[ecrea] CFP: Emerging Genres, Forms, and Narratives in New Media Environments

       19--20 April 2013
       Program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM)
       North Carolina State University
       Submission deadline: 1 February 2013

       Digital media have enabled what impresses most observers as a
       dizzying proliferation of new forms of communicative interaction
       and cultural production, provoking all manner of multimodal
       experimentation, artistic and entrepreneurial innovation,
       adaptive construction and reconstruction, and a good deal of
       just plain play. Hyperlinking, interactivity, and crowdsourcing
       change our narrative strategies and structures. Some of these
       new forms go viral, some persist, some adjust incrementally,
       others languish or are rapidly replaced by something else.
       Scholars in multiple fields have begun to explore these
       processes of emergence, innovation, and stabilization, many of
       them working with the concept of genre, which has become newly
       important in rhetoric, literature, game studies, library and
       information science, film and media studies, applied
       linguistics, and elsewhere. As social recognitions that embed
       histories, ideologies, contradictions---as sites of inventive
       potential---as recurrent social actions---genres are
       constitutive of culture, in Giddens's sense. Genre systems can
       tell us a great deal about social values and cultural
       configurations; narratives tell us who we are and who we want to
       be; rhetorical and poetic form offers recurrence, recognition,
       satisfaction.


       The 2013 CRDM Research Symposium will explore through both
       theoretical inquiry and case studies these processes of
       emergence, innovation, and stabilization as rhetorical energy
       meets the affordances and constraints of new technologies.
       Issues of interest include the relationship(s) between medium
       (or technological affordances) and the evolution and
       stabilization of genre conventions; historical examples of genre
       emergence when old media were new (print, film, phonography,
       radio, television, etc.); the re-mediation or adaptation of
       familiar forms and narratives in new media; the potentialities
       of new combinations of modalities, of sound and text, image and
       word; the processes of global distribution, uptake, and
       modification of historically and culturally situated forms and
       narratives; the emergence and assimilation of new forms and
       genres in education, science, religion, and politics.

       Sponsored by NC State's doctoral program in Communication,
       Rhetoric, and Digital Media, the annual CRDM Research Symposium
       brings together faculty, graduate students, invited speakers,
       and other participants to engage in collective inquiry and
       dialogue on a topic of interdisciplinary interest.

       Keynote speakers for 2013 include Janet Giltrow (University of
       British Columbia), Lisa Gitelman (New York University), David
       Herman (Ohio State University), and Neil Randall (University of
       Waterloo Games Institute). For a full list of our keynote and
       featured speakers, please see the Speakers page.


       We invite participation from CRDM faculty and graduate students;
       from other departments and programs across NC State University;
       from other universities and colleges, and from corporate,
       governmental, and academic institutions throughout the Research
       Triangle and at the national and international levels. We
       welcome two main types of submissions: (1) traditional paper
       presentations, and (2) digital projects or installations. To
       present a paper, please submit a 250 word proposal by 1 February
       2013 through the submission portal on the conference website
       (Please note: you must have an account with the site to submit a
       proposal). To present a digital project, demonstration, or
       installation, please submit a 250 word proposal/description of
       the installation. Additionally, please include as much detail as
       possible about your space and technology requirements.
       Notifications will be sent on 15 February 2013.

       Joint Event with Carolina Rhetoric Conference


       The 2013 CRDM Research Symposium will be held jointly with the
       annual Carolina Rhetoric Conference (CRC), a graduate student
       conference organized cooperatively by students in rhetoric at
       Clemson University, the University of South Carolina, and NC
       State University, and hosted this year by CRDM students and the
       NC State chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America. The CRC is
       open to any graduate students interested in rhetorical studies.
       Several events will be held jointly by the CRC and the CRDM
       Symposium on Friday, and participants in each event will be able
       to attend sessions at the other.

       Publications and Media Archives

       We plan to publish selected papers from the Symposium as an
       edited volume and/or special journal issue related to the theme
       and to make videos of Symposium presentations available on the
       CRDM website. The CRC plans to create a podcast series. More
       details will be available later.