[ecrea] Call for Proposals: What is Universe?

*What is Universe? Communication • Complexity • Coherence*

*University of Oregon in Portland, **April 19-21, 2018*

The */What is Universe?/* (2018)/ c/onference-experience examines 
communication, complexity/simplicity, coherence/incoherence and, how 
they may or may not contribute to “a pluralistic universe.” This 
conference marks the third collaboration among scholars from the natural 
and social sciences, communication, media, law, design, and art. We 
invite proposals for scholarly papers, panels, exhibits and 
installations on a wide variety of issues and topics. Please see 
*whatis.uoregon.edu <http://whatis.uoregon.edu>* for more details.

Participants will explore universes—from reality bubbles, immersive 
virtual environments, and alternate histories, to agential realism, 
media genealogy and archaeology*,* to bio-inspired, urban and ecological 
design, to universal rights, disabilities studies, multicultural 
communities, networks, and cosmologies.

*Proposals may address the following questions (as well as others):
*• What are communication, science, media, design, and philosophy 
universes today, and how are they syncretizing? How can universities and 
disciplines be understood as universes?
• How are citizens increasingly being drawn into alternate, fictional, 
cinematic, andcomic book universes, social networks, immersive worlds, 
and augmented realities?
• In an age of increasing communicative complexities and 
oversimplifications, what is truth and what is reality? How do 
real/virtual and analogue/digital universes overlap/separate?
• How is journalism overcoming vernaculars of real/fake news in a 
“post-truth” era, while still actively seeking**solutions?
• What constitute material universes in antiquity and contemporary culture?
• How do technological and cosmological universes transform theory-practice?
• In this context, what is posthumanism**and how are speculative futures 
already integrating into (re)generative medicine, music, law & other 
disciplines?
• How are emerging systems, environments, architectures, the sciences 
and the arts converging/diverging into societies and universes? What are 
universes of values?

With the definitions of “universe” continuing to multiply, important 
questions abound as we address a sweeping range of issues next April in 
Portland, Oregon.

*Conference Organizers: *Janet Wasko and Jeremy Swartz (University of 
Oregon)

Send 100–150 word abstracts or installations by *DECEMBER 31, 
2017* to:Janet Wasko, (jwasko /at/ uoregon.edu) <mailto:(jwasko /at/ uoregon.edu)>. 
School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 
97403, USA

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