[ecrea] UDC Conference submission deadline December 1st

The Union for Democratic Communications 2015 conference will be held May
1-3, 2015, at the University of Toronto. For more information, please
visit the conference website at http://udc2015.wordpress.com.

This email contains information about:

1. The call for papers and proposals
2. The Dallas Smythe Award
3. Astra Taylor, keynote speaker



1. Call for papers
Deadline for submissions: December 1, 2014

Contemporary communication practices are marked by struggle. On the one
hand, we live amid neoliberalism and austerity and the challenges these
structures impose on democratic life, including precarity, debt, and
enclosure. Capitalism has integrated communicative activity and digital
technologies into a logic of accumulation that exploits all forms of the
commons: the environment, languages, affects, information, and
knowledge. Technological innovation makes possible new forms of
surveillance and corporate control over these resources. On the other
hand, this integration is incomplete. Individuals, organizations, and
collectives are using these same technologies to fight back. Struggles
for higher wages, less work, social justice, and a better quality of
life are occurring worldwide. Those who struggle against domination are
communicating across new channels in innovative and creative ways.

In this context, the 2015 conference organizers ask participants to
engage in conversation about the nature of contemporary media,
communication, and technological struggle, and the possibilities for
transforming the contemporary neoliberal order.


We welcome proposals from emerging and established scholars, graduate
students, activists, media makers, workers, and artists for presentations t

hat speak to the theme or related issues in democratic communications,
including new media and technologies, media and tech activism, policy,
histories, gender and race, work and labour, social justice, and
organizing and resistance. We welcome proposals for paper presentations,
workshops, theme panels, film screenings, artistic interventions, and
other formats.


Submission guidelines: Please submit a 300-500 word abstract or
presentation description to
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=udc2015. For theme panels,
please submit a short description of the panel and 300-500 word abstract
for each presentation.


Graduate students who want to be considered for the Brian Murphy Student
Paper Award should submit a full paper along with their abstract.


Deadline: December 1, 2014.


2. Dallas Smythe Award

The Dallas Smythe Award is given in loving memory of one of the great
pioneers of the study of the political economy of communications and one
of the great leaders in the struggle for democratic communications. At
each conference, the Union for Democratic Communications honors a
critical media scholar/activist whose work exhibits the spirit of
engagement, democracy, teaching, and feistiness to which the UDC is
committed.


Past recipients of the Dallas Smythe Award include Santiago Alvarez,
John Downing, Tom Guback, DeeDee Halleck, Ed Herman, Robert McChesney,
Eileen Meehan, Vincent Mosco, Manju Pendakur, Peter Phillips, Herb
Schiller, Janet Wasko, and Yuezhi Zhao.


The steering committee is soliciting nominations for the next award, to
be presented at the 2015 conference at University of Toronto, Canada,
May 1-3. Please email your nominations to the UDC Steering Committee by
December 1, 2014. Please include a one or two page letter of nomination
that describes your nominee’s qualifications and accomplishments in
critical communications scholarship and/or communications activism.
Nominations of women and underrepresented minorities are particularly
welcome. Self-nominations are accepted.

3. Astra Taylor: Keynote Speaker
We are excited to announce that Astra Taylor will be the keynote speaker
at UDC's 2015 conference.

Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, and activist. Her films include
Zizek!, a feature documentary about the world’s most outrageous
philosopher, and Examined Life, a series of excursions with contemporary
thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Cornel West, Peter
Singer and others. Taylor’s essays and criticism have been published
widely and she is the editor of Examined Life, a companion volume to the
film, and coeditor of Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. Taylor also
helped launch the Occupy offshoot Strike Debt and its Rolling Jubilee
campaign. Her latest book is The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power
and Culture in the Digital Age. She is currently working on a
documentary about democracy.

We look forward to seeing you in Toronto in 2015!

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