Command, Control, and Communication: Scholarly Perspectives on Seventy Years of Nuclear Weapons History

November 18, 2015

National Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas

Deadline for proposal submission: June 30, 2015



Nuclear weapons were introduced to the world seventy years ago, beginning the era of "the Bomb." Historically speaking, the material, political, and social impacts of nuclear weapons defined the Cold War and the post-Cold War. Today, they continue to exert their power as they participate in forms of command, control, and communication on regional, national, and global scales.



To mark the seventieth anniversary of the entrance of nuclear weapons into our world, a special one-day event will be held on Wednesday, November 18, 2015 at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. Scheduled to coincide with the National Communication Association's 101st Annual Convention, this event will be open to the public and showcase a range of scholarship focused on the relationship between nuclear weapons and communication. The aim of the event is to not only showcase the work of scholars already engaged with topics related to nuclear weapons, but also to encourage new scholarship on the same.



Toward this end, we invite scholars representing a variety of methods and perspectives to submit papers for presentation. Topics include, but are not limited to:



Nuclear weapons and the rise of the national security state, for example related to:

  *   nuclear weapons and citizenship in Cold War rhetoric, or
  *   nuclear weapons and constructions of "security" in postwar culture, or
  *   nuclear weapons and the forced migrations of peoples in the Cold War.



Connections between nuclear weapons and contemporary issues, for example related to:

  *   nuclear weapons and the so-called War on Terror, or
  *   nuclear weapons and state surveillance, or
  *   nuclear weapons monitoring, proliferation, testing, and arsenal renewal.



The environmental and health implications of nuclear weapons, for example related to:

  *   the environmental legacies of nuclear weapons, or

  *   global human health issues and nuclear weapons, or
  *   nuclear weapons and the practices of risk analysis.



Public memories of nuclear testing, for example related to:

  *   official or vernacular sites of nuclear weapons memory, or
  *   nuclear weapons in popular media, or
  *   secrecy and publicity in nuclear weapons.



We welcome submissions from across the discipline of communication and from other cognate disciplines. Moreover, we strongly encourage non-traditional formats and innovative approaches to topics and their presentation. This event is both a scholarly and public event; we encourage presentations that address both audiences at once.



Please submit the following to Ned O'Gorman at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> by June 30, 2015 :

  *   A presentation title and 500-word abstract
  *   Full contact information
  *   A brief statement on the proposed presentation style for your proposed presentation (e.g reading a paper; showing and commenting on a short film or film clip; "slide show": performance). Again, this event is both a scholarly and public event and we encourage presentations that address both audiences at once.



This event is an official pre-conference event for the National Communication Association's 101st Convention in Las Vegas. Presenters will be required to register with NCA. Presenters will not be individually listed in the NCA program, but will be listed in the agenda for the pre-conference. However, no fee will be charged for registration.




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Ned O'Gorman
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
325 Communication Building, MC-456
1207 Oregon St.
Urbana, IL 61801 USA
Office Phone: 217.265.0859




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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org