June 11, 2025

University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Deadline: January 30, 2025

This one-day preconference, co-organized by the Center for Media, Religion and Culture (CMRC) at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ), seeks to explore intellectual and epistemic overlaps in African and Arab scholarship on media and culture. Our focus is on disrupting traditional area studies frameworks and drawing connections between long-standing theories, methods, and literatures from these regions.

It takes seriously ICA 2025's focus on"Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research" and invitation to foreground scholarship from across the Global South to disrupt dominant theories and expand our understanding of communication, media, and culture. More than an invitation to talk back to the West, our endeavor is first and foremost driven by a desire to forge new directions for media and communication research by building on long-standing – yet often repressed – theories, methods, and literatures within Africa and the Arab world.

We are inviting contributions from scholars from around the globe who can draw on grounded, evidence-driven scholarship to speak imaginatively and creatively to one or more of the three following keywords, which serve as orienting standpoints for the discussions at the preconference:

• Exchange: Investigating epistemic common grounds, cross-fertilization, and dissonances in African and Arab media and cultural thought.
  
• Experiment: Exploring new theoretical trajectories, unconventional objects of study, and innovative scholarship.
  
• Excess: Theorizing beyond established categories and disciplines, inspired by African and Arab cosmologies. 
  

Submission Guidelines

Submit an extended abstract of 400-500 words (excluding references) by January 30, 2025, to ias@qatar.northwestern.edu. In a single PDF, include your name, institutional affiliation, email, title of your proposed presentation, and abstract. 

A limited number of travel stipends will be available for scholars from the Global South. If you would like to be considered, please indicate this in your submission.

Key Dates

• Deadline for abstract submission: January 30, 2025
  
• Acceptance notifications: February 15, 2025
  
• Deadline for participant registration: March 15, 2025
  
• Preconference: June 11, 2025
  

Organizers:

• Clovis Bergère (Northwestern University in Qatar)
  
• Nabil Echchaibi (University of Colorado Boulder)
  
• Marwan M. Kraidy (Northwestern University in Qatar)
  

For more information, contact: ias@qatar.northwestern.edu

ICA Division Affiliation:

Philosophy, Theory, and Critique