With apologies for any cross-posting:
*Cultures of Movement: Mobile Subjects, Communities, and Technologies in 
the Americas*
Panel, paper, and alternative-format presentation submissions are 
invited for the "Cultures of Movement: Mobile Subjects, Communities, and 
Technologies in the Americas" conference, to be held in Victoria, 
British Columbia, Canada, on April 8-10, 2010.

Open to students, scholars, and professionals, the conference is meant 
to build new ties amongst all those interested in the theoretical or 
applied study of mobilities. The study of mobilities is a young and 
constantly evolving interdisciplinary field. The concept of "mobility" 
refers to the social, political, historical, cultural, economic, 
geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement. Students 
and scholars of mobilities focus their attention on the intersecting 
movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across time-space, 
paying attention as well as to the way relations between mobility and 
immobility constitute new networks and patterns of social life. The 
multiple forms of mobility, or mobilities, are often taken to 
include---amongst others---subjects such as: transportation; travel and 
tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects, information, 
and capital; mobile communications; and social networks and meetings. 
While the conference is open to all themes pertinent to the study of 
mobilities from a social and cultural perspective---irrespective of the 
geographical site of empirical or theoretical attention---the main focus 
of the conference will be on the experience, practice, social 
organization, and cultural significance of forms of mobility in North, 
Central, and South America.
Whereas in Europe the new mobilities paradigm has taken a strong hold in 
academic units, professional research networks, and recognized 
publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its infancy in 
the Americas. In contrast, mobility is very much part of the core of the 
social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the Americas. 
Indeed, to be "on the move" is amongst the most quintessential 
characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the Americas. 
Furthermore, the Americas are home to many, distinct mobile cultures and 
practices: from indigenous cultures rooted in traditional meanings of 
home to the historical institutionalization of colonial and postcolonial 
trade routes and forced relocations, from controversial experiments in 
free transnational trade, to the politics and experience of migration 
and Diaspora, from the widespread diffusion of portable communication 
technologies, to the mobilization of surveillance systems, and from the 
leisure mobilities of tourism, to the social and cultural significance 
of transportation and movement in daily life.
For more information see here: http://tinyurl.com/l6k97s
Phillip Vannini, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Communication and Culture
2005 Sooke Road
Royal Roads University
Victoria BC V9B 5Y2
CANADA
Phone: (250) 391-2600 ext. 4477
Fax: (250) 391-2694
[log in to unmask]