IAMHIST Masterclass on Media and History

IAMHIST Masterclass on Media and History

Thursday 12 January 2023

To be hosted online via Zoom, between 3-5pm CET/2-4pm GMT/9-11am EST

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 21 NOVEMBER

CFP: Exploring the Archived Web During a Highly Transformative Age

It is a pleasure to announce the launch of the call for contributions for the RESAW 2023 Conference, whose title is Exploring the Archived Web During a Highly Transformative Age.

Eight years after the first RESAW conference, which provided for ground-breaking debates on technical, scientific and archival aspects, the conference proposes to appraise Web archives studies in relation to the research carried out on the Internet, social media, the Web archives and reborn digital heritage. It will examine the development of Web archiving while highlighting the way in which technical, cultural, geopolitical, societal and environmental transformations impact the conception, study and dissemination of this reborn digital heritage. The conference will subsequently focus on the methods and practices implemented by those who have explored and continue to explore the archived Web while opening up perspectives for the years to come. Located on the Mediterranean shores, the conference in Marseille will be an opportunity to stimulate discussions based on the approaches used in different cultural areas on different levels in order to reflect on Web archiving in the Mediterranean and its surrounding areas.

AEJMC’s History Division is soliciting entries for its annual award for the best journalism and mass communication history book. The winning author will receive a plaque and a $500 prize at the August 2023 AEJMC conference in Washington, D.C. Attendance at the conference is encouraged as the author will be invited to be a guest for a live taping of the Journalism History podcast during the History Division awards event.

The competition is open to any author of a media history book regardless of whether they belong to AEJMC or the History Division. Only first editions with a 2022 copyright date will be accepted. Entries must be received by February 1, 2023. Submit four hard copies of each book or an electronic copy (must be an e-Book or pdf manuscript in page-proof format) along with the author’s mailing address, telephone number, and email address to:

Gwyneth Mellinger, AEJMC History Book Award Chair

James Madison University

Through its fellowships and travel grants, the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation supports research projects that present creative approaches to the study of invention and innovation in American society. Projects may include (but are not limited to) historical research and documentation projects resulting in publications, exhibitions, educational initiatives, documentary films, or other multimedia products. 

Our programs provide access to the expertise of the Institution’s research staff and the vast invention and technology collections of the National Museum of American History (NMAH). The NMAH Archives Center documents both individuals and firms across a range of time periods and subject areas. Representative collections include the Western Union Telegraph Company Records, ca. 1840-1994 and the Mergenthaler Linotype Company Records, 1886-1997. In addition, the NMAH Library offers long runs of historical technology serials like Scientific American_and _American Machinist, and the American Trade Literature collection, which includes 300,000 catalogs, technical manuals, and advertising brochures for some 30,000 firms, primarily from 1880-1945. For a comprehensive catalog of objects, manuscripts, images and research materials available at the NMAH (and other Smithsonian units), see http://www.collections.si.edu/.

Topics: The Lemelson Center invites all applications covering the broad spectrum of research topics in the history of technology, invention, and innovation. However, the Center especially encourages proposals that align with one (or more) of its strategic research and programmatic areas, including 1) projects that illuminate inventors from diverse backgrounds or any inventions and technologies associated with under-represented groups, such as women, minorities, LGBTQ, and the disabled; (2) projects exploring innovation in sports and sports technology; or (3) projects that explore the broader ecosystem of individuals and institutions that support inventors, including inventors’ professional organizations; angel investors, venture capitalists, and financiers; incubators and entrepreneurial coaches; patent agents and IP attorneys; product designers, manufacturers, and marketers; and bankruptcy-liquidation specialists. 

The Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship supports the work of an experienced author or senior scholar (associate/full/emeritus professor level or equivalent) from the history of technology, science and technology studies, business history, museum studies, STEAM education, or an allied field. The specific arrangement is flexible: the Molella Fellow may use the funds as a sabbatical supplement; for several short-duration visits; for a virtual appointment focused on research and writing; or for a series of lectures leading to a major publication. The stipend is $35,000. Funds may be used flexibly to support teaching buyouts, travel for several short-term visits, living expenses for longer residences up to six months, and related research expenses. Dates are flexible. Applications are due 1 November 2022. For application procedures and additional information, see http://invention.si.edu/arthur-molella-distinguished-fellowship.

CFP: ICA Preconference on the Legacies of Elihu Katz

Elihu Katz (1926–2021) was a peerless scholar, colleague, mentor, administrator, and friend to many in the field of communication. His passing has left the field with an absence that calls out for remembrance and for scholarly consideration. This one-day, all-plenary preconference will create a space for scholarly exchange on Katz’s life, works, and themes—a forum, in other words, for active, critical engagement with his legacy for the field. The preconference invites presenters to explore, critique, and extend Katz’s contributions to communication scholarship. Some will situate Katz’s legacies in pertinent historical contexts; others will use his work to imagine media futures; still others will consider Katz’s many roles (teacher, institution-builder, broadcast pioneer, mentor).

Some lines of inquiry presenters may wish to explore include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

* considerations of journalism and the public that draw upon Katz’s configurations of Gabriel Tarde’s ideas

FUTURE [of] ARCHIVES

International Association for Media and History Conference 2023

Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada 20-22 June (in-person)

Deadline for submissions (20-minute presentations, panels of three 20-minute papers, or practice-based research/workshops): 16 January 2023

CFP: Eight Annual Conference on the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS)

Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University

9–10 June 2023

This two-day conference of the Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS), at Uppsala University in Sweden, will bring together researchers working on the history of post-World War II social science. It will provide a forum for the latest research on the cross-disciplinary history of the post-war social sciences, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, and sociology as well as related fields like area studies, communication studies, history, international relations, law, and linguistics. The conference aims to build upon the recent emergence of work and conversation on cross-disciplinary themes in the postwar history of the social sciences.

Historiography in Mass Communication Available Online

A new issue of the journal Historiography in Mass Communication will go online next week. We will let you know when it goes live.

In the meantime, our current issue is still available. It does not require a subscription — it is free! You can access it at http://history-jmc.com. You may either read it online or download a pdf.

Here’s a list of the contents:

CFP: Exploring the Archived Web During a Highly Transformative Age

It is a pleasure to announce the launch of the call for contributions for the RESAW 2023 Conference, whose title is Exploring the Archived Web During a Highly Transformative Age.

Eight years after the first RESAW conference, which provided for ground-breaking debates on technical, scientific and archival aspects, the conference proposes to appraise Web archives studies in relation to the research carried out on the Internet, social media, the Web archives and reborn digital heritage. It will examine the development of Web archiving while highlighting the way in which technical, cultural, geopolitical, societal and environmental transformations impact the conception, study and dissemination of this reborn digital heritage. The conference will subsequently focus on the methods and practices implemented by those who have explored and continue to explore the archived Web while opening up perspectives for the years to come. Located on the Mediterranean shores, the conference in Marseille will be an opportunity to stimulate discussions based on the approaches used in different cultural areas on different levels in order to reflect on Web archiving in the Mediterranean and its surrounding areas.

The RESAW 2023 Conference will take place on 5 and 6 June 2023 in Marseille (France) at the MUCEM (Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean).

Call for Essays: Broadcast Media History

The website for AEJMC History Division’s scholarly journal Journalism History seeks essays on the history and importance of television over the last 60 years.

The impetus for this essay series is the 60th anniversary of CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite informing the nation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination (Nov. 22, 1963). We welcome all topics exploring broadcasting or television since that iconic moment, including essays focused on TV and intersectionality, children, political or public broadcasting, cable news, and advertising.

One installment in the website’s fifth essay series will be posted on the Journalism History website each month throughout the year 2023. Three essays will be published in Journalism History. The winning essay will receive a $100 prize.

Call for Applications: Exploring Diversity in Technology’s History (EDITH) Conference Support Award 2022

Lisa Ruth Rand’s picture Discussion published by Lisa Ruth Rand on Sunday, September 11, 2022 0 Replies The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) Special Interest Group Exploring Diversity in Technology’s History (EDITH) announces its conference grant program for 2022. The EDITH Conference Support Awards are designed to defray costs associated with participating in the SHOT annual meeting, which may include travel, lodging, meals, and other incidental expenses. Eligibility is open to individuals giving a paper at the 2022 SHOT annual meeting in New Orleans.

EDITH was founded in 2012 with the dual aims of supporting scholars and scholarship currently underrepresented in the history of technology and at SHOT. EDITH works toward incorporating insights from the fields of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and disability studies – and growing attention to the intersectionality of such categories – into the scholarship of the history of technology and providing an intellectual home within SHOT to a broad range of scholars.

The EDITH Conference Support Award prioritizes promoting the participation of: presenters with incomplete funding from other sources, presenters who are new to SHOT, graduate students, presenters belonging to any group underrepresented in SHOT, and scholars whose paper seeks to provoke analysis of difference, diversity, power, alterity, intersectionalities, etc. in the history of technology. Preference will be given to those who have not received funding from EDITH in recent years.

CFP: Media Identitopias: The Long History of Pleasure and Injury in (Social) Media

Guest Editors: Rebecca Wanzo & Reem Hilu

In 2020, the news media reported that Facebook’s internal studies had revealed what numerous scholars had already argued—adolescent girls have experienced depression and other mental health challenges because of extensive exposure to Instagram and other social media. At the same time, other scholars have explored how social media has been a positive force in people’s lives as a means of finding community, identity formation, and building social movements (Moya Bailey, Jillian M. Baez, Catherine Steele, Raven Maragh-Lloyd, Laura Horak).

But social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not the first examples of communities and identities organized around mediated texts and technologies. Young women connected over novel reading and the fantasies in their pages were considered “infectious” and dangerous, from Charlotte Temple to the rise of Harlequin and historical romance novels in the late twentieth-century (Cathy Davidson, Janice Radway). Psychiatrist Frederic Wertham fretted over the raced and gendered harms of comic books, even as the content and the communities that can form around comics often model new just worlds and offer a sense of belonging to the socially marginalized (Qiana Whitted, Ramzi Fawaz). The fan cultures from comics and other “geek cultures” like gaming and science fiction have notoriously been marked by misogyny, racism, and homophobia (Suzanne Scott, Rukmini Pande), even as the same groups marginalized by white supremacy and toxic masculinity have built their own affirming and pleasurable communities. How do we place the current conversation about social media in historical context to think about a longer history of social interaction through media? Can we learn from scholarship about the ways that prior communities organized through media interaction and consumption balanced or failed to balance affinities and difference amongst their members?

The journal Internet Histories Volume 6 Issue 1-2 has been completed and is available online.

This is a special double issue “Dead and Dying Platforms” by guest editors Muira McCammon & Jessa Lingel.

Two articles are Open Access, and one is Free Access for a limited time.

The double issue may be accessed here:

Women in Technological History (WITH) 2022 Conference Grant

The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) Special Interest Group (SIG) for Women in Technological History (WITH) announces its conference grant for 2022. Designed to defray some costs associated with attending the SHOT Annual Meeting (such as lodging, meals, childcare, and other incidental expenses), the grant is open to individuals giving a paper at the 2022 conference in New Orleans. The reviewing committee prioritizes both work by female-identified scholars and feminist scholarship that addresses the presence, actions, activism, and analysis of women and gender in the History of Technology. Scholars who are new to SHOT and graduate students are particularly encouraged to apply.

Awardees typically receive a check for $250 with the possibility of additional funds depending on stated need and WITH’s resources. Winners will be recognized in New Orleans at the WITH meeting.

WITH also invites all applicants to be our guests at the WITH meeting; please indicate in your cover letter whether or not you will join us. Please do NOT register or pay for the WITH lunch in advance.

Dear all,

This is a kind reminder that the deadline to submit an abstract for the conference Time and Machines, 1700-1850: Economy, Productivity, Discipline (co-org. Gianenrico Bernasconi, University of Neuchâtel, 19-20 January 2023) is set on 30 September 2022.

We welcome abstracts (in either English or French) of no more than 500 words, to be sent to the address < mailto:marco.storni@unine.ch > or < mailto:marco.storni@gmail.com >. Submissions from early career researchers are very welcome. Funding will be available to cover accommodation expenses and meals.

Call for papers:

American Society for the History of Rhetoric Interest Group Call

The American Society for the History of Rhetoric (ASHR) Interest Group invites paper and panel proposals for competitive selection. We especially welcome works that address the convention theme, “Communicating Our Future.”

In addition to the broad range of approaches that continually seek to understand and critique rhetorics of and by history, further distinguishing ASHR as a site of scholarly creativity and rigor, SSCA’s 2023 Conference Theme of “Communicating Our Future” presents our scholars a unique opportunity to address the ways in which the past simultaneously influences the present as well as the future.

We especially encourage the submission of works that address how these rhetorics of and by history play a crucial role in the development of current and future rhetorical discourse, particularly at the discursive intersection(s) of politics, power, ideology, oppression, and resistance.

Call for Papers

Conference: #History on Social Media - Sources, Methods and Ethics

The #SocialMediaHistory project (www.socialmediahistory.de) is organising an online conference on 11 and 12 November.

We want to have a look at the significance of social media for historical research as well as research pragmatic approaches. We therefore welcome proposals for empirical case studies as well as theoretical or methodological contributions and problem outlines on various social media. Interdisciplinary approaches to history-related subjects, e.g. from (historical) communication research, media studies and digital humanities are explicitly encouraged.

BBC Radio 1922-2022 - Journal of Radio and Audio Media (JRAM) - Call for papers

Call for Papers –   Journal of Radio & Audio Media Symposium Edition

Editors on behalf of the MeCCSA Radio Studies Network: Janey Gordon, Josephine Coleman, Lawrie Hallett, Emma Heywood, Richard Berry, Deborah Wilson David.

Deadline for submission: February 1, 2023

Women’s Film Heritage: Expanding the World’s Film Archives

This is a call for short and diverse pieces of creative and academic work for an online open access publication of the RSE-funded project Women’s Film Heritage: Expanding the World’s Film Archives.  

Abstracts / proposals are invited from international scholars and practitioners with a specialism in the history of global film cultures, for a publication that will map out the neglect of women’s film heritage throughout the world, and beyond the usual focus on the Western archives. We are looking for short (maximum 4,000 words) pieces, including essays, self-reflexive pieces, poems or other creative work, interviews, video essays, photographic essays, etc… We encourage submissions in your mother tongue, and we will provide English translations or subtitles of these pieces. It is hoped this will result in an inclusive, multi-lingual and imaginative publication that reflects the wide selection of approaches to the topic of global women’s film heritage. 

You could also consider the abstract submission as a proposal for the international conference in January 2023 in Cluj, Romania. Please indicate in your abstract if this is of interest. 

Dear members,

I am Isah Nasidi from University of Nigeria, and the Secretary of the Communication History Division. I am young media and communication researcher.

I wrote a book titled Political communication in the era of fake news: concepts, laws and strategies.

The manuscript is ready, but I want to get a  scholar outside my country to write a forward for the book, at least to INTERNATIONALISED the book.

2nd International Symposium on Media History and Theory

Call for Papers English - Llamado a Ponencias Español Arriba

Presentation

The International Symposium on Media History and Theory is a trading zone where scholars from communications, design, humanities, arts and science can present current research, creative pieces, reflections and critical positions in areas such as software studies, media archaeology and history, speculative and critical design, media art, multimedia, and visual studies. The aim is to extend media analyses to physical media, technical operations, techno-scientific principles and the design of the infrastructures behind texts, images and sounds.

The BBC at 100 symposium, National Science and Media Museum and online, 13-15 Sept 2022

Everyone is welcome to register for free for The BBC at 100 Symposium, which will be held at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford and online from 13-15 Sept 2022. It is sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council with the support of the National Science and Media Museum, the University of Bradford and Media History.The symposium is interdisciplinary, inclusive and free to attend in-person or online. It aims

• to act as a gathering of the tribes, encompassing everyone from established scholars to postgraduates
• to take stock of research about the past century of British broadcasting by scholars in history, media and cultural studies, literary criticism, music, technology and related fields
• to explore what conceptual and logistical changes are needed to foster new directions in research and teaching
• to bring together archivists and researchers to discuss how to expand access to BBC archival resources, especially audiovisual ones.

One hundred and fifty academics and archivists from every continent save Antarctica participate in thirty roundtables on aesthetics, Africa and the Middle East, audiences, children, digital broadcasting, digitised archives, diversity, documentary and features, domestic and international literary programming, education, entertainment, ethnicity and sexuality, global broadcasting, the interwar period, classical, jazz and popular music, local and regional radio, mainland Europe, Northern Ireland and ‘The Troubles’, oral and transnational histories of BBC women, politics and current affairs, popular culture and the overseas services, popular music, public service broadcasting, radio drama, realism, religion and television studies. The programme is rounded out by plenary roundtables about archives and the history of broadcasting history, a tour of the NSMM’s special exhibition on a century of broadcasting, a joint book launch for twenty volumes on broadcasting history published since Covid, a gala screening of This Is The BBC (1960) and a symposium dinner followed by Paul Kerensa’s one-man play The First Broadcast.

CFP: Special Issue of the Journal Internet Histories “Museums on the Web: Exploring the past for the future”

This Special Issue will shed light on the history of museums on the Web. The advent of online technologies has changed the way museums manage collections and access them, shape exhibitions, and build communities and participation. However, scant attention has been given to how museums’ online presence has developed over time, from the mid-1990s to the present. Research has been undertaken for histories about museums and digital technologies (see for example Parry 2007, 2009; Cameron 2003; Cameron and Kenderdine 2010; Bowen 2010; Gartner 2016; Legene 2016). However, this Special Issue invites scholars and museum practitioners to discuss specifically the histories of museums on the Web. How have online collections been built, circulated, and exhibited? How have (information) architecture and museum websites developed over time? And how have museums built and engaged with (online) communities? We are interested in the foundational work by the early Internet pioneers, as well as the ruptures and continuities throughout the history of museums on the Web.

Please follow the link to the full description of the special issue and the forms to submit an abstract.

Possible topics could include, but are not limited to:

Call for Papers: Information & Culture

Information & Culture is an academic journal printed three times a year by the University of Texas Press. It publishes original, high-quality, peer-reviewed articles examining the social and cultural influences and impact of information and its associated technologies, broadly construed, on all areas of human endeavor. In keeping with the spirit of information studies, we seek papers emphasizing a human-centered focus that address the role and reciprocal relationship of information and culture, regardless of time and place.

The journal welcomes submissions from an array of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches, including but not limited to historical, sociological, psychological, political and educational research that address the interaction of information and culture.

To learn more about our submission standards or submit an article for publication in Information & Culture, visit our submissions page.

We are pleased to announce an open access Special Section on “Exclusions in the History of Media Studies”. The seven articles, published in English or Spanish, are introduced by the editors in English and in Spanish translation. History of Media Studies is a new, peer-reviewed, scholar-run, diamond OA journal dedicated to scholarship on the history of research, education, and reflective knowledge about media and communication.

• “Exclusions/Exclusiones: The Role for History in the Field’s Reckoning” - Peter Simonson, David W. Park, and Jefferson Pooley

• “Exclusiones/Exclusions: El papel de la historia en saldar la deuda histórica del campo” - Peter Simonson, David W. Park, and Jefferson Pooley

• “Antonio Pasquali. Una práctica intelectual entre América Latina y Europa (1979–1989)” - Emiliano Sánchez Narvarte

• “Constituted and Constituting Exclusions in Communication Studies” - Sarah Cordonnier

• “El imaginario textil: una interpretación alternativa en los estudios de la comunicación” - Daniel H. Cabrera Altieri

• “Inequality: The Blind Spot of Western Communication Studies” - Boris Mance and Sašo Slaček Brlek

• “Journalism via Systems Cybernetics: The Birth of the Chinese Communication Discipline and Post-Mao Press Reforms” - Angela Xiao Wu

• “Matrices y vertientes de pensamiento sobre los medios indígenas en América Latina” - Maria Magdalena Doyle

• “West Berlin’s Critical Communication Studies and the Cold War: A Study on Symbolic Power from 1948 to 1989” - Maria Löblich, Niklas Venema, and Elisa Pollack

History of Media Studies is published by mediastudies.press, a non-profit, scholar-led OA publisher. The journal is affiliated with (1) the Working Group on the History of Media Studies and (2) the History of Media Studies Newsletter, which contains updates on the journal, among other relevant news.

Questions? Contact us at hms@mediastudies.press

Dear all,

Apologies for cross-posting. The CFP below has been updated and the deadline extended. They are looking for chapters with an historical focus on queer animators, creators, imagineers, and musicians in relation to the Walt Disney Company. They are also seeking chapters that discuss the ‘Gay Days’ at Disney’s theme parks. 

Queering Disney: History of The Walt Disney Company and the Queer Community

deadline for submissions: 

Call for papers: “Hollywood Film Style and the Production Code: Criticism and History”, a special issue of The Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Schedule: 300-500 word proposals/abstracts, along with a short bio, to tom.brown@kcl.ac.uk by 01/08/2022.

10,000 word draft chapters will be due in June 2023 for publication in the journal in early-2024.

Almost 30 years since the Quarterly Review of Film and Video published a special issue on the Production Code edited by Lea Jacobs and Richard Maltby (1995; 15:4), the time is ripe for a re-consideration of the Code’s aesthetic impact on Hollywood. Facing head-on the vexed question of the interaction of industry regulation with the tone and style of films themselves, the essays in the collection look closely at the detail of film form while closely considering broader and more specific histories of Production Code Administration (PCA) regulation and the self-censorship it encouraged.

Call for Submissions

The Journal of 20th Century Media History, a new peer reviewed online academic journal, is soliciting original scholarly article manuscripts for its first issue. The journal is designed to be broadly interdisciplinary and address current scholarship across a wide range of subject areas. As the title suggests, we are looking to publish historical work about topics that, in the main, focus on people, events, ideas, and practices from the 20th century. Article submissions that make use of innovative research techniques and methodologies are highly encouraged, as is research that draws attention to previously marginalized or under-represented groups or forms of media practice.  The journal can be found at https://mds.marshall.edu/j20thcenturymediahistory/

Journal of 20th Century Media History | Marshall University

Possible subject areas for articles include:

Call for Papers

Women and Hollywood: Tales of Inequality, Abuse and Resistance in the Dream Factory

Edited by Karen McNally

Abstract Deadline: Friday 15 July 2022

Hi list,

In case you are interested in studies of material in web archives there is still a few seats left for the closing conference of the WARCnet network. The theme of the conference is “Web archive studies researching web domains and events”, and it takes place in Aarhus, Denmark, 17-18 October, just before the ECREA conference.

Since the beginning of 2020 the WARCnet international network has studied the history of (trans)national web domains and of transnational events on the web, drawing on the increasingly important digital cultural heritage held in national web archives, and beyond. Read more at warcnet.eu.

The programme of the final WARCnet conference is now on line at https://cc.au.dk/en/warcnet/meetings/aarhus-2022

Media and cultural life in German-occupied Western Europe (1940-1945)

Call for papers for a symposium in Brussels (7-8 November 2022)

During the Second World War Nazi Germany occupied the majority of Western Europe, but the mode of occupation differed substantially from place to place. Some areas were simply annexed to the Reich, while others were governed by German military authorities. Others still were administered by German and / or local civilian authorities. In all cases the Germans reauthorized local cultural production in order to create a semblance of normalcy for civilians and to further their own political and economic interests. Newspapers and radio broadcasts reappeared. Cinemas, theatres and concert halls reopened their doors. Media and cultural personnel resumed their activities under widely varying degrees of German control. While the press, radiobroadcasting and newsreel production were often embedded directly into the propaganda apparatus of the Third Reich - with the goal of normalizing occupation and cultivating sympathy for Germany - contact with local media personnel gave rise to various forms of negotiation, conflict, compromise, and even resistance. Meanwhile, operating primarily from Great Britain, the Allies mobilized film, radio , and print media (especially pamphlets) to influence Europe’s occupied territories.

Though research on the cultural, political, social, and economic dimensions of propaganda in Nazi-occupied territories has a rich academic tradition, it is far from exhausted. There is still much research to be done in local, national, and especially transnational perspectives. There is also still significant potential for interdisciplinary investigation. This symposium will contribute to the development of new interdisciplinary and transnational research on media and cultural life in German-occupied Europe. Specific attention will be paid to the opportunities and challenges offered by the digitisation of archival collections, printed newspapers and audio-visual sources.

Good afternoon,

Apologies for cross-posting. This is a reminder for the CFP below. The deadline for abstracts is June 30th:

Queering Disney: History of The Walt Disney Company and the Queer Community

With Disney’s initial apathetic response to the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill which recently passed in the state of Florida, it is time to shed light on Disney’s complex relationship with the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Recently, there have been works which briefly discuss the relationship of queerness and Disney, such as Sean Griffin’s Tinker Bells and Evil Queens (2000), Melanie S. Kohnen Queer Representation, Visibility, and Race (2016), Jennifer Sandlin and Julie Garlen’s edited collection Disney, Culture, and Curriculum (2016), and Joseph Brennan’s edited collection Queerbaiting and Fandom (2019). However, the queer artist/contributor has yet to be the main topic of discussion. These previous works shed light on these areas, but a sustained scholarly inquiry to bring this insight to the forefront and examine the historical and cultural significance of The Walt Disney Company’s complex relationship with the queer community has yet to be done.

CFP – International Conference : The web, source and archive

The organizing committee and the partners of the ResPaDon project are pleased to invite you to participate in the international colloquium:

The web: source and archive

This international conference proposes to question the place of sources from the web in the scientific field and to situate web archiving practices in plural scientific approaches and questions.

Spilling the Tea: Gendering News in the Early Modern World

What makes something ‘news-worthy’? When is something gossip, and when is it cold, hard fact? In the early modern period, a rise in the news across Europe resulted in what some have called an ‘information revolution’, with cheap, widely-available printed news and a thriving manuscript news culture leading to the rise of the public sphere. But – in the past as well as today – the ways that news and information are discussed are highly gendered, with men’s communication networks framed as newsworthy and women’s denigrated as gossip, scandal, tattle, and even ‘dirt’. 

This 1-day conference, Aug 25, 2022, at Durham University UK seeks to reconcile and acknowledge the ways that information is gendered, inviting a fresh consideration of expertise, communication, and publicity, putting women’s contributions, networks, and methods at the centre of news cultures rather than the periphery. We invite scholars and journalists to join us as we consider gender and the rise of the information age. Proposals for 20-minute (presentation) or 10-minute (roundtable) contributions on gender and the news, broadly framed, throughout the early modern (1450-1800) world. This might include, but is not limited to, topics such as:

• Women producers of the news, including women writers, publishers, and creators
• Gendering news as ‘gossip’, ‘tittle-tattle’, or ‘tea’
• Women readers and consumers of the news, and the gendering of readerships
• Letter-writing and epistolary cultures in literature, art, and drama
• Handwriting the news
• Different types of news, including local, social and familial news
• ‘Reporting’ as a gendered action and activity
• Communication methods, information culture and the spread of news both nationally and internationally 
• The history of journalism and women’s roles in the field
• Masculinity, self-control, self-presentation, and public engagement
• Personal networks, alliances, and the sociality of information
• Scandal, rumour, and illicit news-sharing

Book History with Heurist: the challenges and potential of a databasing platform

Many book history projects are developed in Heurist (https://heuristnetwork.org), an open-source web application that enables researchers to develop relational databases without any prior knowledge of programming. To facilitate conversation between such researchers, the Heurist Book History User Group has recently been formed (https://groups.google.com/g/heurist-book-history).

The Heurist Book History User Group is arranging an online workshop for the 20th and 21st of July 2022. Participants will present their book history projects, discussing their Heurist databases and the challenges they pose. The online workshop has three main aims: (1) to inform the community about the possibilities offered by the platform, (2) to orient future developments of the platform, and (3) to promote Heurist as a tool for book history to new users.

The project presentations will last 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions. Two keynote speakers will speak on the development of book history projects in Heurist. Our first confirmed keynote speaker is Professor Simon Burrows (Western Sydney University), who will present his FBTEE and MPCE databases, which he recently converted to Heurist after more than a decade using bespoke MySQL databases.

NOS-HS Workshop: “Cinema as space of encounters before, during and after WWII”

29-30 Sep. 2022, Kristiansand, Norway

For many people in the 20th century, going to the movies was not just a leisure activity, but a necessity. As embodiment of democratic mass culture, movie theatres offered information and entertainment to everybody, regardless of age, gender, class, ethnic or religious background, even though the cinema-going practices were socially distinct and fragmented. People went to the movies for multiple reasons: to be entertained, to learn what was going on in the world and in the community, to find consolation, reassurance, or encouragement, to connect socially or find privacy in the dark, to be noticed or to disappear in the crowd.

The workshop “Cinema as space of encounters before, during and after WWII” is the first in the workshop series “Cinema, War and Citizenship at the Northern Periphery: Cinemas and their audiences in the Nordic countries, 1935-1950”. It asks how the Second World War altered the cinema-going experiences and the social functions of the movie theatre. The Nordic countries were affected very differently by the war. While Denmark and Norway were occupied by Nazi Germany, Iceland was first occupied by British and then by US forces. Finland fought alongside Nazi Germany and then against it, while Sweden remainedofficially neutral, but experienced a large influx of refugees from neighbouring countries. The movie theatre became a battleground between different factions of society. At the same time, the movie theatres became a space of cultural encounters with the enemy or the ally, both on screen and in the auditorium.

Annual CBI Award in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) History

The way people and computers work together has been the subject of intense study since the beginnings of the computer age in the early 1950s. A discipline, known as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), eventually emerged to formalize this research, composed of computer scientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, artists, and many others. Since these early days of focus on the user experience, Human-Computer Interaction has helped create and shape our always evolving digital world—from early graphics, networking, and graphical user interfaces to the Web, mobile, the Internet of Things, AI, and the Cloud.

The Annual CBI Ben Shneiderman Award in Human-Computer Interaction History recognizes excellence in advancing the history/social study (focus must be change over time) of HCI. The principal award is for a published book, article, documentary, podcast, website, or other media on HCI’s past; a second award is for a top dissertation or thesis (Ph.D./Master’s degree) on HCI history.

Available Awards

New issue of Historiography is now available.

We are pleased to announce publication of the newest issue of the online journal Historiography in Mass Communication.

You can access the issue at http://history-jmc.com. You may either read it online or download a pdf. It does not require a subscription — it is free!

Here’s a list of the contents:

Call for papers: Beyond Early Cinema: Persistence of Travelling Cinema Throughout the Twentieth Century

Workshop - Universite Paris-Nanterre, France, October 19, 2022

This workshop, part of the “Community Building at the Cinema” research project, aims to explore the persistence of travelling cinema practices throughout the twentieth century. So far, historiography has mostly focused on the history of travelling cinema and its entrepreneurs in Western Europe before the First World War. With this workshop and according to the project’s decentralising ambition, we would like to take into consideration recent scholarly works and move beyond this well studied space-time to uncover the wide range of travelling cinema practises in lesser-investigated historical and geographical contexts. Indeed, in recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to non-commercial travelling cinema for propaganda or advertising purposes as well as commercial mobile screenings long after the implementation of the (historiographically) dominant model of fixed-site cinemas.

This workshop will explore travelling cinema practises on a global scale in their historical, material and cultural diversity and will look at the ways in which they interfere with the communal identities of audiences. How communities - understood as porous, linguistic, ethnic, religious groups, crossed by various social and cultural dynamics - structured travelling cinema audiences and, conversely, how travelling cinema screening venues created, reinforced or perturbed community identities? The time span adopted goes from the 1920s to the end of the 20th century, up to the moment when television got rooted in the daily spectatorial practices and the VCR player developed (a point in time that differs according to local media histories).

Call for papers: Re-bordering the archive – European audiovisual archives and transnational entanglements

NEW issue 24: Re-bordering the archive: European audiovisual archives and transnational entanglements

Guest editors: Alec Badenoch, Emily Clark, Yasemin Baḡcı, Marek Jancovic

Publication date: fall/winter 2023

mediastudies.press is a scholar-led, nonprofit, no-fee open access publisher in the media, film, and communication studies fields. We are excited to announce the publication of our latest book, Sue Curry Jansen’s What Was Artificial Intelligence?.

When it was originally published in 2002, Sue Curry Jansen’s “What Was Artificial Intelligence?” attracted little notice. The long essay was published as a chapter in Jansen’s Critical Communication Theory, a book whose wisdom and erudition failed to register across the many fields it addressed. One explanation for the neglect, ironic and telling, is that Jansen’s sheer scope as an intellectual had few competent readers in the communication studies discipline into which she published the book. “What Was Artificial Intelligence?” was buried treasure. In this mediastudies.press edition, Jansen’s prescient autopsy of AI self-selling—the rhetoric of the masculinist sublime—is reprinted with a new introduction. Now an open access book, What Was Artificial Intelligence? is a message in a bottle, addressed to Musk, Bezos, and the latest generation of AI myth-makers.

The book is available online, and as a free download in PDF, ePub, and Mobi. The book is also available as a $5 paperback.

What Was Artificial Intelligence? appears in the Media Manifold series. Scholars interested in proposing volumes in this or other series are encouraged to reach out with a query.

Joseph McKerns Research Grant Applications Sought

The American Journalism Historians Association seeks applications for its annual Joseph McKerns Research Grant Awards.

The research grant is intended to provide research assistance and to recognize and reward the winners. Up to four grants for up to $1,250 each will be rewarded upon review and recommendation of the Research Committee. Grants may be used for travel or other research-related expenses, but not for salary.

Eligibility:

Dear friends and colleagues,

We are pleased to invite those of you who will be in Paris on May 25 to attend the Communication History Division’s preconference “Reconsidering Empires and Imperialisms in Media and Communication History.” 

The event is open to all but advanced registration is required as places are limited.

If you are planning to join us, please register using this link: 

Call for Papers

Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression

November 3–5, 2022, via ZOOM and in person

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Call for Papers: Broadside Extra!

News, songs and provocations in the history of cheap print and street literature

One-day conference Saturday 15th October 2022, hosted by the School of Media and the Centre for Critical Media Literacy (CCML) at Technological University DublinOrganised by the Traditional Song Forum and CCML, with the support of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and An Góilín Traditional Singers Club.This will be an in-person conference, with proceedings live-streamed for those who cannot be there. Admission is free.

We invite proposals for 15-to-20-minute presentations on any aspect of cheap print and street literature in Britain and Ireland (and their diasporas) – including intersections of the histories of journalism and other facets of the popular press.

CfP: Media histories of the 1980s and 1990s. Special issue of TMG – Journal for Media History.

Deadline (Abstracts): May 16, 2022

Contemporary research predominantly conceives of ‘new media’—i.e., media worthy of scholarly attention—as digital media and computer technologies (Peters, 2009; Borah, 2017). Media historical scholarship has responded to this in various ways. Media archaeologists, for example, argue that historicising media helps to counter teleological perspectives concerning the current digital media landscape, as well as the corporate-fed idea that present-day media are more disruptive and transformative than ever. Others seek to historicise the current media ecosystem and its conceptual underpinnings to investigate claims of their supposed “newness” (Balbi, Ribeiro, Schafer & Schwarzenegger 2021). Media history at large has thus shifted from a central focus on traditional mass media towards a more diverse set of research ambitions, also including transnational media histories. 

However, media and technologies that emerged or prospered over the course of the 1980s and 1990s have largely been neglected, some exceptions notwithstanding (e.g., Arceneaux 2005; Moe & Van den Bulck 2016; Slootweg 2018; Verhoef 2022). This is problematic, for it results in a gap in our socio-cultural knowledge. After all, scholars have abundantly made clear that media histories form an apt prism through which to analyse ‘a rich web of cultural practices and ideas’ (Douglas 1987: xv). Seminal works have highlighted the societal changes that older media technologies, such as the telegraph (Czitrom 1982), telephone (Fischer 1992), radio (Douglas 1987) and television (Spigel 1992) engendered and reflected—yet there is a dearth of similar histories pertaining to the 1980s and 1990s. An earlier special issue of TMG—Journal for Media History sought to bring electromagnetic media such as video back into the limelight. More needs to be done, however. We believe that encouraging 1980s and 1990s media histories is imperative to understand historical developments such as burgeoning individualisation, consumerism or neoliberalism—developments which continue to affect our lives today. In short, 1980s and 1990s media technologies moved fast and broke things, too. 

CFA: Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Technology, applications due 15 April

The Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Technology honors the contribution of Brooke Hindle to the work of the Society for the History of Technology. The Fellowship, made possible thanks to the great generosity of his family, is for $10,000 and may be used for any purpose connected with research or writing in the history of technology for a period of not less than three months during the calendar year following the award.

Applicants must hold a doctorate in the history of technology or a related field. The doctorate can be awarded no more than four years before the application deadline, and no later than nine months after the application deadline. (Applicants who graduated more than four years before the deadline but have extenuating circumstances, such as family commitments, may apply at the discretion of the committee chair.) Other awards may be held in conjunction with the Fellowship.

The proposal must be in a field related to the history of technology. Applicants should be intending either to prepare a dissertation for publication as articles or as a monograph, or to develop a new project based on primary research. Applications must be in English.

New issue of Historiography in Mass Communication is available now. We are pleased to announce publication of the newest issue of the online journal Historiography in Mass Communication.

You can access the issue at http://history-jmc.com. You may either read it online or download a pdf. It does not require a subscription — it is free!

Here’s a list of the contents:

• From the Editor: “How Media History Matters”
• Pat Washburn, In Memorium: Mike Sweeney
• Erin Coyle, “Analyzing Journalists’ Collective Conceptions of Press Freedom”
• Hiley Ward, How Media History Matters: “The Media and Political Values”
• Historian Interview: Andrew Pettegree
• Book Award Interview: Harold Holzer: The Presidents vs. the Press
• News and Notes