Call for Papers - Please post and circulate to your graduate students.
USC Critical Studies Graduate Conference
*Technologies of Knowing – “TechKnow”*
Los Angeles, California
Friday-Saturday, October 24-25, 2014
*Description:*
In the opening of *Understanding Media* (1964), Marshall McLuhan
famously refers to media technologies as “the extensions of man.” Despite
the core centrality of technology to the function of media itself,
humanities scholarship frequently focuses on the cultural while ignoring
the technological. The fields of film and media studies have produced
countless histories of major studios, producers, and creative contributors.
In light of this vast body of knowledge, the histories and theoretical
inquiries that address the possibilities, limitations, and impacts (both
physical and psychological) of technologies are comparatively small in
number while at the same time these questions have become even more
critical as media technologies increasingly enable (or at least seem to
enable) people to do and know new things. The 2014 USC Critical Studies
Graduate Conference seeks to bring examinations of media technology to the
fore through the conference theme of “Technologies of Knowing.”
Borrowing McLuhan’s notion of the “extension,” this conference will
be particularly concerned with the many ways that media technologies
can extend the processes of discovery and knowing. How do media
technologies impact the ways we think? How do the ways we think inform what
technology can do? In what ways do media technologies produce, archive, or
obfuscate certain knowledges? While any paper engaged with technology and
media studies will be considered, preference will be given to papers that
reflect on the relationship(s) of media technology to knowledge, including
its generation, preservation, communication, and erasure.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words for a 20-minute
panel presentation as well as a brief bio of no more than 100 words. If you
would like to propose something outside of these parameters, please contact
us with your idea before submitting your proposal. Non-traditional,
creative and digital projects are welcome, as are individual papers
or pre-constituted panels. Please email your submissions and inquiries
to Heather Blackmore at [log in to unmask] and Mike Dillon at [log in to unmask] by
**August 1, 2014*.*
In addition to panels of graduate papers, this year’s conference
will include a workshop devoted to concerns around working on and with
technology.
Possible Topics Include:
- Epistemologies of technology
- Technological determinism
- Representations of technology
- Technological anxieties
- Technology as archive
- Technology and discovery, pedagogy, scholarship, etc.
- Technological histories
- Technology within the political economy of film, television,
interactive media, etc.
- Impact of technology on boundaries between established media
(television, film, games, etc.)
- Cultural impacts of technological developments and constraints
- Economic, social, cultural, psychological, and material (etc.) nature
and impact of the digital
- Invisible technologies
- Forgotten technologies
- Cults of technology
- Amateur technologies
- Cyborgs, biotechnologies, and technology and the body
- Design and technology
- Interfaces, platforms, hardware, and software
- Obsolescence
- Hype
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Mike Dillon
Ph.D., Critical Studies
USC School of Cinematic Arts
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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org
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