What's On

Events run by Australian and international organisations concerned with the study of media and communication history.

What's On
Australian Media Traditions Conferences

 

International Communication Association Annual Conference

22 - 26 June 2010, Singapore
Submission deadline: 6 November 2009

http://www.icahdq.org/conferences/2010/2010CFP.pdf

Greetings from the ICA Communication History Interest Group! We are a young part of the International Communication Association, founded in 2007, but in our short time we have become a vibrant home for historical work in the field of communication. We are always interested in bringing in new members, and the fact that ICA has been in North America since our founding means that we have been somewhat difficult for scholars from Australia and New Zealand to find. We hope to redress that shortcoming, and welcome all of you to join our interest group.

The Communication History Interest Group is available to all ICA members. Now that there will be an ICA conference in Singapore in 2010 (rather closer to Australia/NZ than N. America, after all), this is a great opportunity for Australian/New Zealander researchers to join our group. So, to be very straight-forward about it: If you do scholarship that relates to communication and history, the ICA Communication History Interest Group is made for you.

More information about the group, recent activities and how to sign up to commhistlist, a listserv dedicated to scholarship on communication and history, is at: http://www.communicationhistory.org

More information about ICA and how to join is at: http://www.icahdq.org/

European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition

29 June - 2 July 2010, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario
Deadline for Abstracts: April 30, 2009

The international conference European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition will address issues which small European cinemas encounter as a result of European unification and worldwide economic and cultural globalization. During the conference, the presenters will explore how the general concept of "small cinemas" relates to questions of geographical territory, the nation-state and post-national phenomena. Our discussions will include the momentous political and social events which have influenced the ways in which small cinemas have evolved after 1989 in an effort to maintain national integrity, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the desire to join the international community in expressing general problems of the globalized world. The conference participants will also concentrate on the state of film industries in small nation-states, the emergence of new film industries in places like Estonia and Latvia, the work of the most accomplished new directors working in European countries during the past twenty years, the fate of old auteurs, and new themes and aesthetics foregrounded in contemporary European cinema.

Plenary speakers are renowned scholars in the field, including Mette Hjort, author of The Cinema of Small Nations, and Randall Halle, author of Toward a Transnational Aesthetic: German Film after Germany. Abstracts of circa 200 words for individual papers or pre-constituted panels consisting of three 20-minute papers to be submitted by April 30, 2009.

Please send abstracts to Professor Janina Falkowska, falkow@uwo.ca

The Australian Historical Association Biennial Conference: ReViewing History

The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, 5-9 July 2010

http://www.theaha.org.au/conferences/aha_conference2010/index.html

ReViewing History invites historians to assess the state of History. What are the debates? What are the challenges? How are academic historians responding to challenges? The theme also invites discussion about popular interest in History as explored through films, literature and ‘reality’ documentaries. Do these modes challenge academic historians? There are many sub-themes and presenters are encouraged to consider their area of interest from the perspective of ReViewing History.

The Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Conference 2010

The University of Canberra, 7 – 9 July 2010

http://www.canberra.edu.au/anzca2010

Every year, ANZCA conducts a conference for its membership and interested persons, examining all facets of Communication. There are refereed and unrefereed sections of the conference, and refereed papers are published through the website in the weeks prior to the Conference. Academics, post-graduate students and community representatives are all encouraged to submit papers for presentation.

The First International History of Public Relations Conference

8-9 July 2010, Centre for Public Communication Research (CPCR), The Media School, Bournemouth University, UK

Conference Themes

As this is the first international conference on the History of Public Relations, the range of conference themes is wide and those listed below are the starting point for consideration, rather than a finite list.

  • Public relations in history before it became a named or defined discipline
  • Alternative approaches to the history of public relations, e.g. on the basis of culture (personal networks and influence) or via definitions of public relations
  • The evolving naming of the field from propaganda and press agentry to corporate communications
  • The history of public relations and its developing or diverging relationships with other disciplines like marketing, HR, legal and corporate governance
  • The evolution of public relations in nations or parts of government or industry
  • Seminal personalities or events that shaped the formation of public relations as a discipline (This can also include challenges to the “Great Man” or “Great Woman” approach)
  • Key books or articles (or series of both) that have influenced public relations
  • The history of political public relations and lobbying
  • The history of public relations education
  • The evolution of public relations theory(ies) over time - from propaganda to dialogue; the history of schools of thinking in public relations
  • Formative influences on public relations theory and practice, such as in or by government, industry or consultancy
  • The formation of industry and professional bodies and their impact, over time, on public relations practice and education
  • The evolution of public relations education, training and continuing professional development
  • The impact of technology, over time, upon public relations practice and theory
  • Archival sources for the history of public relations
  • The theories and processes of researching the history of public relations
  • Oral histories of public relations; the role of this methodology

Please send abstracts to Dr Tom Watson, Conference Chair, The Media School, Bournemouth University, email: prhistory@bournemouth.ac.uk

Deadlines

Submission of abstracts: December 7, 2009
Acceptance notification (by email): January 18, 2010
Submission of selected papers: April 26, 2010

American Journalism Historians Association Annual Convention 2010

6 - 9 October 2010, Hotel Arizona, Tuscon, Arizona

http://www.ajhaonline.org/convention.html

The American Journalism Historians Association invites paper entries, panel proposals and abstracts of research in progress on any facet of media history for its 30th annual convention to be held October 6-9, 2010 in Tucson, Arizona. The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2010.

The AJHA views journalism history broadly, embracing print, broadcasting, advertising, public relations and other forms of mass communication which have been inextricably intertwined with the human past. Because the AJHA requires presentation of original material, research papers and panels submitted to the convention should not have been submitted to or accepted by another convention or publication. Research Papers Authors may submit only one research paper. Research entries must be no longer than 25 pages of text, double-spaced, in 12-point type, not including notes. The Chicago Manual of Style is recommended but not required.

Margins of Print: Ephemera, Print Culture, and Lost Histories of the Newspaper

31 October 2010, School of History, Nottingham University

This one-day conference/symposium will address the significance of transitory, elusive texts in Britain, Europe and America, including textual artifacts that have eluded traditional categories of print, or have been dismissed as short-lived, disposable, or valueless. To this end, the conference seeks to establish the value of a wide range of ephemera, from pamphlets and pulps, agony columns or matrimonial advertisements to pictorial matter, cards, cartoons, competitions, display advertising and personal ads. Recent decades have witnessed a shift in scholarly interest toward this formerly overlooked print tradition. New digital resources in particular are bringing into view a wide range of printed materials once hidden from the sight of researchers. Some questions raised by this material include: What are the appropriate methods of interpretation for working with ephemeral texts? What do these unique texts tell us about our cultural, social, or technological histories? How do transitory materials document the history of the nation in different ways from other sources? By asking such questions, this event aims to tell the untold stories of ephemera.

Contact: harry.cocks@nottingham.ac.uk

Australian Media Traditions Conferences

The Australian Media Traditions conference, held biannually, is an interdisciplinary forum for scholars, journalists and others researching or working in the Australian media, particularly in the area of media history. The inaugural conference was held in 1999. Previous conferences held as part of the Media Traditions series are listed below:

AMT 2009: Internationalising Australian Media History

http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=27

23 - 25 November 2009, The University of Sydney, Australia.

Media and communication networks of the 21st century are increasingly international, multilingual, and cosmopolitan, transforming the public sphere into a lively, diverse global space of dialogue and discord, and presenting new challenges for media scholars. Media histories have traditionally been bound to narratives of national development but are now also responding to processes of convergence and change in media and communication cultures, philosophies, institutions, technologies, economies, regulatory frameworks, professions, contents and audiences. For the past 10 years, Australian Media Traditions conferences have offered an interdisciplinary forum for scholars, journalists and others researching or working in the Australian media, particularly in the area of media history. This fifth biennial conference provides a timely opportunity to explore links between our national interests and global or regional themes, trends, voices and perspectives, that is, to contextualise and connect our media and journalism research to the wider literature and discussion of international media practice.

AMT 2007: Distance and Diversity: Reaching New Audiences

http://www.csu.edu.au/special/amt/

22-23 November 2007, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.

The 2007 conference, Distance and Diversity: Reaching New Audiences, explored the notion of the New Audience as an historical continuum. The historic role of the media and communicators in overcoming distance and diversity of populations to reach new readers, listeners and viewers was the dominant theme of the conference.
Contact: Margaret Van Heekeren, Charles Sturt University.

AMT 2005: Politics Media History

http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/comm-international/amt/

24-25 November 2005, Old Parliament House, Canberra

This conference explored historical relationships between politics and the media, including the role of political journalism, government relations with the media, and historical pulls between the power of policy makers and the power of media barons.
Contact: Trish Payne, University of Canberra.

AMT 2003: When Journalism Meets History

http://search.informit.com.au/browsePublication;isbn=0864593066;res=E-LIBRARY

13-14 November 2003, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

The speakers on the opening night of the conference were Mitchell Stephens, professor of journalism and mass communication at NYU and author of A History of News and The Rise of the Image the Fall of the Word; Ken Inglis, one of Australia's best known historians who began writing about the local media scene for Nation magazine in the 1950s; and Chris Masters, an award-winning investigative journalist with the ABC, best known for his work with Four Corners. Eighteen of the refereed papers presented at the conference can be found at the link above.
Contact: Sybil Nolan, RMIT University.

AMT 1999: Historical Perspectives Conference

16-17 July 1999, State Library of NSW, Sydney.

Selected papers from the inaugural conference can be found in the Australian Media History special issue of Media International Australia, no. 99, May 2001, edited by Bridget Griffen-Foley and David McKnight.