Subject: UDC List: Shanghai Conference on Communication and Social Change
May 13-14 2011

From: Yuezhi Zhao [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 


Communication and Social Change: New Marxist Perspectives
An International Academic Conference
May 13-14, 2011
Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Call for Papers

As neoliberal globalization reaches a critical juncture and as global
political economic, social, cultural and ecological crises deepen, social
scientists all over the world are facing profound challenges in analyzing
the drastic changes in the world. Marxism, with its powerful critique of
capitalism and its unyielding commitment to human emancipation, has not
vanished with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rather, it has been revitalized
and reconstructed to tackle the problems of our times. The spectre of Marx
haunts the world in variegated forms. 

The world's communication systems, which function as a technological
infrastructure and an economic sector on the one hand, and as a cultural
terrain and a cornerstone of democratic societies on the other, are also
undergoing a profound process of transformation. Confusions and crises
within the process have created a new sense of urgency for the explication
of a whole range of historical and contemporary issues. Over the years,
scholars within a broadly defined Marxian tradition have persistently
dedicated themselves to advancing communication research as a critical
praxis aiming at creating more just national and global communication
orders. In doing so, the Marxian tradition has also made well-recognized
contributions to enriching communication scholarship. 

In order to promote dialogue among critical communication scholars and
contribute to advancing global communication scholarship that is capable of
not only addressing the multifaceted problems of globalized informational
capitalism, but also grasping the complicated dynamics of ongoing social
upheavals, the State Institute for Innovations in the Studies of Journalism,
Communication and Mediated Society at Fudan University (SJCM), in
collaboration with the Center for the Study of Intellectual History at Fudan
University, will host a conference entitled "Communication and Social
Change: New Marxist Perspectives" from May 13-14, 2011 at Fudan University,
Shanghai. 

The conference, which has already confirmed the participation of more than
10 leading international scholars with specializations in different areas
and regions of the world, solicits the submission of paper proposals in any
aspect of communication and social change in global, regional, national and
local contexts. We are particularly interested in papers addressing the
following topics:

1.	Marxism and Critical Theories on Communication and Social Change
2.	Information, Media and Cultural Industries and the Global Economic
Crisis 
3.	Critical Perspectives on Communication Law, Policy and Regulation
4.	Information Societies in the Global South and the Future of Rural
Societies from Social Justice and Critical Ecological Perspectives
5.	Communication, Labor, Peasants, Urban Youth, and the New Dynamics of
Social Struggle
6.	The Communication and Cultural Politics of Empire, Nation, Class,
Race and Gender 
7.	Communication, Emancipation, and the Possibilities and Limits of
Identity Politics
8.	Communication and Cultural Rights and Global Justice
9.	Marxist Methodologies and the Critical Application of Empirical
Methods
10.	Revitalizing and Sharpening the Critical Edge of Cultural Studies 
11.	Critical Perspectives on Media Education
12.	Universities, the Politics of Intellectual Publicity, and
Transnational Knowledge Flows in the Age of Networked Communication
13.	The Public Nature of Communication Media in China: Historical
Legacies and Contemporary Crises
14.	The Position of China's Communication Industries within the Global
Political Economy
15.	Marxism, the History of Chinese Media Scholarship, and the History
of Chinese Communication Industries

Please submit an abstract of around 300 words by March 31, 2011 to Dr. Jia
Min ([log in to unmask]) at the SJCM. Successful authors will be notified
by April 8, 2011.