CFP : IAFOR North American Conference on Media, Film and Cultural Studies 2014

CFP Archive

The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) has opened its online application portal for the 2014 North American Conference on Media, Film and Cultural Studies.

This will be the first edition of this conference, and it’s shaping up to be a major occasion for film, media and cultural studies in America. The conference will be happening September 18-21, 2014 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

The call for paper seems to be divided into two major categories: “Individual, Community, Society: Conflict, Resolution & Synergy”, and “Borderlands of Becoming, Belonging, and Sharing”

The deadline for this call for paper is May 15 and applications should be made through their Online Submission System.

All the necessary information for this conference and these calls for papers can be found on the conference’s website, and below the break.

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Call For Papers – Deadline: May 15 2014

NACMFCS2014 Conference Themes

Conference Theme 1: “Individual, Community & Society: Conflict, Resolution & Synergy”

Conflict from earliest times has been a characteristic of the human condition. The struggle between our individual selves and our social selves arises from what makes us unique on the one hand, being challenged by our being part of an interdependent structure of relationships on the other.

The specific blend of experiences, abilities, attitudes, and aspirations, that helps to define us, can sit sometimes uncomfortably alongside our commitments to those closest to us, our communities and our cultures. This can lead to conflict at different levels.

Conflict within communities and societies is inevitable given that these groups are based on commonality of geography, values, attitudes, and beliefs that help to differentiate one from another. The dialectic engendered by diversity, however, although it may lead to conflict, can play an important role in the expansion of ideas in communities and societies. One major challenge of modern society is to harness the synergy that emerges from the interactive dialectic generated by these differences.

The Media Arts have long recognized these differences and frictions when they try to explain conflict through the systematic exploration of ideas, words, and artistic expression, and the media has used narratives to great effect in both drama and documentary. By proposing such a wide-ranging 2014 conference theme, the organizers hope to encourage exciting new avenues of research, inspire the creation of new explanatory concepts, and provide a context for academic and personal encounters. The resultant exchanges it is hoped will stimulate synergies that cross national, religious, cultural and disciplinary divides, a bridging idea central to the global vision of IAFOR.

Conference Theme 2: “Borderlands of Becoming, Belonging and Sharing”

Local, national and global cultures have been transformed by an intensification of human migration, mobility and multi-culture with multiple and complex claims of home, identity and belonging. Gloria Anzaldua’s idea of the borderland has become a critical conceptual rubric used by cultural researchers as a way of understanding, explaining and articulating the in-determined, vague, ambiguous nature of everyday life and the cultural politics of border-knowledge, border crossings, transgression, living in-between and multiple belongings. Borderlands is also about a social space where people of diverse backgrounds and identities meet and share a space in which the politics of co-presence and co-existence are experienced and enacted in mundane ways. This conference, which focuses on the borderlands of becoming, belonging and sharing, is therefore about examining how the culture of everyday life is regulated and contested across diverse political, economic and social contexts, and whether and how it creates spaces of belonging with others.

The aim of this conference theme is to open up discussion, critical reflection and analysis about emerging social, political and cultural identities that are formed at the intersection of multiple and multi-sited belongings and their expression and about the possibility of making them shared across differences.

NACMFCS2014 Conference Sub-Themes

This theme welcomes papers that focus on the following sub-themes:

  • Trans-cultural displacement/belonging
  • Belonging and the intersections of gender, race, religion, sexuality
  • Seeking refuge, unruly belonging(s) and border politics
  • Trauma and joy of becoming and belonging
  • Communication, new technologies and belonging
  • Cultural narratives of belonging/not belonging
  • Cultural politics of survival/transgression
  • New imaginings/formations of home
  • Citizenship beyond borders
  • Multicultural exhaustion/renewal
  • Belonging in the Anthropocene
  • Multiple and complex belongings
  • Re-locating culture across borders
  • Convivial cultures and the imagined communities
  • Creation of shared space(s) of multiple belongings

The organizers encourage submissions that approach the conference themes from a variety of perspectives. However, the submission of other topics for consideration is welcome, and we also encourage sessions within and across a variety of disciplines and fields related to Media and Communication Studies, Film Studies and Cultural Studies. Proposals will be organized into the following streams:

Media and Mass Communication Streams

  • Advertising, Marketing, & Public Relations
  • Digital Media and Use of New Technology in Newsgathering
  • Communication Theory and Methodology
  • Critical and Cultural Studies, Gender and Communication
  • Media Disaster Coverage
  • Media History
  • International Communication
  • Law, Policy & Media Ethics
  • Newspapers & Magazines as Print/Digital Media
  • Mass Communication
  • Broadcast Media & Globalization
  • Journalism
  • Education & Scholastic Journalism
  • Sports, Media & Globalization
  • Media Management and Economics
  • Political Communication and Satire
  • Visual Communication
  • Media & Education: Training journalists
  • Social Media & Communication Technology

Film Studies Streams

  • Film Direction and Production
  • Film Criticism and Theory
  • Film and Literature: Artistic Correspondence
  • Biography
  • Film History
  • Documentary History
  • Archive-Based Studies
  • Films and Digital Distribution (Use of the Internet and video sharing)
  • Anime and Digital Film Production
  • Films, Festivals, and Fans (Audience/Fan responses to film)

Cultural Studies Streams

  • General Cultural Studies
  • Sociology
  • Critical Race Theory
  • Social Criticism
  • Queer Theory
  • Gender studies / Feminist Theory
  • Black Feminism
  • Media Studies
  • Visual Culture
  • Cultural Geography
  • Cultural History
  • Political Theory
  • Orientalism
  • Critical Legal Studies
  • Education
  • Political Philosophy
  • Linguistics, Language and Cultural Studies

Abstract Submission Process

Acceptance of Abstract: If your abstract is accepted by the review team and you pay the conference registration fee by the specified deadline, your submission will be scheduled in an appropriate session for oral or poster presentation at the conference.

General Information

  • Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by the deadline of May 15, 2014.
  • All abstracts will be blind reviewed by a voluntary team, and authors will usually be notified of the decision of the reviewers within two weeks of submission. Those who submit near the May 15th deadline will usually receive confirmation of acceptance or rejection by June 1, 2014.
  • We encourage you to submit in good time & well before the submission deadline in order to benefit from Early Bird rates.
  • All accepted authors may have their full paper published in the online conference proceedings. Full text submission is due by November 1, 2014.
  • The deadline for full conference payment for all presenters is August 15, 2014.

Authors as Reviewers: A Reciprocal System
Our academic events would not be what they are without a commitment to ensuring adherence to international norms of abstract peer review. IAFOR relies on a large number of international scholars from around the world to contribute to a shared vision of promoting and engaging in international, intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue, and if you are taking part in an IAFOR event, then that means you. As all authors have had their work reviewed by at least two reviewers, in the spirit of reciprocity, similarly we ask that all accepted authors be prepared to review up to five abstracts over the lifespan of submissions to the conference. You are under no obligation to participate in this reciprocal system, but if you are selected to review, and undertake this task of grading abstracts for the NACMFCS2014 conference, then you will be credited in the 2014 programme.

Individual Presenter (30 minutes paper/60 minutes workshop/Poster)
You can submit a proposal to present an individual paper or give a workshop at NACMFCS 2014 under the open call for papers. Please submit through the online system by clicking on the ONLINE SUBMISSIONS SYSTEM button below.

Virtual Presenter
We understand that some presenters will be unable to make the trip to the United States to present their paper, mainly due to financial and/or political restrictions on travel. NACMFCS 2014 has therefore instituted a virtual presentation system to allow the authors of accepted proposals the same publication opportunities as regular presenters.

  • You can submit a proposal for virtual presentation under the open call for papers through the online system by clicking on the ONLINE SUBMISSIONS SYSTEM button below.
  • We do not allow presentations by video-conferencing but virtual presenters are encouraged to upload a video of their presentation onto the NACMFCS 2014 YouTube Conference Channel. Information on how to do this will be given to you following registration.
  • Following the conference you will be mailed a conference pack, including a printed receipt of payment, certificate of participation, and a printed copy of the NACMFCS 2014 programme.

Panel Organizers (90 minutes)
As the chair/organizer of a proposed panel, you can submit a proposal through the online system by clicking on the ONLINE SUBMISSIONS SYSTEM button below.

  • Panels should have at least four participants (including the chair).
  • All the panel participants must be listed in the submission, listing the chair or leader as the primary author, and the other presenters as co-authors.
  • Panel organizers are responsible for the arrangement of all the presenters under their proposed topics, and should ensure that all are firmly committed.
  • If your proposal is accepted you will be invited to register for the conference. Please ensure that you transmit the submission reference number to the other members of your panel and invite them to register in timely fashion.
  • Upon payment of the registration fee of ALL PARTICIPANTS your panel will be scheduled in the conference programme.
  • If you, as the panel chair, wish to publish a joint paper associated with the panel in the conference proceedings, please ensure that a paper is uploaded through the online system.
  • If you and your panel members wish to publish separate papers then they will have to register individually with the system and submit their proposals for review.

How to Submit

  • Register with our online submission system. Please click on the button below.
  • Create your own personal account. Your email address will be used as your username and you will be asked to submit a password.
  • Login to the online submission system to submit a proposal.
  • Your proposal will normally be reviewed within two to three weeks.
  • If your proposal is accepted you will be invited to register for the conference. Upon payment of the registration fee, you will be sent a confirmation email receipt from the conference team.

You can then return to the system at any time using your user name and password to edit your personal information. If you wish your paper to be published in the conference proceedings, please ensure that a paper is uploaded through the online system by November 1, 2014.