The IAFOR North American Conference on Media, Film and Cultural Studies (NACMFCS) 2014

The Inter­na­tional Aca­d­e­mic Forum (IAFOR) in con­junc­tion with its global uni­ver­sity and insti­tu­tional part­ners is proud to announce the Inau­gural North Amer­i­can Con­fer­ence on Media, Film and Cul­tural Stud­ies tak­ing place in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, United States on Sep­tem­ber 18 – 21, 2014 at the Prov­i­dence Mar­riott Down­town.

The First North Amer­i­can Con­fer­ence on Media, Film and Cul­tural Stud­ies promises to be a remark­able cross-​cultural and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary event, which will encour­age aca­d­e­mics and prac­ti­tion­ers work­ing in the fields of media, film, and cul­tural stud­ies to meet and exchange ideas and views, and share their ideas and work.

Our two con­fer­ence themes of “Indi­vid­ual, Com­mu­nity, Soci­ety: Con­flict, Res­o­lu­tion & Syn­ergy”, and “Bor­der­lands of Becom­ing, Belong­ing, and Shar­ing” promise to encour­age orig­i­nal and excit­ing new research paths, and we look for­ward to receiv­ing your pro­pos­als, and to see­ing the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary syn­er­gies that develop at the time of the conference.

Keynote Speakers

• Jenna Stern – Actress (the­atre, TV and film)
• Pro­fes­sor Stu­art D. B. Picken – Chair, Japan Soci­ety of Scot­land & Chair, IAFOR IAB
• Pro­fes­sor Yuriko Saito – Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy, Rhode Island School of Design, USA

“Indi­vid­ual, Com­mu­nity & Soci­ety: Con­flict, Res­o­lu­tion & Synergy”

Con­flict from ear­li­est times has been a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the human con­di­tion. The strug­gle between our indi­vid­ual selves and our social selves arises from what makes us unique on the one hand, being chal­lenged by our being part of an inter­de­pen­dent struc­ture of rela­tion­ships on the other.

The spe­cific blend of expe­ri­ences, abil­i­ties, atti­tudes, and aspi­ra­tions, that helps to define us, can sit some­times uncom­fort­ably along­side our com­mit­ments to those clos­est to us, our com­mu­ni­ties and our cul­tures. This can lead to con­flict at dif­fer­ent levels.

Con­flict within com­mu­ni­ties and soci­eties is inevitable given that these groups are based on com­mon­al­ity of geog­ra­phy, val­ues, atti­tudes, and beliefs that help to dif­fer­en­ti­ate one from another. The dialec­tic engen­dered by diver­sity, how­ever, although it may lead to con­flict, can play an impor­tant role in the expan­sion of ideas in com­mu­ni­ties and soci­eties. One major chal­lenge of mod­ern soci­ety is to har­ness the syn­ergy that emerges from the inter­ac­tive dialec­tic gen­er­ated by these differences.

The Media Arts have long rec­og­nized these dif­fer­ences and fric­tions when they try to explain con­flict through the sys­tem­atic explo­ration of ideas, words, and artis­tic expres­sion, and the media has used nar­ra­tives to great effect in both drama and doc­u­men­tary. By propos­ing such a wide-​ranging 2014 con­fer­ence theme, the orga­niz­ers hope to encour­age excit­ing new avenues of research, inspire the cre­ation of new explana­tory con­cepts, and pro­vide a con­text for aca­d­e­mic and per­sonal encoun­ters. The resul­tant exchanges it is hoped will stim­u­late syn­er­gies that cross national, reli­gious, cul­tural and dis­ci­pli­nary divides, a bridg­ing idea cen­tral to the global vision of IAFOR.

“Bor­der­lands of Becom­ing, Belong­ing and Sharing”

Local, national and global cul­tures have been trans­formed by an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of human migra­tion, mobil­ity and multi-​culture with mul­ti­ple and com­plex claims of home, iden­tity and belong­ing. Glo­ria Anzaldua’s idea of the bor­der­land has become a crit­i­cal con­cep­tual rubric used by cul­tural researchers as a way of under­stand­ing, explain­ing and artic­u­lat­ing the in-​determined, vague, ambigu­ous nature of every­day life and the cul­tural pol­i­tics of border-​knowledge, bor­der cross­ings, trans­gres­sion, liv­ing in-​between and mul­ti­ple belong­ings. Bor­der­lands is also about a social space where peo­ple of diverse back­grounds and iden­ti­ties meet and share a space in which the pol­i­tics of co-​presence and co-​existence are expe­ri­enced and enacted in mun­dane ways. This con­fer­ence, which focuses on the bor­der­lands of becom­ing, belong­ing and shar­ing, is there­fore about exam­in­ing how the cul­ture of every­day life is reg­u­lated and con­tested across diverse polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and social con­texts, and whether and how it cre­ates spaces of belong­ing with others.

The aim of this con­fer­ence theme is to open up dis­cus­sion, crit­i­cal reflec­tion and analy­sis about emerg­ing social, polit­i­cal and cul­tural iden­ti­ties that are formed at the inter­sec­tion of mul­ti­ple and multi-​sited belong­ings and their expres­sion and about the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing them shared across differences.

• Trans-​cultural displacement/​belonging
• Belong­ing and the inter­sec­tions of gen­der, race, reli­gion, sexuality
• Seek­ing refuge, unruly belonging(s) and bor­der politics
• Trauma and joy of becom­ing and belonging
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, new tech­nolo­gies and belonging
• Cul­tural nar­ra­tives of belonging/​not belonging
• Cul­tural pol­i­tics of survival/​transgression

• New imaginings/​formations of home
• Cit­i­zen­ship beyond borders
• Mul­ti­cul­tural exhaustion/​renewal
• Belong­ing in the Anthropocene
• Mul­ti­ple and com­plex belongings
• Re-​locating cul­ture across borders
• Con­vivial cul­tures and the imag­ined communities
• Cre­ation of shared space(s) of mul­ti­ple belongings

Pub­lish­ing Opportunities

Authors of accepted abstracts will have the oppor­tu­nity of pub­lish­ing their asso­ci­ated paper in the offi­cial con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings, and a selec­tion of papers will be con­sid­ered for inclu­sion in the inter­na­tion­ally reviewed IAFOR jour­nals asso­ci­ated with the conference.

Inter­na­tional, Inter­cul­tural, Interdisciplinary

The IAFOR North Amer­i­can Con­fer­ence on Media, Film and Cul­tural Stud­ies 2014 is orga­nized as part of a five week series of aca­d­e­mic events in the US orga­nized by IAFOR. Those attend­ing the con­fer­ence will have the oppor­tu­nity of attend­ing The IAFOR North Amer­i­can Con­fer­ence on the Arts and Human­i­ties 2014 (NACAH2014) for no extra charge.