[Commlist] CFP Media Theory, Media Fiction, and Infrastructures Beyond the Earth

Call for Papers: Media Theory, Media Fiction, and Infrastructures Beyond 
the Earth

Space exploration mediates how societies envision their future and space 
exploration would not be possible without media. More obviously, the 
history of space exploration is closely tied to Cold War military and 
economic imperatives. Today, established space agencies are struggling 
with national funding, and numerous countries are starting ambitious 
space programs, and private companies and individuals are building 
innovative space plans and technologies. The current socio-political 
configuration offers thinkers and practitioners new opportunities by 
which to intervene in how we envision and inhabit the cosmos. /Media 
Theory, Media Fiction, and Infrastructures Beyond the Earth/ is a 
two-day workshop May 7-8, 2020 at University of Toronto, Mississauga 
that will investigate space exploration and inhabitation from the point 
of view of media studies.

Because media infrastructures are outer space’s condition, media 
scholars and practitioners are uniquely equipped to critically engage 
with the debates and issues surrounding the anthropological, social and 
political implications of space exploration. Outer space is a field of 
activity conditioned by the tools, artifacts, devices, and dispositives 
of media studies, revealing that humanity’s relationship with the cosmos 
is a mediated one: we rely on satellites in Geostationary Earth Orbit 
(GEO) for communication as well as for health and environmental 
monitoring and planning; on Geo Positioning Satellite (GPS) for 
navigation; on space travel apparatuses for the development of methods 
of storage and transportation of information, bodies, and goods; on 
tele-communication devices for interplanetary transmission; on the tools 
of media archeology for data sampling; on the tools of media geology for 
mining and extraction; and on the tools of information sciences for data 
processing and visualization. Outer space is a site of both potential 
inhabitation and politics in which medium design plays a crucial role.

Today, as we face growing concerns about the future of human survival on 
Earth, we have to rethink our relationship to technology, land, 
population, property, resource extraction, and environmental management. 
Even more critically, as space exploration is being envisioned and 
imagined as a continuation of older logics – military, colonial, 
capitalist, sexist, classist, racist, ableist – we have to ask what 
kinds of theory, analysis, methods, techniques, and ethics are needed to 
critically inhabit the cosmos?

This workshop will bring together media, information and communication 
scholars, and students working on outer space and communications 
infrastructure as well as academics, writers, and thinkers researching 
science and science fictions, as well as Afrofuturism and Indigenous 
futures. It will seek to formulate propositions on how media scholars 
and practitioners can provide noteworthy interventions into the current 
and future debates around space exploration and inhabitation.

We especially welcome proposals from graduate students that propose 
innovative questions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

Political economy of New Space companies

Media infrastructure in outer space, e.g. satellite imaging

Outer space and waste management

Architecture in outer space, e.g. design of space colonies

Media geology, land, and extractivism of outer space, e.g. asteroid mining

Outer space and multimedia ethnography

Outer space and the future of wearable technologies

Media archeology and planetary histories

Outer space, journalism, and media representations

Militarization of outer space

Media ecologies, ecosystems and ecological colonization of space

Outer space and futures of marginalized groups

Outer space, robots, and transhumanism

Extraterrestrial and artificial intelligence

Media, space and war

We foresee this event as a collective think tank to reflect on the 
contribution of media scholars and practitioners to the future of space 
exploration. We wish to create the conditions for constructive dialogue 
and collective enunciation. We are thus especially keen on proposals 
that emerge from struggles of thought and work in progress, and which 
formulate questions and invite dialogue rather than offering fully 
articulated propositions.

Graduate students and media practitioners are welcome to submit (1) an 
abstract (max. 250 words) of their planned contribution; (2) a question 
they would like to be addressed at the workshop and (3) a short 
biographical profile (max. 100 words) to (spaceandmedia.uoft /at/ gmail.com), 
by February 15.

Limited funds to aid graduate student travel and accommodation are 
available. Please indicate it in your submission email if you require 
funding for travel or accommodation!

Confirmed speakers include:

Kathryn Denning (York University)

Nalo Hopkinson (sci-fi author, Cal State Riverside)

Lisa Parks (MIT)

Lisa Ruth Rand (Science History Institute)

Chris Russill (Carleton University)

Fred Scharmen (Morgan State University)

Gerry William (sci-fi author)

Karen Lord (author of speculative fiction and sociologist of religion)

Organizing Committee:

Marie-Pier Boucher

Reka Patricia Gal

Tero Karppi

Jeremy Packer

Jeremy Packer, PhD

Associate Dean, Graduate

University of Toronto, Mississauga

3254 Davis Building

Associate Professor

Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology

Faculty of Information

University of Toronto

Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine (Duke 2020) 
<https://www.dukeupress.edu/killer-apps>

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