[ecrea] UDC 2015 Conference call for papers

CALL FOR PAPERS: Circuits of Struggle

Union for Democratic Communications 2015 conference
May 1-3, 2015, University of Toronto
Hosted by the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and 
Technology
Deadline for submissions: December 1, 2014

The Union for Democratic Communications is dedicated to the critical 
study of ascendant, emergent, oppositional, democratic, and experimental 
forms of media, their production and distribution, and the development 
of local, regional and international systems of democratic 
communication. In this spirit, the organizers of the 2015 Toronto 
conference propose that participants engage with the theme of circuits 
of struggle.

Contemporary communication practices are marked by struggle. On the one 
hand, we live amid neoliberalism and austerity and the challenges these 
structures impose on democratic life, including precarity, debt, and 
enclosure. Capitalism has integrated communicative activity and digital 
technologies into a logic of accumulation that exploits all forms of the 
commons: the environment, languages, affects, information, and 
knowledge. Technological innovation makes possible new forms of 
surveillance and corporate control over these resources. On the other 
hand, this integration is incomplete. Individuals, organizations, and 
collectives are using these same technologies to fight back. Struggles 
for higher wages, less work, social justice, and a better quality of 
life are occurring worldwide. Those who struggle against domination are 
communicating across new channels in innovative and creative ways.

In this context, the 2015 conference organizers ask participants to 
engage in conversation about the nature of contemporary media, 
communication, and technological struggle, and the possibilities for 
transforming the contemporary neoliberal order.

We welcome proposals from emerging and established scholars, graduate 
students, activists, media makers, workers, and artists for 
presentations that speak to the theme or related issues in democratic 
communications, including new media and technologies, media and tech 
activism, policy, histories, gender and race, work and labour, social 
justice, and organizing and resistance. We welcome proposals for paper 
presentations, workshops, theme panels, film screenings, artistic 
interventions, and other formats.

Submission guidelines: Please submit a 300-500 word abstract or 
presentation description to http://udc2015.wordpress.com/cfp/ For theme 
panels, please submit a short description of the panel and 300-500 word 
abstract for each presentation.

Graduate students who want to be considered for the Brian Murphy Student 
Paper Award should submit a full paper along with their abstract.

Deadline: December 1, 2014.

We look forward to seeing you in Toronto in 2015!

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