CALL FOR PAPERS
History in the Making:
Arab Media and Processes of
Remembering
Conference organised by
the
Arab Media Centre
Communication and Media
Research Institute (CAMRI),
Date: Friday 24 April,
2015
Venue:
University of Westminster, Regent Street Campus,
309
Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
Keynote Speaker: Kay Dickinson, Concordia University, Montreal. Author
of Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together (2008) and co-editor of The Arab
Avant-Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (2013)
‘If history is a term that means both what happened in the
past and the varied practices of representing that past, then media are
historical at several levels’. These words of Lisa Gitelman in her 2008 book, Always Already New: Media, History, and the
Data of Culture, highlight the multiple ways in which media are implicated
in our retelling of history. It is not just a question of journalism being seen
as the first ‘rough draft’ of history (an observation credited to a former
publisher of The Washington Post), or
the fact that what are now sometimes called ‘legacy media’ were themselves new
media several decades ago. It is also the role of films and other entertainment
media in our awareness and understanding of the past, as well as the deliberate
or unwitting silencing of histories through the highly selective processes of
media representation. Such silencing is compounded when archives, or parts of
archives, are neglected or destroyed.
Yet digital media and political upheaval in Arab countries
raise new theoretical and practical questions about historical records. On one
hand, online archiving of user-generated content seems to contradict the old
maxim that history is written by the victors. On the other, who now has the
right to be forgotten? Online digital infrastructures make it possible to trace
dissident voices and sources in ways that threaten to sustain the entrenched control
mechanisms of dictatorships.
Perhaps because Arab media outlets have expanded so rapidly
in recent years, historical dimensions of media development or media use in the
region have received limited attention. Eric Davis noted in the 1990s how much
writing about the Arab world suffers from a ‘presentist’ fallacy, whereby inadequate
or cursory coverage of historical forces contributes to essentialist
constructions, which in turn represent the Middle East as incomprehensible
political spectacle. More recently Walter Armbrust has pointed out the dangers
of what he describes as a ‘relentless presentism’ and predominant ahistoricism
in Arab media studies, born in his view from a form of technological
determinism.
This one-day conference will seek to address issues raised
by the place of media in history, the function of media artefacts as historical
sources, and the processes involved in documenting and storing media images and
accounts that will make the past accessible to future generations. A focus on
history seems appropriate for what will be the tenth in the Arab Media Centre’s
series of annual international conferences.
We welcome papers from scholars and media practitioners that engage critically with the issues
outlined above. Themes may include, but are not limited to, the following:
· Arab media history and
historiography
· The place of history in Arab media
studies
· Methodological questions in
researching Arab history: the place of media
· Oral histories of Arab media
· Formation of film and broadcasting
through colonial and postcolonial times
· Suppressed histories from the media
sector
· Historicising the rise of subversive
media across different political contexts
· Archiving and digitizing: who
decides what and how?
· The performance of museums and
libraries in preserving media artefacts
· Translation of historic media texts
· Gender, media and social history
· Media and memory studies
· Historic patterns in media coverage
of Arab affairs
· Audience feedback in 20th
century Arab media
PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION
This one-day conference, taking
place on Friday, 24th April 2015, will include a keynote address, plenary
sessions and parallel workshops. The fee for
registration for all participants, including presenters, will be £110, with a concessionary rate
of £59 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and
administration costs. Registration will open in February 2015.
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS
The deadline for abstracts is Monday, November
3rd, 2014. Successful applicants will be notified early in mid-December 2014. Abstracts
should be 300 words. They must be accompanied by the presenter’s name,
affiliation, email and postal addresses, together with the title of the paper
and a 150-word biographical note on the presenter. Please send all these items
together in a single Word file, not as pdf, and give the file and message the
title ‘AMC 2015’ followed by your surname. The file should be sent by email to
the Events Administrator, Helen Cohen, at [log in to unmask]
TRAVEL EXPENSES
Participants fund their own travel and accommodation
expenses.
PUBLICATION
There will be various openings for publication of selected
conference papers, which will be discussed further after the conference.