[ecrea] Call for Papers: 2017 What is...? Conference-Experience

*Call for Papers//*

*/Lifestyles • Lifeworlds • Lifeworks: What is Life?/*

*University of Oregon in Portland (USA) • April 6-8, 2017*

Today, media constitute and permeate all avenues and forms of life – 
scale, pace, and pattern interact in private, public, and organic 
systems. As technology**encompasses more and more practices and agents, 
and becomes evermore malleable and fungible – *What is Life?*And, how is 
life mediated?

In 2017 the seventh annual “What is...?” conference-experience 
investigates, imagines, and enacts everyday *lifestyles*and 
*lifeworks*by emphasizing the *lifeworlds *we inhabit.Our aim is to 
build bridges through multidisciplinary networks along with discovering 
how communication is instrumental in and for living systems.

The event will bring together scholars, government and community 
officials, industry professionals, alumni and students, as well as 
scientists, artists, filmmakers, grassroots community organizations, and 
the public. It will feature plenary speakers, roundtables, paper 
presentations, installations, and special events.

/Presentations/panels/installations may include the following topics (as 
well as others):/

*Communication and Media*

• What is /media life/? How is life mediated/?/ How is life a medium? 
How do media shape everyday life’s habits?

• How do science communication and ecology inform each other? What is 
public and/or solutions journalism?

• What are approaches to civic media, engagement, and action for the 
environment? What is ecosophy?

• How do media draw attention to and motivate certain lifestyles and 
livelihoods (e.g. crowdsourcing)?

• What ways do technology/media act as life-support/sustaining systems? 
What is life in an “always-on culture”?

• How do apps, games, and immersive worlds help us to adapt to the 
ever-changing landscape of mediated life?

• Where are boundaries (dis)integrating between databases and life (e.g. 
social media and/or bioinformatics)?

• How are language, meaning, mind, and thought grounded in life 
processes? What is new materialism?

• What are relationships between media archaeology and nature 
(/Geologies of Media/ and /Insect Media/)?

• Is life an algorithm (materially and/or symbolically) in big data and 
data visualization?

***Media and The Environment*

• How are ecological education and media related (e.g. ecomedia, 
ecocriticsm, ecodesign, and/or ecoliteracy)?//

• How are communication/media and the natural and life sciences coming 
together (e.g. ecosystem analysis)?

• How is media metabolized (e.g. e-waste)? How can we repair the world 
(e.g. bio-remediation)?

• What are emerging issues in environmental humanities research? What is 
biomedia and/or bioart?

• How are place and space (environments) related to media and life? What 
is life enhancement (H+)?

• How does an embodied (material) account of media and science/art 
contribute to integrative thinking?

• What are indigenous peoples’ rights and issues (e.g. natural 
resources, autonomy, environmental degradation)?**

***Sustainability, Responsibility, and Beyond*

• What are sustainable cities and livability? What is biourbanism? What 
is social ecology?

• How do sustainable housing and/or placemaking foster habitats? What 
are DIY (design) & SLOW (e.g. food)?

• How can sustainability cultivate more diversity and inclusivity (e.g. 
gender, race, age, socioeconomic class)?

• How are sustainable business and systems thinking intertwined (e.g. 
triple bottom line, biomimicry)?

• What is corporate social responsibility in public relations? What is 
social entrepreneurship (e.g. L3C, B-corp)?

• How does advertising enhance/obsolesce sustainability trends (e.g. 
life-cycle assessment, greenwashing)?

• What are incubators for social, economic, and political change? What 
is an /evolutionary/ political economy?

• How are collaborative and cooperative projects facilitating ecological 
praxis (e.g. open source ecology)?

• Are there accounts of aesthetics and ethics that can assist in our 
understanding of life processes?

• What comes /after/ sustainability? How do we differentiate sustaining 
from thriving (communities of practice)?

***Emergence, Synergy, and Regeneration*

• What is biodiversity? What is biocommunication, biosemiotics, 
bioculture, or bioethics?

• What is biopower, biopolitics, bioeconomics, and/or biosecurity? What 
is ecofeminism and/or ecospirituality?//

• What is artificial life/intelligence and/or synthetic biology? How is 
life being incorporated?

• How do microbes change our conception of life? How does microbial 
health relate to the built environment?

• What are black swan events? Who controls life, death, birth and aging? 
What is integrative medicine?

*/
/*

*/Conference Organizers: /Janet Wasko (University of Oregon) and Jeremy 
Swartz (University of Oregon)*

*Send 100-150 word abstracts/proposals by November 21, 2016, to: Janet 
Wasko • (jwasko /at/ uoregon.edu) <mailto:(jwasko /at/ uoregon.edu)>*

*School of Journalism and Communication • University of Oregon, Eugene, 
Oregon, 97405-1275, USA*

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