CFP: Pedagogy of Images II: Depicting Communism for Children (Princeton U.)

Deadline for Submissions: December 30, 2016

Symposium
Pedagogy of Images II:
Depicting Communism for Children
Princeton University,
March 31 – April 1, 2017

The Pedagogy of Images project started in 2015 with an exploratory symposium that mapped out approaches to studying the process of amalgamation of text and image within the boundaries of the illustrated book for young Soviet readers. As a part of the general desire to translate Communism into idioms and images accessible to children, these books visualized ideological norms and goals in a way that guaranteed easy legibility, without sacrificing the political appeal of the message.

Using a corpus of Soviet-era illustrated books for children from the collections of the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University, the participants of the first meeting focused on the dual verbal-visual representation of the Communist imaginary and sensibility in early Soviet books. The initial symposium also had a second purpose: to achieve a more nuanced awareness of the ways in which digitization of these works can facilitate more exhaustive mining of the information contained in these rich graphic and verbal artifacts. An edited volume growing out of the work of this first symposium is currently in production.

The goal of the second symposium is to expand the generational boundaries of scholars working on early Soviet children’s books. We invite advanced Ph.D. students and recent Ph.D. graduates from a range of disciplines and backgrounds to submit their proposals for participating in a two-day symposium that will take place at Princeton University on March 31- April 1, 2017.

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CFP: Symposium About Language and Society (UT-Austin)

Deadline for Abstract: January 14, 2017

SALSA XXV:
Language Contact and Multilingualism
April 14-15, 2017 at University of Texas at Austin

The Symposium About Language and Society (SALSA) is an annual symposium promoting linguistic, linguistic anthropological and communication research at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally created through the joint efforts of students from the Linguistic, Anthropology and Communication Studies Departments at the University of Texas, SALSA has developed into an interdisciplinary conference with contributions from various fields, including foreign language education, educational psychology, media studies, and numerous language departments. Our annual proceedings appear in special editions of Texas Linguistic Forum.

This year’s theme is Language Contact and Multilingualism. We look at contact broadly as the point where different languages and cultures come together and influence one another. We want to examine language contact throughout history and how it has shaped the present day languages in a variety of contexts and outcomes. Through this perspective we examine questions such as how doeslanguage contact impact bilingual and multilingual societies? How does contact affect methods of communication? How do intersecting cultures influence language use? What types of language ideologies influence and arise out of this contact situation? How has contact impacted the relationship between identity and language? In a world where contact is seemingly everywhere, how do we understand the particularities of different contact situations? How is contact encoded in the features of the languages in contact? How do social media and other forms of mass media impact contact? What role does contact play in projects of revitalization and documentation of languages? SALSA XXV seeks to explore these questions and more in order to contribute to literature in linguistics, anthropology, communication sciences, and interdisciplinary fields such as media, queer, critical race, area, and women’s and gender studies. Continue reading “CFP: Symposium About Language and Society (UT-Austin)”

CFP: Summoning the Archive: A Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving (NYU)

Deadline for Submissions: February 3, 2017

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CfP | Summoning the Archive: A Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving

NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge
May 11-13, 2017
Organizer: Meghan Forbes, NYU and UT-­Austin
Keynote Speaker: Jenna Freedman, Barnard

The printing and distribution of the avant-­garde magazine, illustrated weekly, and underground zine have developed in the twentieth century in tandem with technological advancements in printing and access to these technologies in various regions, gaining traction in different parts of the world at different times based on economic, social, and political conditions. At its best, the magazine is an efficient, relatively affordable (for both publisher and consumer) vehicle for the artists and intellectuals it represents, and has the capacity to innovate with new technologies and engage in pressing social, political, and artistic issues. This is even more true now, in the second decade of the twenty-­first century, as we observe new models for content, design, and distribution of the periodical or magazine published online, which has the potential to involve an even wider audience, and host a variety of multimedia content. The magazine thus continues to be a leading platform for social and political engagement, and artistic innovation.

Corresponding to a turn towards the digital, the field of Periodical Studies has gained traction as it situates the magazine as a cultural product that incorporates text, image, and graphic design toward various political, social, artistic, and pedagogical ends. With large scale projects dedicated to digitizing print based magazines, such as the Blue Mountain project at Princeton University or the Modernist Journals Project at Brown, and a concurrent turn towards digital mapping and data visualization, periodicals that were once sequestered in the archive now have the capacity to reach a wider audience, and make visible previously overlooked networks and connections enacted within and across the magazines. Continue reading “CFP: Summoning the Archive: A Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving (NYU)”