8th Biennial MESEA Conference
The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas 13–16 June 2012
Blanquerna School of Communication, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
Call for Papers Media and Mediated Performances of Ethnicity
“A decade into the twenty-first century, media culture has become a prime driving force in politics, culture, society, and everyday life. We can argue that the media—readily accessible to everyone—provide models for cultural perspectives and positions, and new forms of identity. In many ways the media have become today’s dominant culture, with visual, aural/oral, and digital forms of media culture increasingly replacing book culture among large sectors of the world’s urban population, requiring a fundamental revision of the notion of literacy. Media have also become prime constituents of socialization, with social-networking sites, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and other similar vehicles shaping our lives in significant ways†(Davis, Fischer- Hornung and Kardux, 1).
This argument, put forth in the introduction to the MESEA volume Aesthetic Practices and Politics in Media, Music and Art (Routledge 2010), points to the current need to heighten our critical engagement with media in its multiple forms.
The 2012 MESEA Conference, to be held at the Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, invites papers that focus on the place, role, influence, effects and forms of media in contemporary society, with particular emphasis on its intersection with the performance of ethnicity and citizenship. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
•   Media literacy/Literacy and the Media •   Media and literary intertextualities •   Youth cultures and the media •   Performance and performative media •   Mediating traditions: virtual natives and migrants •   Media, ethnic division; and social exclusion; media coverage: discourse and nationality •   Media Cartographies: landscapes/seascapes/mediascapes; global and glocal media
•   Cyber hedonism versus cyber activism and responsibility •   Ethnic media, political protest and naturalization •   Mediating ethnic space and time; ethnic simulacrums •   McDonaldization and ethnic homogenization; advertising and virtual power •   Cultures of circulation/flow: cultural capital
Proposals should be submitted to our website between August 15 and November 15, 2011. Submitters will receive notification of acceptance by January 1, 2012.
Preference will be given to complete panel proposals with an inter/transdisciplinary and/or transnational focus. Panels may not include more than 2 participants from the same institution. Presenters must be members of MESEA or MELUS in 2012.
As in previous years, MESEA will award two Young Scholars Excellence Awards. For more information please see: https://www.mesea.org