[Commlist] CFP: ICA Preconference - Non-Aligned Disruptions: Global Media Histories in the Wake of Decolonization

Non-Aligned Disruptions: Global Media Histories in the Wake of 
Decolonization
International Communication Association Preconference: June 12, 2025. 
Denver, CO
Co-sponsored by: Global Communication and Social Change, Communication 
History Divisions
With the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the 1960s, newly 
independent nations from across the Global South sought to generate 
channels and protocols for international collaboration that would bypass 
centuries-old colonial extractive dynamics. What began as a political 
project of high level diplomacy soon expanded into an ethos that 
inspired and guided numerous initiatives in the fields of scientific 
research, cultural production, architecture, and so on. In short, the 
Non-Aligned Movement was a major disruptor of the political, economic, 
and cultural status quo of the mid-20th century, and media and 
communication practices were key to this disruption. Projects like New 
World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), Broadcasting 
Organization on Non-Aligned Countries (BONAC), and Non-Aligned News 
Agency Pool (NANAP) aimed to reconfigure the international arena of 
communication, from reimagining networks and technology exchange to 
forging new collaborative practices to respond to unique and shifting 
on-the-ground situations of decolonizing countries in the Global South. 
These projects troubled and challenged established logics of the 
existing institutional apparatuses and research paradigms they relied 
on. However, the histories of these disruptions have mostly remained 
unwritten or been forgotten by contemporary scholarship.
This preconference aims to examine the conceptual implications and 
epistemic challenges that NAM disruptions (as well as other forms of 
disruptions that emerged in media and communication systems of the 
Global South and are aligned to the spirit and objectives of NAM) 
continue to pose for media and communication research. How do we account 
for the varied projects that were simultaneously initiated in and 
carried out from locations such as India, Iraq, Algiers and Cuba? How 
does such a fundamentally transnational character of collaborative 
initiatives expand our grasp of global media histories? What do we make 
of institutional collaborations that unsettle our understandings of 
top-down and bottom-up activities? How should we frame the persistence 
of racial logics that NAM actors faced in the realm of international 
media governance? And how do NAM’s failures, alongside the simultaneous 
persistence of its legacies, trouble existing conceptions of media 
temporalities? We will bring together scholars who are tackling these 
and other questions to provide a greater depth and geographical scope to 
media and communication studies’ understanding of the long history of 
global connectivity. By centering historical projects of media 
decolonization, we also aim to advance the field’s contemporary efforts 
to decolonize and de-canonize knowledge production.
This ICA preconference continues from two previous preconferences held 
in Canada and Australia respectively: “Media and Communication Studies 
in Global Contexts: A Critical History” and “Repressed Histories of 
Communication and Media Studies.”
The preconference will be organized as a set of four roundtables and we 
invite submissions that address one of the following roundtable topics:

  *
    Develop critical histories of the disruptions and consolidations of
    media industries in postcolonial and non-aligned contexts, with a
    particular emphasis on institutional and political economic analysis.
  *
    (Re)Assess the role of popular icons in the Non-Aligned Movement
    (e.g.  from Nasser and Nehru to Mariam Makeba and Bruce Lee) across
    various media forms including but not limited to films and
    newsreels, radio, television, posters and pamphlets, music.
  *
    Consider Non-Aligned media practices as forms of anti-colonial
    worldmaking and knowledge production, especially in their relation
    to transnational feminist, queer, disability, and other justice
    movements.
  *
    Explore contemporary re-activations of nonaligned visions in
    response to renewed pressures to align with or against regimes of
    power in the context of contemporary geopolitics.


Information about submissions
Authors should submit an extended abstract of 350-400 words (excluding 
references) to *(cargc /at/ asc.upenn.edu)*. In a single PDF, please include: 
your name, institutional affiliation, email address, title of your 
proposed presentation, and abstract.
*The deadline for submissions is _December 15th, 2025, 23:59 GMT_.*
Authors will be notified by January 30, 2025 if their abstract has been 
accepted.
Attendance to the preconference has a general USD 50.00 fee. Please note 
that we will be able to defray registration costs and provide some 
travel funding for panelists.

Organizers:
Eszter Zimanyi, University of Pennsylvania
Sima Kokotovic, University of Pennsylvania
Aswin Punathambekar, University of Pennsylvania
Simone Natale, University of Turin
Usha Raman, University of Hyderabad
Emily Keightley, Loughborough University
Jing Wang, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ignatius Suglo, University of Richmond


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------