See the Call for Papers below: an exciting, CHIG-sponsored pre conference for ICA London, June 16-17.

## New Histories of Communication Study

International Communication Association Preconference
London, June 16-17, 2013
Organizers: David W. Park and Peter Simonson

This preconference seeks to broaden, internationalize, and advance the history of communication study as a family of overlapping configurations and practices. It aims to bring together scholars from ICA, ECREA, IAMCR, NCA, and select rhetoric societies in an effort to stoke new, cross-national and cross-field conversations about the study of communication in long and broad historical perspective. It aspires to push the empirical and theoretical boundaries of histories and pre-histories of the field by attending to overlooked research areas, emerging conceptual orientations, and new axes of understanding and comparison among distinct traditions cutting across communication, media studies, cultural studies, journalism, and rhetoric, among other fields—and across institutional, intellectual, social, cultural, discursive, and material history. More specifically, it takes as its aims:

### (1) To further internationalize the history of the fields and subfields of communication through papers that

* a. are centered on world regions or nations that have received relatively little historical attention to this point;
* b. are focused on the history of trans-national flows of influence, ideas, paradigms, texts, methods, research technologies, people, politics, power, other agentic forces contributing to the study of communication in the past; or
* c. take up comparative analysis across nations or regions.

### (2) To deepen, enrich, and empirically fill out the history of communication study through papers that

* a. throw light on understudied dimensions of the academic study of communication as it developed over time;
* b. make use of archival materials, oral histories, or other primary sources that have not found their way into the published history of the field to date, or have been underused;
* c. advance a social history of the field that goes beyond ‘great men,’ landmark texts, and dominant forms of research—drawing attention, e.g., to patterns of labor, ordinary practitioners, pedagogical texts and practices, and points of articulation with everyday life and with publics beyond the academy;
* d. provide institutional histories of important departments, journals, and professional associations
* e. apply historical consideration to domains that have received less attention than some other subfields in the extant historiography of the field, including: internet studies, interpersonal communication research, forgotten avenues of communication research, marginal formations of all kinds, and more;
* f. bring newer or under-utilized theoretical paradigms and analytic frameworks to bear on the history of the field—e.g. new materialisms, archaeology, post-colonial and critical race theory, feminist theory, and queer theory; or
* g. critically engage existing histories and revise dominant understandings of individuals, institutions, ideas, schools, and practices.

### (3) To broaden and cross-fertilize the history of communication study and related academic and non-academic fields through papers that

* a. consider commercial, governmental, philanthropic, religious, therapeutic, or other non-academic versions of the study of communication as a family of social practices; or
* b. draw out points of intellectual or socio-historical connection among communication-related fields whose histories and presents have often been kept separate of one another—e.g. rhetoric, hermeneutics, literary studies, journalism studies/Zeitungwissenschaft, information, media studies, cultural studies, and social scientific communication research.

If there is sufficient interest in this preconference, the planners hope to program the preconference as a two-day event. The two-day format would be intended as a way to foster conversation and networking among an international and institutionally diverse array of scholars, and to make a substantial contribution to the history of multiple fields and subfields of fields of communication.

Abstracts of 300 words (maximum) should be submitted no later than 15 November 2012. Send abstracts to: David Park at [park@lakeforest.edu](mailto:park@lakeforest.edu) Authors will be informed regarding acceptance/rejection for the preconference no later than December 15, 2012. In an effort to facilitate informed discussion of papers, the organizers hope to have the papers for this preconference posted online. For this reason, full papers will need to be submitted no later than May 15, 2013. The pre-conference will take place on June 17, and if it becomes a two-day preconference, it will take place on June 16 and 17.

This preconference will be held at London Metropolitan University. The organizers wish to thank Sheila Lodge for providing access to these facilities.