Dear friends,
We are hoping to organize two separate panels around disability rights and communications for ICA ’24. For more information on the conference, see, https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/
The first will be aimed at CAT (Communications and Technology), and the second for PTC (Philosophy, Theory and Critique). Please see below CFPs and consider sending in a submission for consideration by 10 October 2023 to [log in to unmask] . Do note the different requirements for the respective CFPs. Please also note the following:
Organizers: Kuansong Victor ZHUANG, Gerard GOGGIN, Katie ELLIS
Any questions should be directed to Victor at [log in to unmask]
CFP 1: Disability Rights, Communications and Technology
We live in a moment where disability rights are increasingly part and parcel of the world, encapsulated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities, legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the European Accessibility Act, and the work of global organizations such as the G3ict. Yet despite this focus on disability rights, there remain pressing issues and problems regarding disabled people’s inclusion, especially in the case of communications and technology.
The question of how disability rights intersect with communications technology, however, takes on greater urgency given the centrality of technology in contemporary society. We note for instance, how newer forms of technologies continue to pervade and dominate all areas of society, such as artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain, 3D printing, robotics, but also biogenetics, nanotechnology and so on. There is of course, critical scholarship that begins to uncover how such technologies imagine disability, for instance with disability bias in AI, and in eugenics and biogenetics (Whittaker et al. 2019; Bennett and Keyes 2020; Treviranus 2018; Trewin et al. 2019; Davis 2014). Correspondingly, scholars have highlighted the need to analyze the operations, workings, and logics of media and technology with regards to disability (Mills, Sterne, and Kirkpatrick 2017). As Alper et al. state (2015), communication studies can and should critically engage with disability studies so as to highlight the normative biases and assumptions inherent in workings of technology, especially with regards to disability. Yet, the emergent uses of technology are a matter of great concern, especially, to consider their impact on disability rights.
Against this backdrop, our proposed panel for Communication and Technology Division seeks to consider the intersections of disability rights and emerging technologies. We refer to emerging technologies in two different ways. The first refers to new and novel forms of technology that may pose a radical to the way that society is organized; the second, refers to emergent uses of technology – new and different ways of the deployment of technology.
We welcome submissions from postgraduates, early-career, emerging and established scholars that:
If you are interested, please submit the following to [log in to unmask] by 10 October 2023:
· CFP 2: Disability Rights and Communication Studies: Critical Perspectives from the Global South
There is an extant critique about the western centricity of disability scholarship and the need to decolonize such forms of knowledge. Helen Meekosha, writing in 2011, highlights how non-metropolitan disability scholars are often ignored within knowledge production (Meekosha 2011). Similarly, Leslie Swartz notes how disabled people in the global south are framed through the lens of the north, either through scholarly research or media representation. Amidst the epistemic injustice perpetuated by global north disability studies, there remains a key imperative to advance a decolonial agenda in both disability knowledge and scholarship (Nguyen 2023). Importantly, we situate this critique with communication studies, where an emergent body of work discussing the intersections of communication studies and disability has emerged (Alper 2017, 2023; Ellis and Goggin 2015; Ellis et al. 2019; Ellis and Kent 2011; Ellcessor 2016; Ellcessor and Kirkpatrick 2017; Sterne 2021). To this, we may add, what can disability bring to communication studies and vice-versa, and more importantly, how can we begin to decolonize communication studies from the lens of disability?
Amidst this scholarly imperative, we are keen to highlight the emergence of disability rights and to ask, how can disability rights decolonize communication and disability research. In particular, we note how disability rights has always had an international outlook, at least in its key foundational moments. In 1981, Disabled Peoples’ International, the first international cross-disability organization of disabled people was formed in Singapore and also elected a Singaporean as its first chairperson. The adoption and eventual passing of the United Nations Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities was initiated from Global South locations – Mexico, New Zealand and other international disability rights organizations were pivotal actors. The Convention, and its corresponding assertion of disability rights, has also been ratified by 187 state parties as of 2023, many of which are in the Global South. To these, we may ask, can the international orientation of disability rights, in particular, its adoption and localization in national jurisdictions afford opportunities to think differently about communication and disability research?
In this CFP, we are keen to bring into conversation these three developments – communication studies’ focus on disability; the decolonial agenda within disability studies and research; and the international outlook of disability rights. We welcome submissions from postgraduates, early-career, emerging and established scholars that consider these issues, in particular those that undertake a critical perspective of communication and disability research from the Global South.
If you are interested, please submit the following to [log in to unmask] by 10 October 2023:
References
Alper, Meryl. 2017. Giving voice: Mobile communication, disability, and inequality. Boston: MIT Press.
---. 2023. Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
Alper, Meryl, Elizabeth Ellcessor, Katie Ellis, and Gerard Goggin. 2015. "Reimagining the good life with disability: Communication, new technology, and humane connections."
Bennett, Cynthia, and Os Keyes. 2020. "What is the point of fairness?: disability, AI and the complexity of justice." ACM SIGACCESS accessibility and computing (125): 1-1. https://doi.org/10.1145/
Davis, Lennard J. 2014. The End of Normal : Identity in a Biocultural Era. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Ellcessor, Elizabeth. 2016. Restricted access: Media, disability, and the politics of participation. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Ellcessor, Elizabeth, and Bill Kirkpatrick. 2017. Disability media studies. New York: NYU Press.
Ellis, Katie, and Gerard Goggin. 2015. Disability and the Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Ellis, Katie, Gerard Goggin, Beth Haller, and Rosemary Curtis. 2019. The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media. London: Routledge.
Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. 2011. Disability and new media. London: Routledge.
Meekosha, Helen. 2011. "Decolonising disability: thinking and acting globally." Disability & Society 26 (6): 667-682. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Mills, Mara, Jonathan Sterne, and Bill Kirkpatrick. 2017. "365Afterword II: Dismediation—Three Proposals, Six Tactics." In Disability Media Studies, edited by Elizabeth Ellcessor, 0. NYU Press.
Nguyen, Xuan Thuy. 2023. "Decolonial Disability Studies." In Crip Authorship: Disability as Method, edited by Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez, 108-120. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Sterne, Jonathan. 2021. Diminished faculties: A political phenomenology of impairment. Duke University Press.
Treviranus, Jutta. 2018. "Sidewalk Toronto and why smarter is not better." https://medium.
Trewin, Shari, Sara Basson, Michael Muller, Stacy Branham, Jutta Treviranus, Daniel Gruen, Daniel Hebert, Natalia Lyckowski, and Erich Manser. 2019. "Considerations for AI fairness for people with disabilities." AI Matters 5 (3): 40-63.
Whittaker, Meredith, Meryl Alper, Cynthia L Bennett, Sara Hendren, Liz Kaziunas, Mara Mills, Meredith Ringel Morris, Joy Rankin, Emily Rogers, and Marcel Salas. 2019. "Disability, bias, and AI." AI Now Institute. https://ainowinstitute.org/