[Commlist] Call for Papers: ‘Making Sense of the High-Speed Society’

Reminder and Keynotes - Call for Papers: ‘Making Sense of the High-Speed 
Society’



"As a conclusion to our project Pause for Thought: Media Literacy in an 
Age of Incessant Change (funded through the AHRC Research Networking 
Scheme - pauseforthought.net <http://pauseforthought.net>), we will be 
hosting a small, one-day symposium on the topic ‘Making Sense of the 
High-Speed Society’.


The symposium will hopefully be *held in person*, and will be hosted at 
the University of Lincoln, UK, on Monday, 6th December between 
10.00am-5.00pm.If circumstances make an in-person event impractical or 
unsafe, it will be held online instead.

We can now announce the two keynote speakers: *Dr. Rebecca Coleman*, 
Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London; and *Professor 
David M. Berry*, University of Sussex.

CFP

The world seems to change so rapidly, it often feels hard to keep up. 
Concerns regarding the hurried pace and constant upheaval of everyday 
life are not at all new, but anxieties surrounding these issues seem to 
be growing increasingly acute, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic 
(witness, for instance, the focus on problems of ‘burnout’).Continual 
upheaval, one of the characteristic features of modernity from the 
Industrial Revolution onward, has intensified to the point where our 
societies are unable to adjust.This inability to keep up manifests most 
strikingly in the realm of technology: the platforms, devices, apps, and 
other media forms that leave a mark on our everyday lives emerge and 
then obsolesce with dizzying rapidity.

We have all likely devised and shared tactics for adapting to and 
managing the pressures that the high-speed society places upon us – ways 
of dealing with the fact that we cannot, and perhaps should not, keep up 
with the pace of change. That is, ‘media literacy’ – the question of how 
we learn to navigate the fluctuations of our hyper-mediated world and 
how we share that skill and knowledge with others – is not an issue that 
can or should be confined merely to the institutional setting of the 
university. It does not occur solely within the classroom. In a world 
saturated by media technologies, all of us must learn – have learned – 
to live with media’s accelerating pace of change. Or: to ‘make sense’ of 
media technology even as it threatens to leave us behind.

We invite proposals for 15-minute papers that reflect upon, respond to, 
or critique these notions of the high-speed society and media literacy 
and the twin problems of social acceleration and rapid technological 
development.

We are especially interested in papers that address – in theoretical, 
conceptual, methodological, or empirical terms – the question of how we 
might ‘make sense’ of or reframe this state of affairs. Although our 
project centres upon the study of media and their various literacies, 
the symposium is intended to be interdisciplinary in nature, for we 
recognise that that such concerns extend far beyond the disciplinary 
confines of media studies proper. We encourage proposals from 
researchers (including doctoral students and early-career researchers) 
working in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences whose 
relates to study of the high-speed society.

Themes that papers might potentially address include:

-Social acceleration

-Media literacies (beyond traditional educational institutions)

-Accelerating cycles of technological invention and obsolescence

-Anxieties relating to time-pressures, overwork, information overload, 
burnout, etc.

-Management culture and the logics of productivity/efficiency

-Political economy of speed

-The uneven distribution of social acceleration

-The pleasurable and oppressive aspects of speed and slowness

-‘Slow’ movements (e.g. slow food, slow journalism, slow research, etc.)

-Resisting the injunction to acceleration

-Artistic or literary responses to/conceptualisations of the high-speed 
society

Please submit abstracts of 250 words, including your institutional 
affiliation and a short biography, to both Tom Sutherland 
((tsutherland /at/ lincoln.ac.uk) <mailto:(tsutherland /at/ lincoln.ac.uk)>) and Scott 
Wark ((s.wark /at/ warwick.ac.uk) <mailto:(s.wark /at/ warwick.ac.uk)>). The deadline 
for submissions is 1st of November, 2021.

In the interests of keeping participants safe and ensuring the event 
runs smoothly, we are planning to run this symposium as a small event.

All successful applicants will be asked to submit an *extended abstract 
of 500-1,000 words *prior to the symposium’s commencement. These will 
not be peer-reviewed, but will be copyedited and published on the 
project’s website (pauseforthought.net <http://pauseforthought.net>), 
further contributing to the project's ongoing non-academic network and 
output. The hope is that the symposium will lead to an edited collection 
of some kind, which will be discussed with participants - neither of 
these publishing projects will require author publication fees.

We have a budget to cover travel costs (and accommodation also if 
required) for all participants within the UK. If you are interested in 
travelling from overseas, please speak to us about possible arrangements.

If you have any enquiries, please get in touch with us at the email 
addresses above.

Shareable link: https://pauseforthought.net/symposium/cfp/ 
<https://pauseforthought.net/symposium/cfp/>"

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