[ecrea] CFP: McLuhan's Messages,,for Contemporary Communication and Media Research

Dear Colleague,

I have attached to my email the call for papers of the conference 
*/McLuhan's Messages/*

*/for Contemporary Communication and Media Research /*which is organized 
by the Eötvös Loránd University Media and Communication Department as 
one of the series of events to honor the centenary of Marshall McLuhan's 
birth.

I respectfully ask you to advertise it on your forums,

Yours,

Noémi Tünde Farkas
Assistant lecturer
ELTE BTK Muvészetelméleti és Médiakutatási Intézet
Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences
Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies
1088 Budapest Múzeum krt. 6-8.
tel/fax.: +36-1-411-65-58

+++

CALL FOR PAPERS

McLuhan's Messages

for Contemporary Communication and Media Research

Eötvös Loránd University

Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies

November 11, 2011.

/tag cloud/: drama, change, extension, prosthesis, human being, 
environment, involvement, detachment, frame, electronic circuitry, 
information, parabola, literature, montage, enigma, metaphor, 
performance, scene, whirlpool, global village, message, medium, brand 
new world, rear-view mirror, revolution, anachronism, probe, 
parochialism, dialogue, child, politics, writing, humor, originality

A series of events will be held in Budapest in 2011 to honor the 
centenary of Marshall McLuhan's birth. The participating Budapest 
institutions are the Ludwig Museum, the Kunsthalle, LABOR, Kitchen 
Budapest, the Intermedia Department at the Hungarian University of Fine 
Arts and the Department of Media and Communications (Institute for Art 
Theory and Media Studies) at Eötvös Loránd University. The series 
includes projects, exhibitions, discussions, and actions.

The Department of Media and Communications contributes to the series 
with a conference on "McLuhan's Messages," which will explore how 
relevant McLuhan's oeuvre is for contemporary media and communication 
research. In our time, when networking and interactive communication 
have far surpassed all the sixties' expectations for the growth of 
information society, the McLuhanist idea of the global village seems to 
be an error only in terms of judging the level of intensity of 
connections between people. The idea is apparently realized on a much 
higher level today. Or so it seems. For the "melting" of people into the 
apparatuses producing virtuality is different in the western/northern 
and in the eastern/southern parts of the globe. While in the former the 
utopian expectations project the so-called "angel communication" in the 
near future, the computer waste coming from the western world causes 
diseases in the respiratory organs of the men and women in the east who 
try to extract the metal from the matter in the process of 
industrial/manual recycling. Even if the new forms of colonization 
definitely do not stem from McLuhan's texts, the reflection on the 
relationship between virtual and material is a terrain not only for 
postcolonial criticism and environmental studies, but also for 
communication research. This is why the centenary could be a proper 
occasion to make McLuhan's theses confront various theories that have 
tried to calm the teleological expectations made on the basis of 
McLuhan's work (e.g. Raymond Williams' critique of technological 
determination; Derrida's critique of the notion of the "end of writing"; 
W.J. T. Mitchell's critique of domesticated prostheses and the age of 
information, among others). Far from intending to be spoilsports, we 
hope to make an experiment with this revival of the critical tradition 
to see the turning point where McLuhan's more or less ideological 
discourse may become valid speech for us.

The organizers look forward to the participation of all experts and 
researchers who think rereading and adapting the works of McLuhan in the 
changing environment is timely.

The conference is organized by Associate Professors András Müllner and 
Ferenc Hammer, and Professor Péter György.

The application form can be downloaded from the official website of the 
conference: http://mcluhan100.kibu.hu/en/conferences/mcluhan-messages/

Please fill in the form and send your abstract for 20-minute papers 
(200-400 words) to (mcluhan /at/ emc.elte.hu) <mailto:(mcluhan /at/ emc.elte.hu)> by 
30 July, 2011.