Join us October 31-November 2, 2019 at 8am at California State University, East Bay
Check out the Conference Schedule Here!
The UDC, since its founding conference in Philadelphia in 1981, has been a place for scholars in the political economy of communications to level theoretically sharp inquiry into the relationship between media, quality of life, democracy, and equality. Scholars at past and present meetings have approached political economy of media through the lenses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability expanding on our understanding of the forms of oppression and domination that often escape the orbit of normative approaches to democracy and plurality promoted in other disciplines. The UDC continues to promote critical and radical approaches to media and, also, expand its circle to areas of inquiry affiliated with political economic approaches to media including gaming studies, cultural studies, and critical race approaches to name but a few. Perhaps, most significantly, the UDC has, since its founding, and continues to work to bridge the divide between academics, cultural workers, and social movements. The UDC sesquiannual meeting remains a place where UDC participants join with media activists and community groups to build connections that can advance broader local and national projects. We have been lucky to have PC as a partner in these projects.
It is our hope that this year’s conference at California State University, East Bay strengthens our relationship with PC and offers opportunities for new groups and new insights to better advance an understanding of current global conditions and opportunities for democratic social change.
Presenters at this year’s meeting are strongly encouraged to submit their papers to the UDC’s journal, Democratic Communiqué. We will discuss our association’s journal at this year’s business meeting which we hope you will all attend. The business meeting is also an opportunity for first and longtime participants to become involved with the UDC more directly. This, and past, meetings and the organization as a whole depends upon voluntary labor and the business meeting serves as a way for people who truly appreciate this unique organization and conference to ensure that it continues into the future.
The Union for Democratic Communications-Project Censored 2019 conference invites contributions that reflect on the relationships between media, communication, and empire from a variety of perspectives. Contributions may examine these concepts through historical materialist, feminist, critical race, queer, and other critical approaches, and might be situated in interdisciplinary areas such as Latinx Studies, Black Studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and environmental studies. In particular, we invite contributions that highlight the means and methods for active resistance, democratic communication, and the promotion of social justice. New and established scholars, graduate students, activists, and media creators are encouraged to submit proposals. Please refer to this page for proposal submissions.
At this conference, we will ask: In what ways do we still exist in “American empire”? What are its prospects for the future, what alternatives are emerging and in what way? What role do media and communication networks play in solidifying or disrupting these possibilities? What continuities or disjunctures exist in the relations between the state, capital, labor, technology, and ideology? In what ways are the structures and ideologies of colonialism and imperialism (re)produced and experienced within national contexts?
Topics included but not limited to:
- Race, class, gender and/or indigeneity
- De-colonization
- Borderlands
- Subaltern publics/communities, counterpublics, intersectional & post-colonial critiques
- Subversive political knowledge & oppositional gazes
- Debt, precarity and austerity
- Transnational capitalist class
- Refugees and migrants
- Intersectionality, hybridity, articulation
- Nomadism, dislocation, ephemerality, ontological hybridity
- Slavery, colonialism/post-colonialism and/or the primitive accumulation of capital
- Progressive movements, social movements, mass mobilizations and protests
- Alt-global visions
- Left-state alternatives
- State violence
- Media reform and communication policy
- Neo-fascism
- Media literacy and critical media theory
- The neoliberal assault on higher education, radical scholars and academic freedom
- Radical scholars and academic freedom
- Critical communication pedagogy
- fake news and propaganda
- CNN Effects
- Intersections of politics, morality, and communication in the current political climate
- Eco media studies
The post The Union for Democratic Communications-Project Censored 2019 appeared first on Project Censored.