[ecrea] CALL FOR PAPERS for conference on: Communication, Postcoloniality, and Social Justice: Decolonizing Imaginations

CALL FOR PAPERS

Communication, Postcoloniality, and Social Justice: Decolonizing 
Imaginations

A four-day conference: Sponsored by the Waterhouse Family Institute for 
the study of Communication and Society (WFI) at Villanova University, 
PA,   26th-29th March, 2015, Location: Villanova University (Specifics 
to be announced later)

About Waterhouse Family Institute: Founded in 2010, the WFI’s mission is 
to foreground the centrality of communication scholars, activists, and 
professionals to the study of and advocacy for social justice. To that 
end, the WFI is dedicated to creating opportunities for the productive 
and collaborative exploration of these issues in ways that cross 
sedimented boundaries, whether they be academic, methodological, or 
national. The WFI annually sponsors research grants for scholars whose 
projects embody and extend its mission (typically awarding a total of 
$40,000 to scholars across the globe), and supports projects that 
highlight communication scholars’ abilities to advocate for social 
change. Since its inaugural launch in October, 2010, the WFI has 
sponsored events, lectures, and symposia creatively engaging the 
essential link between communication/media and social justice. Past 
symposia have addressed the communicative production and contestation of 
truth (2011-12), the clash between institutional values and social 
justice advocacy (2012-13), and dialogic approaches to diversity in 
secondary and higher education (2013-14). Continuing the social justice 
focus, the WFI is very pleased to announce a conference on 
“Communication, Postcoloniality, and Social Justice: Decolonizing 
Imaginations,” and hopes that this important scholarly event will chart 
some possible pathways for Communications research (broadly conceived) 
in the 21stcentury.

Conference Organizers: Bryan Crable; Raka Shome (Biographies of 
organizers presented at the end of call for papers)

Keynote Speakers: Arjun Appadurai (New York University, USA),

                               Inderpal Grewal (Yale University, USA)

                               Ravi Sundaram (Center for the Study of 
Developing Societies, India)

Plenary Speakers: (confirmed so far) Boulou Ebanda De B’Beri (Canada); 
Mohan Dutta (Singapore); John Erni (Hong Kong); Nitin Govil (USA);  
Ramaswami Harindranath (Australia); Aniko Imre (USA); Shanti Kumar 
(USA), Soyini Madison (USA); Radhika Parameswaran (USA); Sandra 
Ponzanesi (Netherlands); Arvind Rajagopal (USA); Raka Shome (USA); 
Ramesh Srinivasan (USA)  (Awaiting confirmation from other speakers)


Three Plenary Sessions: 1) Significance of postcolonial studies for 
communication and media research 2) Postcolonial feminist and queer 
approaches 3) Postcoloniality and the Global South: Logics of Modernity 
beyond the West/North

In the past two decades, postcolonial theory has become increasingly 
influential in various spaces in the Social Sciences and Humanities. 
Recent communication and media scholarship has also shown some interest 
in postcolonial frameworks. However, there has not been a focused and 
sustained conversation in Communication/Media Studies in the United 
States and we think, even outside, that has engaged the ways in which 
communication and media studies, and postcolonial studies can mutually 
inform each other in the advancement of social justice projects. The 
conference emerges from the recognition that diverse logics, networks, 
and trajectories of communication and media today (as well as in the 
past) play a significant role in the production of colonial power 
relations in contemporary globality.

The organizers of Communication, Postcoloniality and Social Justice: 
Decolonizing Imaginations thus invite proposals from scholars who employ 
postcolonial frameworks to study various communication and media 
phenomena—including their embedded-ness in various logics of 
transnationality. We are interested in exploring how communication/media 
scholarship, with its varied rich perspectives, may make contributions 
to broad field of postcolonial studies by foregrounding the importance 
of communication/media frameworks for understanding colonial cultures, 
and transnational relations. At the same time we recognize that many of 
the core concepts and assumptions in the fields of Communication and 
Media Studies are rooted in Western/Northern exclusionary intellectual 
frameworks. Thus, we wish to explore how postcolonial analytical 
frameworks may productively enrich our understandings of various 
communication and media phenomena and enable us to decolonize normative 
frameworks in the field so as to be responsive to various struggles 
engendered by contemporary (and past) post/colonial logics. The 
conference aims to provide a productive space that can facilitate 
dialogue and interconnections amongst scholars conducting postcolonial 
scholarship in communication and media studies. We also hope that this 
conference can provide a space for building intellectual solidarities 
amongst scholars in Media and Communication who are concerned with the 
politics of colonialisms (including their varied transnational logics) 
as they inform our research and influence our social, economic, 
cultural, and academic practices.

This call for papers will be available for download on the Communication 
Department of Villanova University website by the end of week of May 
5th. A conference website will be put up by the end of May—please check 
there for updates.

REGISTRATION FEES: $250 (includes some meals and coffee; specifics will 
be confirmed in fall, 2014)

FORMAT: We welcome proposals from scholars, activists, and researchers 
from various parts of the world. Papers must demonstrate an engagement 
with the field of postcolonial studies. (Just any descriptive study of 
colonialism, while suitable for other venues, will not fit the goals of 
this conference). Submissions must be made by August 30, 2014. 
Acceptance of papers will be announced sometime in October 2014. PLEASE 
EMAIL SUBMISSIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY TO: Bryan Crable 
((bryan.crable /at/ villanova.edu)) and Raka Shome ((r.shome /at/ yahoo.com)). In 
subject heading please write: “Submission for Communication, 
Postcoloniality and Social Justice conference.” Given the volume of 
submissions we expect to receive, we will not be able to acknowledge 
receipt of every submission.

Please choose any one format:
1) Panel proposals: Panels on a theme relevant to the conference are 
welcome. A panel should have between 3-4 panelists (including 
discussant. Chair may be one of the presenters, or you may select your 
own Chair/moderator who is not a presenter). Please submit title, panel 
abstract (which should include names/affiliation of participants, 
description and justification of panel). REQUIRED: 350 word panel 
description/justification, and approximately 200 words abstract of each 
paper to be presented.

2) Individual paper proposals: Please send an abstract of around 350 
words. Name, paper title, and institutional affiliation must be included.

A statement of commitment to attend is required of all participants. 
Please include that in your proposal submissions.

Potential topics of interest are (and these are not exhaustive). 
Postcoloniality and the Global South; Feminist and Queer Approaches; 
Transgendered subjects and/in colonial cultures; Gay imperialism; 
Homonationalism; Heterosovereignities; Modernity beyond the West/North 
(Papers dealing with Islamic modernities from a 
postcolonial/transnational perspective especially welcome); Memor(ies) 
and Postcoloniality ; Diaspora (especially new logics of diaspora) and 
Hybridity; Media and Migrations; Post/colonial Visual cultures; Cultural 
Studies and the Postcolonial; Nation, nationalisms, national identity; 
Asylum and Exile; Colonial Necropolitics; Colonial Biopolitics; 
Subalternity and Communication (e.g., the ‘impossibility’ of 
communication in the politics of subalternity); Cosmopolitanism(s); 
Politics of Cultural Translation; Engagements with works of key 
postcolonial scholars in terms of their relevance for 
media/communication studies; Communication of “human rights;” 
Consumption, Cultural Industries, and Postcolonial/Transnational Power 
relations; Environment and the Postcolonial (papers on mediations of 
“climate change” are particularly welcome); Intellectual and Cultural 
Property Issues; Affective regimes and post/colonial relations; 
Celebrities and Colonialism; Materialities of colonialism; Fashion, 
Identity and Colonialisms; New Media; Postcolonial Urbanisms; Traveling 
technologies and colonial circuits; Techno-cities; Transnational 
Temporalities; Postcoloniality and computer cultures; Postcolonial 
Piracy; The “global” city; Technological Colonialisms; Science and the 
Postcolonial; Electronic Others; Postcolonial Securitizations; Politics 
of Representation; Global health and colonial relations; 
“Humanitarianism,” “Natural Disaster” and Contemporary colonial logics; 
Decolonizing Pedagogy and the field of Media/Communication Studies; The 
contemporary university and (the possibility of) postcolonial interventions.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS Dr. Bryan Crable is Professor of Department of 
Communication at Villanova University, and the Founding Director of 
Villanova’s Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication 
and Society. His scholarly work connects critical race theory, 
rhetorical studies, and the philosophy of communication, specifically by 
engaging Burkean rhetorical theory. He is the author of Ralph Ellison 
and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide (University of 
Virginia Press, 2012), a book awarded inclusion in the Mellon 
Foundation’s American Literatures Initiative, excerpted in Twentieth 
Century Literary Criticism, vol. 286 (Gale, 2013), and reviewed in such 
journals as African American Review, Callaloo, and Rhetoric Review. He 
is also the editor of a volume of essays connecting Burkean studies to 
the concerns of social justice, Transcendence by Perspective: 
Meditations on and with Kenneth Burke (Parlor Press, 2014). Dr. Crable 
is a two-time winner of the Charles Kneupper Award for best article of 
the year from the Rhetoric Society of America (2003, 2009), and, for his 
scholarly and professional contributions to the discipline, was awarded 
the Kenneth Burke Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. In 
addition to scholarly chapters and reviews, his essays have appeared in 
top rhetoric and communication journals, including The Quarterly Journal 
of Speech, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Argumentation & 
Advocacy, Human Studies, Communication Quarterly, and Western Journal of 
Communication. In addition to his work as WFI Director, Dr. Crable has 
served on the editorial board of leading journals in his field, has 
served in a leadership role in the Kenneth Burke Society, the National 
Communication Association, and the Eastern Communication Association, 
and in 2011 was invited to serve as an Associate in the international 
scholarly network, the Taos Institute. CONTACT: (bryan.crable /at/ villanova.edu).

Dr. Raka Shome is a Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies scholar 
who writes on postcolonial cultures and transnational feminism. 
Currently based in New York, Dr. Shome has published numerous articles 
and book chapters in leading journals and anthologies in the field of 
Media and Communication Studies. She is the author of Diana and Beyond: 
White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture 
(University of Illinois Press, 2014)-- a book that examines how new sets 
of postcolonial relations in contemporary western cultures are mediated 
through images of white femininity. Under her co-guest editorship the 
first-ever special issue on ‘Postcolonialism’ was published in the field 
of Communication Studies in the International Communication Association 
journal Communication Theory (August, 2002). She recently also guest 
edited a special issue on ‘Asian Modernities (2012) in the (Sage) 
journal Global Media and Communication, which included several 
internationally recognized scholars working on the question of what it 
means to be “modern” outside of liberal western frameworks. Some of her 
essays have been reprinted in key texts in the field of global 
communication and media studies. Dr.Shome has delivered talks, including 
keynotes and plenaries, nationally and internationally on issues of 
postcoloniality and racism in contemporary global contexts. In 2011-2012 
she served as the Inaugural Harron Family Endowed Chair of Communication 
and Justice at Villanova University , Pennsylvania. Prior to this, she 
held full time faculty appointments at London School of Economics, (UK), 
Arizona State University, and University of Washington. She serves on 
the editorial boards of several leading journals in Communication. She 
has been a past chair of the Cultural Studies Division of National 
Communication Association (NCA) and has also received awards for her 
research from National Communication Association. Her current research 
interest is in the logics of non western modernities. CONTACT: 
(r.shome /at/ yahoo.com)





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