MeCCSA-PGN 2022 (King’s College London) Conference – Call for Papers

The organisers of the joint MeCCSA-PGN – King’s College London Conference are pleased to announce this year’s call for contributions. This is an in-person conference, the first in-person conference we will be having since 2019. The conference will take place at King’s College London, and the specific room location will be announced shortly.

*NEW DATE* for Mediating Gendered Identities: Articulations, Representations & Contestations(21-22 July 2022).

Call for Contributions

The ‘Facebook Files’, released in September 2021, highlighted the ongoing concerns regarding the “impact” of Instagram on teenage girls. Critically, the entanglements of agency and empowerment that resurfaced in the leaked internal research from Facebook, coupled with subsequent media reporting, indicate how teenage girls continue to be positioned as gendered subjects, drawing on old stories of moral panics about media use. 

This conference seeks to engage with debates and issues concerning gendered forms of identities, subjectivity and representation circulating within media discourse, cultural products, and creative practices. How are expressions and articulations of gender contested and reinforced in mediated environments? How can contemporary media discourses, products and cultures be situated within historical context? What role does research play in this dynamic?

Keynote speaker: Dr Ysabel Gerrard, Lecturer in Digital Media and Society, University of Sheffield

Rationale

The programme committee welcomes proposals from graduate students on a range of topics that address the mediation of gender in cultural practices, products, and settings.

We specifically pose the question: how can examinations of creative practices and cultural products enable a deeper understanding of a vast and evolving spectrum of gendered identity? We encourage submissions which challenge current discourse surrounding gender studies, or those which discuss the ways in which we as academics shape and pursue the intersection of such disciplines. Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following areas:

– Articulations of gender, race, class, age, ability, sexuality

– Audience engagement, reception, and participation

– Exclusion and gender inequalities

– Collaborative practices and the creation of community

– Cultural and social histories

– Digital culture and everyday life

– Forming subjectivities through media and culture

– Semiotic and discursive mediations of culture and media

– Media and culture in a neoliberal age

– Memory and cultural practices

– Online communities (including gaming, social media, etc.)

Submission guidelines

We are considering proposals in a variety of formats, such as papers, panel submissions, and media presentations. Each contribution will be allocated a 30-minute window, but individual presentations can be of varying length (up to 20 minutes for the presentation and remaining time for feedback and questions). Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to meccsapgnc2022@gmail.com by May 1st, 2022. Should you choose to present in a nonstandard format (e.g. media presentation or performance), please indicate this in your abstract. Please also indicate in your submission if you need any specialist equipment, other than a projector and podium, and please notify us of any access requirements.

Additionally, we would like to encourage delegates to submit full versions of their papers for the potential inclusion in a Special Conference Issue of the Postgraduate Network’s journal, Networking Knowledge. More details to be released after the abstract deadline.

If you have any questions please contact meccsapgnc2022@gmail.com

We look forward to receiving your abstracts and welcoming you to the conference.

Profile of Keynote Speaker

Dr. Ysabel Gerrard (@ysabelgerrard) is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Society at the University of Sheffield. Her research aims to understand the extent to which young people and those with vulnerabilities (e.g., mental health conditions) are protected by social media companies’ content policies. This work has been published in journals like New Media and Society and Internet Histories, and featured in venues like WIRED, BBC News and Dazed. Ysabel is the current Chair of ECREA’s Digital Culture and Communication Section and also sits on Meta’s Suicide and Self-Injury Advisory Board. She is currently writing her first manuscript, tentatively titled Network Burnout: Why Young People Crave Secrecy on Social Media (University of California Press).