Challenges and Possibilities

AATG/ACTFL, Nov. 21-23, 2014, San Antonio, Texas

Films and television programs have become an integral part of the teaching of German language, literature, and culture. Several new publications on German film geared specifically to the foreign-language classroom have appeared in recent years, and the wide availability of German audiovisual materials on DVDs, YouTube, and the Internet has made the teaching of film and television easier than ever. But the seductive simplicity of the audiovisual medium also distracts from significant methodological challenges of using film and television in language and literature/culture classes and obscures problematic assumptions about the relationship between audiovisual media and social reality and national identity. This session invites presentations that address these problems in relation to questions of didactics, methodology, and course and curriculum development and that
offer solutions through best practices in individual courses and lesson plans.

This panel is sponsored by the German Studies Association. Please send an abstract (250 words) plus short bio blurb to session chair Sabine Hake at Hake@austin.utexas.edu by January 6, 2014.

GSA 2014 Panel Submissions

The 2014 conference of the German Studies Association (GSA) will be held in Kansas City on September 18 – 21, 2014.  Several scholars are already attempting to put together themed-panels.  Find two of these calls for panels below.  Please note that you have to be a member of the GSA to present at the conference.

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Reiselust/Reisefieber/Reisezwang: German Travel Writing from the 18th to the 21st Century

Traveling and narrating have been intertwined from the beginning. These narratives have ranged from mythical tales and adventure stories to travel memoirs, expedition reports, guidebooks, and travel blogs. This panel invites papers on German travel writing from the 18th through the 21st century. We are particularly interested in theoretically informed papers that combine scholarship from various disciplines (i.e. tourism studies, history, cultural studies, and German literature). Our premise is that travel experiences build on pre-formed notions of what there is to see and in turn shape and influence what others are to see. Travel writing, as well as other media forms such as the blog and the public presentation of pictures, moreover allows for an engagement with the travel experience
without actually having to travel at all (armchair travel). Travel narratives thus provide a rich tapestry of exchanges in terms of modalities of travel and sightseeing. We are interested in both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, in macro- and micro approaches to the history of travel. Ultimately the panel will address the question what German Studies can contribute to the history of travel as a cultural phenomenon in the German-speaking countries.

Paper topics might include (but not be limited to):

• The construction of the modern self through travel
• How does (real and imaginary) travel liberate the individual to construct new social conventions?
• How does the gender of the writer/traveler impact his/her experience and narrative?
• How are culturally charged destinations (i.e. Rome) perceived by contemporary writers? Is there a sense of travel writing tradition surrounding certain places? How is this tradition developing and changing?
• Genres (such as travel handbooks) that construct new coordinate systems
• How have technology and social media inventions impacted both traveling and the reception of travel?
• How do the modalities of travel (i.e. airports, train stations) affect travel writing?

Paper or panel proposals are due by January 15, 2014.  Please submit a brief proposal (250 words) and cv by email to Karin Baumgartner (karin.baumgartner@utah.edu) and Daniela Richter (richt2dm@cmich.edu).

Please note GSA rules: all panel participants including the commentator and moderator must be a registered GSA member before February 15, 2014 in order to submit panels for the annual conference.

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Non-European Others within German Daily Life 

I am in the process of framing a panel on constructions of non-European Others within German daily life, primarily in the 20th century. I envision a diverse panel, drawing on scholarship about “different Others,” and how the general public perceived such groups, individuals, or themes within Germany. My own paper focuses on representations of and engagements with Africa in a small Bavarian town. Please email me a brief description of
your topic or possible panel, if interested: Martin.Kalb@nau.edu

Please do so by Dec. 31, 2013, thus giving me adequate time to frame a coherent panel. Based on submissions I can create a panel and coherent proposal for the upcoming GSA conference in Kansas City (September 18-21), or maybe there is a way to add my paper to panels that are already in the making. Thank you – Martin Kalb.

FOR THE GSA’S GENERAL CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 2014 CONFERENCE, SEE OUR PREVIOUS POST, HERE.