PCI Film Series presents: Letter to a Refusing Pilot (2013)

Directed by Akram Zaatari
Introduced by Dr Layal Ftouni (Gender Studies, UU) 

GARCIA national conference: ‘Precaire posities. Aandacht voor gender in de werving en selectie van postdocs en universitair docenten’ (Ravenstein, NL)

On January 19, the Radboud University Nijmegen organizes the national GARCIA conference. This conference is a platform that is meant to raise awareness for gender in selection processes during early stages of academic careers, tenure tracks, post-docs, and university lecturer levels. This conference is organised for (early-career) researchers, members of commissions, HR-employers, policy makers, diversity officers, and other interested.

Practical information
Date:  Thursday, January 19, 2017 
Time:  9:30 to 19:00 
Location:  The Garden Room of meeting and conference center Soeterbeeck, Ravenstein
More information here. 

Professor in Global Englishes and Intercultural Communication

Postdoctoral Researcher in the Literatures of the Maghreb
SOAS, University of London - CCLPS, Faculty of Languages & Cultures
Deadline: 30 January 

University College Utrecht currently has two vacancies

• Director of Education (0.8 FTE)
• Head of the Humanities Department (0.4 FTE)

Please find more information about these vacancies and information on how to apply at Working at Utrecht University.
Deadline: 3 February 

ATGENDER Spring Conference 2017 ‘Bridging gender research and policy making: missing links, good practices, future scenarios’ (April 19-21 Vilnius, LT)

The main goal of this conference is to address gaps between academic research in gender studies and the practice of gender policy making and implementation in light of current political and social issues in Europe. The conference invites participants to consider how to make gender research more accessible outside the academic community and how to make gender policy better informed by recent scholarship. It also urges participants to think about how to overcome the dualism of theory and practice in the quest for future gender equality in Europe. ATGENDER particularly encourages contributions by policy makers, information specialists, archivists, civil society activists and academics. Graduate students are also invited to contribute to the conference with academically informed and politically engaged papers. 

Deadline: You have time until January 9th, 2017 to send an email to info@atgender.eu with your proposal for presentation - but also for workshop, panel or roundtable.
For more information, visit the website.

SAS Central Type Conference / Symposium, 'Fieldwork and Language in the Postcolonial Research Site'

While research in the postcolonial research site is almost invariably multilingual, the impact of language use in accessing and negotiating legitimacy in the research site has only occasionally come to the fore of academic discussions on postcolonial perspectives and methodologies since Independence. In Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature, published in 1986, Kenyan writer and theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o observed how imperialism lived on in the mind of the colonised long after the coloniser has left, and posited language use as a key vector in this process. He returned to his theme in a keynote to the African Studies Association-UK in 2012, during which a show of hands suggested that almost all research on and from Africa is published in the former colonial languages, indicating little change since Decolonising the Mind was written. Recent scholarship on language use in fieldwork tends to confirm this fact, but not an assumption that goes with it: that this is to the detriment of postcolonial scholarship. Does this use of an ex-colonial language actually matter in the globalised world of scholarship? If it does, to what extent are we ignoring the impact of non-indigenous language use in research in postcolonial contexts? And if, for pragmatic reasons, scholarship will persist in the foreseeable future in mediating ‘subaltern’ experiences through imperial codes, how can this be mitigated (if at all) in new developments in fieldwork methodology and post-fieldwork analysis? Have significant changes in the modes of engagement employed by observers, commentators, scholars and practitioners using the medium of European languages taken place in the postcolonial research site in recent years? Or has there been a failure to engage with the language question rendering fieldwork absent from the transformations that have shaped Europe’s critical engagement with its former colonies? Indeed, how does a researcher’s language identity impact on scholarship in a transnational space and what role does language play here in the negotiation of legitimacy and reciprocity between researcher and researched? 

The format of the symposium will include panel presentations, poster presentations and workshops. The organisers welcome proposals from researchers at all levels, including doctoral students, and from researchers working beyond the academy.

Deadline: Contributions are invited for paper proposals (maximum 250 words), panel proposals (maximum 500 words) or poster proposals by 14 January 2017. 
Please send one proposal addressed to all three conference organisers: 
kaya.davieshayon@bristol.ac.uk, catherine.gilbert@kcl.ac.uk, c.griffiths@chester.ac.uk 
More information here. 

A TRANSDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL HUMANITIES - 'Insurgencies from the South: human rights against the grain'

Call for Papers, Issue 2, Summer 2017

In line with the mission of From the European South, issue number 2 (summer 2017) aims at investigating insurgent actions and discourses from the South, intended as collective and/or individual examples of forceful claiming and revising of human rights from ex-centric perspectives. We address the notion of the South as a complex set of resistant epistemologies and subaltern critical positionings – cultural, geographical, religious, gender, sexual, ethnic, racial, age-related… – which may propel new reflections on human rights issues, or which inflect rights ‘against the grain’, that is, from non-western, post- or decolonial, rebellious, revolutionary, visceral standpoints. 

Proposals for contributions are welcome from the full range of the humanities ((literature, language studies, philosophy, religion, history, geography, visual arts, performing arts) and the humanities that are also social sciences (anthropology, archaeology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, gender studies, law and politics, psychology, sociology...). A transdisciplinary approach is welcome.

Deadline: 31 January
Please send your abstract to both the following addresses: annalisa.oboe@unipd.it and eli.bordin@gmail.com

ESA Conference Athens 2017, RN18 Communications and Media Research presents '(Un)Making Europe:  Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities'
13th Conference of the European Sociological Association, 29 August ­ 1 September 2017, Athens, Greece.

The ongoing financial crisis in Europe is not only challenging the established economic, political, social and cultural structures and practices, but has also caused new inequalities, uncertainties and fears for people across Europe and beyond. The premise of a united Europe is at stake while euroscepticism is constantly gaining power. The well-known democratic deficit that characterized EU policies, is keeping member states and citizens from standing behind a united Europe. Media enterprises have witnessed radical changes due to technological advances and new communication practices. There is an increasing radical right populist movement ­ mostly in Northern Europe ­ that has been growing in parallel to left wing resistance movements ­ especially in Southern Europe. Mainstream media are divided trying to profit from the contradictions. At the same time on social media, the fragmented voices of the public struggle to be heard. In such critical times, it is crucial to analyse the forms of communication and media practices that reinforce, contest and challenge the (un)making of Europe.

Theatricalization is an important aspect of social life in general, of political life in particular. Aspects of the political scene and action are given in mass and new media discourse as well as in mass cultural productions (as narratives of the contemporary society). Given that people understand reality first of all on the symbolic level, the analysis of these narratives is an ideal approach of the meaning given to politics and communication nowadays: images of the economic crisis, of the migrants and/or refugees, of identities (given by media discourse or by mass cultural productions), constitute a basic imprint of the expressions of the current social myths. In this sense we invite papers based on the analysis of emblematic media events or on the political stories narrated in TV serials and cinema.

Authors are invited to submit their abstract either to a Research Network (RN), a Research Stream (RS) and/or a Semi-Plenary (SP). Abstracts should not exceed 250 words (for semi-plenaries: 500 words).

Deadline: 1 February 
Abstracts must be submitted online here. 

Conference Affects – Media – Power

June 29th - July 1st 2017, Freie Universität Berlin

The social and cultural formations of emotions and affects have been of central interest to social science based emotion research as well as “affect studies” (Gregg/Seigworth 2010) mainly grounded in cultural studies. Media and communication scholars in turn have especially focused on how emotions and affects are produced by media, the way they are communicated through media, and the forms of emotions audiences develop during the use of media. Communication processes can have various affective dimensions: whether as a phenomenon of communication within a shitstorm or a moral panic; as a mode of emotional reception at a distance as in Fremdschämen; or as a trigger for circulation of information in an affective flow (Wetherell 2012; Papacharissi 2015).

The conference wants to add to the ongoing research stream of affect studies and the existing emotion research within media and communication studies. A special emphasis will be placed on exploring structures of difference and power in relation to emotions and affects. We especially appreciate contributions to the discussion dealing with (but not limited to) the following aspects:
1. Concepts and theories of affect and emotion research
2. Methods of affect and emotion research
3. Empirical analysis: forms, formats and their audiences

Deadline: 1 February  
Please mail your anonymized abstract along with a separate cover sheet as pdfs to tanja.maier@fu-berlin.de and margreth.luenenborg@fu-berlin.de before February 1st 2017.

For more information, visit the website.

Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe
Sixth biennial network conference

African European Studies and Black European Studies explore social spaces and cultural practices that are characterised by a series of contemporary and historical overlaps between Africa, the African diasporas, and Europe. This sixth biennial network conference aims to contribute to the existing scholarship in Europe with a view to establish it more firmly in its several disciplinary locations. 

The general theme of the Afroeuropeans 2017 conference is African diaspora and European cultural heritage. We encourage submissions exploring the topics below as well as proposals on other topics related to African/Black European communities and cultures, which can be found here. 

Deadline: 25 February. We ask you to send your submission (max. 300 words including the title).
For more information, visit the website.

Humosexually Speaking. Laughter and the Intersections of Gender

Rivista di studi letterari, postcoloniali e di genere Journal of Literary, Postcolonial and Gender Studies (de genere)

Critique of Black Reason (2017)

Stuart Hall: Selected Writings (2017)

Stuart Hall (1932–2014) is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost cultural theorists and public intellectuals of the late twentieth century. Though circulated, read, and taught for decades, Hall's seminal essays are widely dispersed, with many pieces out of print or difficult to find. Stuart Hall: Selected Writings brings together Hall's well-known works with previously unpublished ones to create a portrait of his wide-ranging intellectual and political investments. The volumes in the series, which include Hall's memoir, are edited by major scholars and organized thematically, covering topics ranging from race, photography, and Marxism to the Caribbean, popular culture, and British politics. With this series, Duke University Press is the official home for the writings of Stuart Hall.

This series features Stuart Hall's works:
Familiar Stranger (2017) 
"Sometimes I feel myself to have been the last colonial." This, in his own words, is the extraordinary story of the life and career of Stuart Hall—how his experiences shaped his intellectual, political, and theoretical work and how he became one of his age's brightest intellectual lights. With great insight, compassion, and wit, Hall tells the story of his early life, taking readers on a journey through the sights, smells, and streets of 1930s Kingston while reflecting on the thorny politics of 1950s and 1960s Britain. Full of passion and wisdom, Familiar Stranger is the intellectual memoir of one of our greatest minds.

Selected Political Writings (2017) 
Selected Political Writings gathers Stuart Hall's best-known and most important essays that directly engage with political issues. Written between 1957 and 2011 and appearing in publications such as New Left Review and Marxism Today, these twenty essays span the whole of Hall's career, from his early involvement with the New Left, to his critique of Thatcherism, to his later focus on neoliberalism. Whether addressing economic decline and class struggle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the politics of empire, Hall's singular commentary and theorizations make this volume essential for anyone interested in the politics of the last sixty years.

Cultural Studies 1983 (2017) 
The publication of Cultural Studies 1983 is a touchstone event in the history of Cultural Studies and a testament to Stuart Hall's unparalleled contributions. The eight foundational lectures Hall delivered at the University of Illinois in 1983 introduced North American audiences to a thinker and discipline that would shift the course of critical scholarship. Unavailable until now, these lectures present Hall's original engagements with the theoretical positions that contributed to the formation of Cultural Studies. Throughout this personally guided tour of Cultural Studies' intellectual genealogy, Hall discusses the work of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and E. P. Thompson; the influence of structuralism; the limitations and possibilities of Marxist theory; and the importance of Althusser and Gramsci. Throughout these theoretical reflections, Hall insists that Cultural Studies aims to provide the means for political change.

Stuart Hall′s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (2017)