Call for Third Biennial Conference on Communication, Media, and Governance in the Age of Globalization
The National Communication Association (NCA) announces the Third Biennial Conference on Communication, Media, and Governance in the Age of Globalization, to be held on the Beijing campus of the Communication University of China (CUC), June 19-21, 2020. The conference seeks to foster greater understanding between and collaboration among Chinese scholars of Communication and a wide range of international colleagues affiliated with NCA.
For this event, we will be using the United Nation’s “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs). Approved in 2000, and signed by all 191 UN members, the MDGs serve as benchmarks in human development, quality of life, and global partnership. The eight MDGs are:
- To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
- To achieve universal primary education;
- To promote gender equality and empower women;
- To reduce child mortality;
- To improve maternal health;
- To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;
- To ensure environmental sustainability; and
- To develop global partnerships for development.
We believe each of the eight MDGs is deeply bound up in communication questions and practices. We are accordingly organizing our conference around three “tracks,” which honor the MDGs while centering them as issues in communication.
Documentary Films & Social Justice—Across our international mediascapes, documentary films (in both traditional long form and the now-popular short forms) are an important genre of communication about human development and social justice. We will focus on documentary films, especially those that address issues of poverty and poverty eradication, education, the global empowerment of women, health in underserved communities, health crises, and others that speak to the MDGs’ principles. The track will be led by NCA’s Hezekiah Lewis (hezekiah.lewis@villanova.edu) and CUC’s Zhi Li (bbilee@sina.com).
One Belt, One Road, and the Opportunities and Dilemmas of Development—China’s “One Belt, One Road” Initiative (popularly known as “BRI”) amounts to a Marshall Plan for the 21st century. Whereas the U.S.’s Marshall Plan sought to rebuild a Europe devastated by World War II, China’s BRI hopes to drive a China-centric version of globalization wherein Chinese capital, technology, industry, and labor power stitch large swaths of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Middle East into a new market. This track addresses this emerging infrastructural turn in communication, and will be led by the NCA’s Fan Yang (fanyang@umbc.edu) and a CUC-selected scholar to be determined.
Postcolonialism and the Global South— The long-standing cultural, political, economic, and communicative damage wrought by more than a century of colonialism limits the achievement of the MDGs. To discuss the MDGs, then, means entering implicitly into a conversation about the legacies of colonialism. This track seeks to center postcolonialism at the heart of our intercultural conversations, in this case by focusing on the communicative dynamics surrounding the MDGs and the Global South. This track will be led by NCA’s Soumia Bardhan (soumia.bardhan@ucdenver.edu) and a CUC-selected scholar to be determined.
DATES: All NCA-member participants will arrive on the CUC campus no later than the afternoon of Friday, June 19, 2020 (or earlier, if you wish to join our pre-conference outings). The conference will be held on Saturday and Sunday, June 20-21, 2020. All NCA-member participants will depart from CUC on Monday morning, June 22, 2020.
LOCATION: The conference will be held in the CUC International Convention Center, on the campus of CUC; NCA-member participants will be housed in the Convention Center Hotel. CUC will cover these lodging costs for the nights of June 19, 20, and 21.
TRANSPORTATION: Conference participants will arrange for their own airplane tickets. To facilitate the participation of NCA members, CUC will arrange transportation pick-up upon arrival in Beijing and drop-off for departure. Upon acceptance to the conference, NCA will distribute detailed information regarding how to procure a Chinese visa, which is required to enter the country.
PRE-CONFERENCE OUTING: For those who wish to participate, NCA will organize a day of pre-conference events on Friday, June 19, details TBA.
APPLICATIONS: All NCA-member applications are due by November 1, 2019. Send your application to the “track leader” of the track to which you wish to apply. All applicants will use the standard template, available at https://www.natcom.org/sites/default/files/2019ApplicantTemplate.pdf. Please use this application template, save it to your computer, and then send it along to your requested “track leader.” Please note that NCA will consider only one submission per individual.
All NCA-member acceptances and rejections will be announced via email on November 15, 2019. Applicants will then have one week to confirm their participation; we need a firm decision so that NCA can begin working with CUC on logistical arrangements.
For all enquiries, please contact Stephen John Hartnett, Stephen.hartnett@ucdenver.edu.