Bridges and Borders: Media (In)Forms
A Graduate Student Virtual Conference presented by the Department of English Literary & Cultural Studies Colloquia in Collaboration with the Department of Modern Languages
“Studying information activism means following information as it moves—the logistics of information—to see the infrastructures that quietly get it where it needs to go: across space, across different forms of media, and through time.” Cait McKinney Information Activism (2020)
Media is information, and media is in formation. This year’s theme, Media (In)forms, asks participants to think about how forms of media and culture trouble, question, or inform. At the same time, we hope to problematize and disrupt the forms themselves. Form and content have long been central to the study of language, culture, and media. These theorizations, however, are contested and messy. From print to digital, moving to still, and visual to audio, we ask participants to think critically about how media is created, produced, and distributed through various channels. We invite participants to think of media expansively and consider overlooked, unusual, or even, contested forms of media.
We ask: What are the affordances or limitations of certain forms? How can media’s infrastructures encourage political solidarity or create disparity? How does media shape our understanding of gender, sexuality, race, and nation? What do we do with antiquated or “out-of-date” media? How is media used in education? How do forms of language include or exclude? What does it mean to examine the “stuff” of media? How can forms repair, reinforce, resolve, or renew?
For this year’s virtual conference, we seek papers, creative pieces, and preconstituted panels from graduate students across disciplines.
We welcome proposals that consider the following keywords and concepts:
- Forms of resistance and solidarity
- Racialized forms
- Queer media and gendered forms
- Language forms and functions
- Infrastructure
- Networks, distributions, and institutions
- Global media
- State and legal forms
- Censorship
- Media preservation and archives
- Object histories
- Media archeology
- Analog, digital, and new media
- Non-commercial and underground media
- Film and television
- Sound studies
- Media in the classroom
- Literary and cultural forms
Conference Date
April 12-13, 2024Proposals Due by February 16th
This is the submission form for proposals to the 2023 Virtual Graduate Student Conference "Bridges and Borders: Media (In)Forms" to be held on April 12-13, 2024. Proposals are due February 23, 2024 with decisions by/before March 1st.Program Schedule (Click to view)
Submission Types
Research Presentation: Participants present research from coursework, dissertation, or extracurricular projects. Works in progress welcome!
Project Showcase: Participants display, read, or otherwise showcase something they have created (e.g., a poem, a creative work, a website, a document design project).
Preconstituted Panels: Participants submit a preorganized panel, typically made up of 3-4 paper presentations. We welcome panels that grow from graduate seminars with students at the same university or branch out across disciplinary and university boundaries.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Cait McKinney
Cait McKinney is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University. They are the author of Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies (Duke 2020), winner of the Gertrude Robinson Best Book Prize from the Canadian Communication Association and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for LGBTQ studies. They co-edited Inside Killjoy's Kastle: Dykey Ghosts, Feminist Monsters, and other Lesbian Hauntings (UBC, 2019). Their new book on the legacies of Pee-wee Herman, I know you are, but what am I?, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in 2024. McKinney's current research considers the intertwined histories of AIDS Activism and digital technologies, and the ways sexuality has been used to explain data and computing technologies in the late 20th century.
