March 24-26, 2006

Call for Papers
Intersections 2006
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Call for Papers (CFP)

Intersections 2006: Original Call for Papers

CFP Main Theme
Subtopics and Subthemes
Submission format

EMERGING SPACES, TRANSFORMING SCAPES (CALL FOR PAPERS)

Intersections 2006: A Graduate Student Creative Conference
Call For Papers (CFP)
CFP DEADLINE: Friday, January 20th, 2006

CFP MAIN THEME: EMERGING SPACES, TRANSFORMING SCAPES

We invite all interested graduate students to join us for our 5th annual
Intersections weekend Creative Conference.
This year we are especially interested in discussing the significance of both
new and established scapes, and their relationships with and connections
to imagined and physical spaces.
Edges, nodes, networks, overflows, streams: the way we imagine our world is
changing. We are at a point where it is important to reflect upon and consider
older connectivities established through non-electronic media, while at the same time
considering the potentials of new media through emerging communication
technologies. Bodies, commodities, ideas, and technologies follow an exploding
number of conduits between the local and the global, around, through, and
behind nations and institutions.

The 2006 Intersections Conference will be the 5th annual event organized by
the York/Ryerson joint Programme in Communication and Culture.
After last year's successful conference concerning themes of HYBRID ENTITIES,
which analyzed haphazard links, mongrel formations, and mutant compositions,
we are now interested in submissions that explore intersections where steps and
solutions can be actively followed in attempts to answer the many questions that
arise when we try to create and influence the direction of Communications and Culture.
The conference will investigate the following new spaces and modes of movement:
How and by whom are these flows, networks, and disjunctures created?
By what paths do we move/think through them?
Where is power, and how does it move? Do borders, edges, and in-between
spaces exist? What happens here?
Is social change or even directionality possible within a fluid and shifting environment?
What metaphors and tools can we use to conceptualize the world and the future?
What potential exists for scapes of resistance, or opportunities to challenge
present boundaries and structures? What can we learn from the past?
How can we imagine new social formations, solidarity, and subject positions
in the 21st Century?

Open to all graduate students, this interdisciplinary conference welcomes
submissions that take up these themes either through an academic paper presentation,
an artistic expression, or an activist agenda. Details on subtopics and
submission procedures follow below. We encourage all interested activists
and scholars to participate and to come celebrate the Fifth Anniversary of
the Intersections Conference!!

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SUBTOPICS AND SUBTHEMES

Invited submissions include papers, artwork and activist presentations
that relate to the following broad themes:

1) Media and Culture
Topics could include (but are not limited to) cultural consumption and production,
cultures of cities, space and place, depictions of ability/disability, media democracy,
media studies, popular and visual culture, subjectivity, representations of
class/ethnicity/gender/race/sexualities, semiotics and linguistics.

2) Technology in Practice
Submissions in this category might address (but are not limited to) questions
regarding technology's emergent role in theoretical and practical debates
surrounding art, authenticity, and aesthetics, negotiations of accessibility
and identity, race and gender, explorations in the concepts of the cyborg,
the post-human, and technoculture. Also, issues of how the Internet and
network society is reconfiguring social formations and subject positions will be
considered as a part of this category.

3) Politics and Policy
Potential areas of focus could include (but are not limited to) accessibility,
citizenship, communication policy, copyright and intellectual property, cultural policy, deliberations about communication and culture and the public sphere, globalization,
media ownership in Canada, questions of structure, power and agency,
privacy and surveillance, sovereignty, and strategies of resistance.

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SUBMISSION FORMAT/DEADLINES

As an expanded event, this year EMERGING SPACES will include the
following formats for disseminating and discussing ideas.

1. Paper presentations
   - 15 min. presentation of an academic paper with time for discussion to follow
   
2. Creative work with artist's talk
   - Artwork/media for exhibition, accompanied by artist talk during conference
   
3. Poster session (with possible roundtable discussion)
   - Presentation of materials in a poster and/or table display with discussant.
   If enough interest, these displays may be followed by a roundtable discussion.

Although these formats are tailored to accommodate academic papers, artwork
and activist contributions respectively, all participants are encouraged to apply for
whatever format is most interesting or appropriate for your submission.

All interested participants are asked to submit a textual abstract or artist's statement
explaining the proposed presentation in light of the conference themes, and indicate
which of the above three formats the presentation would take.

Abstract or statement should be no more than 250 words (approx. 1 typewritten
page, double spaced) and submitted via email as an attachment in .TXT, .RTF,
or Microsoft Word format. Name and contact information should not appear
on this page. Please include a separate page with the following information:

1. Title of presentation as it appears on the abstract or statement
2. Name
3. Affiliation (program and university)
4. Level and year of study (ex. Master's, 2nd year)
5. Phone number
6. E-mail address
7. Mailing address
8. A/V requirements (computer/projector, film projector, VCR, stereo,
   turntables, etc.)
9. Other requirements (table, easel, hooks, display materials). If
   you have exceptional requirements for your work, please contact us to
   discuss feasibility.

Artists are also asked to submit a small sample of their work for adjudication,
by either email or post.

If sending creative works by email, please submit up to 10 jpegs sized to display
onscreen or a multimedia clip with cumulative attachment size of 5mb or less.
You may also direct us to an URL. Please number the pieces and put viewing instructions,
comments and titles in your email if applicable.

If submitting creative works by post, please mail the proposal well before the deadline
with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for return to the following address :

Intersections, c/o Graduate Communication and Culture
3068 TEL Building, York University
4700 Keele St. Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3

You may send a CD, DVD, cued video or other multimedia, the duration of which does not exceed 10 minutes. Alternatively, you may send up to 10 slides or printouts of work,
illustrations or diagrams. Please include a slide or media list with title, size, media,
and date, and viewing instructions for your work if applicable.
Please do not send original work.

Deadline: FRIDAY, JANUARY 20th, 2006

Please e-mail inquiries and submissions to:
intersec@ryerson.ca

CFP available online:
http://www.yorku.ca/cocugsa/conference.html

Presented by the Communication and Culture Graduate Students Association (GSA):
http://www.yorku.ca/cocugsa

For more information about the Joint Programme in Communication and Culture:
http://comcult.yorku.ca/

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