[Air-L] Extended deadline: Call for Participation: Symposium on Media, Communication, and Film Studies Programs at Liberal Arts Colleges

[Jeff Pooley]

Call for Participation: Symposium on Media, Communication, and Film Studies Programs at Liberal Arts Colleges
May 23 & 24, 2017
Colby College, Waterville ME

Deadline for submissions: March 3rd, 2017  

Media, Communication, and Film Studies Programs at Liberal Arts Colleges (MCFLAC) invites proposals for papers, panels, and exhibits for a two-day symposium, to be held at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The symposium will bring together faculty engaged in the scholarly and pedagogical praxis of media, communication, and film studies in the liberal arts context for two days of resource sharing, student-work showcases, workshops, and panel sessions.  

Building off the momentum of last year’s inaugural symposium, at Muhlenberg College, this year’s theme is “Revolutions.” We have chosen this theme in keeping with Colby College’s Center for the Arts and Humanities year-long focus, which is broadly conceived to encompass revolutions in the “political, literary, artistic, cultural, social, scientific, … conceptual,” and, we suggest, pedagogical and institutional realms.  

Our keynote speaker this year will be Patricia R. Zimmermann, professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College, where the nationally recognized program of teaching screen studies in the Roy H. Park School of Communication includes the Mellon Foundation commended Introduction to Film Aesthetic and Analysis course. She is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (IUP, 1995) and Open Spaces: Openings, Closings, and Thresholds of International Public Media, among many other titles, and serves as a Film Envoy for the US State Department. Professor Zimmermann is also the co-director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, which integrates film, music, new media, activism, literature, art, scholarly research and distribution within a four-year institution to provide meaningful interfaces between academia, art, and the public.  

We invite proposals (250 to 500 words) that engage with our theme, including:  
Revolutionary approaches to teaching
Teaching about revolutions–past and present
Revolutionizing the (increasingly neoliberal) institutional structures in which we are located
Mobilizing theory and pedagogy to facilitate revolutionary thinking
Analyzing the impact of ongoing revolutionary changes (sociocultural, economic, epistemological) upon our work in liberal education, including ideas for redirecting, capitalizing and/or adapting.
Interrogating the “revolutionary” rhetoric around higher education, with the liberal arts college said to be ripe for “disruption”
Responding to the Trump “revolution” and its reverberations on our campuses

Preference will be given to submissions that fit the symposium theme, but we welcome submissions on all topics reflecting MCFLAC’s unique emphasis on praxis in liberal arts settings. We seek to bring together a diverse group of teachers, scholars, and students, from different backgrounds with various life experiences, teaching styles, and intellectual orientations.  

Presentation formats include:  
individual paper abstracts
panel session abstracts (identifying three to four participants)
student-work showcases (featuring scholarship, media work, and/or hybrids in digital or other formats)
pedagogy workshops (on core assignments, capstone courses, and/or pedagogical techniques)
research workshops (on projects, strategies, publishing models, and/or research/exhibit and tools)
Additional formats considered

*** In addition to these formats, we invite submissions for 3-minute short cuts: lightning fast presentations in which participants give a quick run-down of innovative or useful tech tools, assignments, teaching strategies etc. The presentations are three minutes long and we ask you to use one slide per minute. Please label your “short cut” submissions accordingly.  

Please include a brief bio and note any technology requirements with your proposal. Include your bio, proposal, and tech needs in one PDF document and attach to an email addressed to Beth Corzo-Duchardt, at bcorzo-duchardt at muhlenberg.edu. If you are submitting a short cut proposal in addition to another proposal, please attach as a separate document.  

Deadline for submissions: March 3rd, 2017  

Questions? Contact Beth Corzo Duchardt, at bcorzo-duchardt at muhlenberg.edu