[Commlist] CFP -- eco_media II virtual conference: Fire & Rain

The Screen & Sound Cultures Research Group and the Critical Intimacies 
Reading Group at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, present

eco_media II: Fire & Rain

RMIT University, Melbourne
Tuesday 1 September 2020

Unless it is 100% safe to return to RMIT, this symposium will be held 
online. Even if we return to campus, those who aren’t able to present 
in-person are welcome to join us remotely.

The first eco_media symposium was held at RMIT University in October 
2019. Theorists, poets, researchers, filmmakers, recorders, and artists 
gathered to explore what it means to think and make in a time of climate 
catastrophe. See a summary of the day, along with the programme, at this 
page on the Screen & Sound Cultures website.

The second symposium invites a similarly broad range of thinkers and 
makers to take the conversation further. In particular, we seek 
theoretical, empirical, philosophical or creative responses to the 
extreme weather events that have wreaked havoc all over Australia in the 
last six months: the devastating bushfires that engulfed Australia in 
late 2019 and early 2020, and the extreme flooding events along the 
eastern seaboard in late January and early February 2020. Media 
responses to the COVID-19 pandemic will doubtless be covered by other 
conferences, journals and institutions. However, we also welcome 
discussion of how our ideas, understandings, philosophies of climate 
change – as well as the response to the bushfires and flooding – have 
been affected by the pandemic.

Academics and postgraduate researchers from humanities, communications, 
social sciences, media studies, environmental studies, and more, are 
invited to contribute.

Topics to be covered can include -- but are not limited to:

- analyses/discussion of media representations of these extreme events, 
or environmental issues in general
- documentary/creative interventions into the climate catastrophe discourse
- social media-based responses to the bushfires, including international 
celebrity attention
-new media and environmental justice
-discussion of (or contributions to) media responses (or lack thereof) 
to the impact of the bushfires/floods on animal life and Indigenous 
Australians and Country
-how the climate debate – or responses to extreme Australian weather 
events – has been affected by COVID-19
-the meeting places between the natural and the mediated
-the impacts of media practice/research on the environment
-media materialism (which can incorporate elements of the above)

Presentations have a max duration of 20 mins (you will be timed), but 
within that 20 mins you can read or present a paper; screen or present 
work-in-progress; philosophise on the current media/environmental 
condition; live riff/performance along a theme; or any combo of these.

Selected presentations concerning visual media will be invited for 
conversion into articles for a special issue of Senses of Cinema planned 
for publication in 2021.

Please send a 200-word abstract and 50-word bio to 
(eco.media2.rmit /at/ gmail.com) by 5pm Friday 14 August.

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