[Commlist] CFP | Contested Visibilities | ECREA DCC, GSC and VC sections

**CALL FOR PAPERS**

Contested Visibilities: Everyday politics and online imaginaries of the body

co-organised by the Digital Culture and Communication, Gender, Sexuality 
and Communication and Visual Cultures sections and their YECREA 
representatives.



6-8 September 2023, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal


While in the early days of the internet, the digital was often seen as 
purely virtual and detached from the experience of human embodiment, our 
current online landscape has challenged this view. Social media seems to 
have awakened the urge to share images of our bodies. These shared 
visual representations contribute to the creation of individual and 
collective identities. They are tools of meaning-making and belonging in 
a highly mediatised world. Their visibility can be part of advertising 
campaigns, everyday interactions, intimate practices, activist 
engagement and many other affective practices. These are situated in 
digital cultures of affect and their inherent normativity is governed 
not only by social norms but also by the particular possibilities and 
algorithmic rules of platforms.


Contested online environments have also become terrain for contemporary 
social justice movements and activists who both respond to and use 
online visual representations for their actions. These hybrid activist 
practices rely on embodied representations and combine online and 
offline activities. While online spaces enable important visibility, 
this visibility also carries risks and raises questions about who 
prefers not to be visible and what practices of resistance can be 
adopted. Digital participation is inextricably linked to embodied 
characteristics (e.g., gender, ethnicity, social class, age, 
(dis)ability or others). These intersecting identities can shape digital 
experiences enabling them to both liberate and oppress individuals and 
communities.


Format

The conference will include different formats for presentation on topics 
related to contested visibilities, everyday politics and online 
imaginaries of the body. We welcome individual submissions for oral 
presentations, which will be arranged in thematic sessions by the 
organising team. We also welcome submissions in alternative and creative 
formats, proposals may include video, audio, images, text, hyperlinks 
and multimedia that illustrate your reflections in the proposal.


We are interested in abstracts that address the complexity of online 
representations of bodies and/or related visual practices (e.g., 
producing, perceiving, curating, circulating) through case studies, 
theoretical, empirical or methodological approaches. We strongly 
encourage submissions that take an intersectional approach and address 
embodiment in relation to social factors such as gender, sexuality, age, 
class, race/ethnicity, disability, and nationality.


We are open to contributions from scholars at all career stages 
(early-career scholars are especially invited to participate), artists, 
activists, and media producers.


We look forward to submissions on (but not limited to) the following topics:


* The use of digital media for feminist, queer, anti-racist, 
anti-ageist, anti-ableist, anti-classist, neurodiversity, or 
illness-related activism and the returning critique of the normative body;

* Reactionary visualities to the above activism and hate 
speech/imaginaries "against the woke";

* The intertwinement of socio-cultural imaginaries with platform cultures;

* Chances and limits of hybridisation of commercial culture, strategies 
of self-branding and body activism;

* Practical experiments with methods attuned to the 
'online-groundedness' of social body images (e.g., body-image dominated 
platforms such as TikTok or Instagram);

* Impact of online representation of bodies in various fields such as 
sports, memory cultures, advertising, fan/pop cultures, etc;

* Augmented technologies of filtering, avatars and their significance 
for identity and meaning-making;

* Images shared without consent, images that reproduce stereotypes and 
resistance by minority communities;

* Images produced by media and news organisations as part of their work, 
which are ultimately criticised for 'othering'/stereotyping communities, 
and the activism involved;

* Online communities as sites of political pedagogy and critique of 
mainstream/traditional media's stereotyping of the body;

* Dialectical dialogues about the body in the online sphere: 
metadiscourses, beefs, videos about videos, Tiktok reframings;

* Gendered and sexua(lised) digital/online representations of embodied 
diversity, difference and intersectionality;

* Critical analysis of the relationships between digital spheres and 
gendered and sexual(ised) performativity, resistance and defiance;

* Representations of bodies in relation to technology and artificial 
intelligence;


Abstracts

Please submit your proposal (300-500 words) until 15 May, 23:59 (CET) 
using the form at <https://bit.ly/ContestedVisibilities 
<https://bit.ly/ContestedVisibilities>> and highlight how your work 
relates to the conference topic, methods used, and perspectives you 
would like to bring to the discussion. In addition to the thematic 
sessions, the conference will also facilitate practical tutorials 
dedicated to creative/situated/ethical approaches to digital platforms 
and visual data.


Workshop
In addition, our YECREA team offers an online pre-conference workshop 
for early-career scholars focusing on research challenges (ethics, data 
access, collection, analysis etc.) via Zoom on Monday, 4 September 2023. 
This event will offer ECRs the opportunity to present their work in 
progress. If you wish to participate in the ECR pre-conference event, 
please submit an abstract of 200-300 words at 
<https://bit.ly/workshopContestedVisibilities 
<https://bit.ly/workshopContestedVisibilities>>, briefly describing your 
current project and research challenges, e.g. in regard to research 
ethics, data collection, access, or analysis. The accepted participants 
will engage in facilitated peer discussions based on their submissions. 
Participation in the pre-conference YECREA workshop can be independent 
of participation in the conference. Please indicate how you would like 
to participate by 15 May, 23:59 (CET). Participation in the online 
workshop is free of charge.



**Organisation**


This ECREA conference is co-organised by the Digital Culture and 
Communication, Gender, Sexuality and Communication and Visual Cultures 
sections and their YECREA representatives.


Hosted and sponsored by Lusófona University.


The conference is partially supported by funding from the European 
Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie 
Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement Nº 101059460.


More info at 
<https://dccecrea.wordpress.com/2023/02/24/contested-visibilities 
<https://dccecrea.wordpress.com/2023/02/24/contested-visibilities>>

For questions, please send an email to 
<ContestedVisibilities2023[at]gmail[dot]com>


**Timeline**


* The deadline for submissions is Monday 15 May 2023, 23:59 (CET).

* We will notify all contributors if their proposal has been accepted or 
not by the end of June

* Registration for the conference will be open in early July

* The event will take place on 6-8 September 2023, at Lusófona 
University Lisbon.


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