The Creativity Workshop in Dubai (December 5 - 10, 2012)

The Creativity Workshop in Dubai 5th to 10th December 2012 Dubai, United Arab Emirates Experiential Conference / Workshop dedicated to helping educators in humanities, sciences and arts get more creative in the classroom and personally, using tools of writing, mapping, memoir, art, storytelling. creativityworkshop.com/conferences.html Enquiries: admin@creativityworkshops.com Web address: http://creativityworkshop.com/dubai.html

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The Language of Humor in Literature and Film

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY
Thirty-Fifth Colloquium on Literature and Film

September 13-15,2012
FEATURED SPEAKERS

"Humor in Documentaries? You've Got to be Joking!"
Keynote talk by Ross McElwee, Documentary
Filmmaker and Professor of the Practice of
Filmmaking, Harvard University

"Comedy in the Making: A Conversation with Anne
Harris of Comedy Central"
Featuring Anne Harris, Director of Talent, Comedy
Central, and Jay Malarcher, Theater Professor and
Humor Scholar, WVU

Call for Papers

We are seeking submissions about the many ways
that authors and filmmakers use humor in their
works. Analyses may be about works in any language
and time period, and may be presented in English,
French, German, or Spanish. Topics include but are
not limited to the following:

Irony
Parody
Comedy
Political Satire
Great National Humorists and Their Works
Theories of Humor and Laughter
Challenges of Translating Humor
History of Humor
Humor in Minority Literatures
Humor as Resistance or Subversion
Humor of Ethnic and National Identities
Countering Xenophobia and Prejudice through Humor
Comics, Cartoons and Graphic Novels
Gendered Approaches to Humor
Humor in Popular Culture
The Semiotics of Humor
Stylistics of Humor
Conversation Analysis
Dialect, Stereotype and Humor
The Actor’s Contribution: Body Language, Delivery
and Inflection
Puns and Word-Play: Linguistic Ambiguity in
Humorous Literature
Pedagogical Approaches to Humor in Literature and Film

Please submit 300-word proposals for papers and/or
panels by May 15, 2012 to WVUCOLL@MAIL.WVU.EDU

Department of World Languages, Literatures, and
Linguistics/205 Chitwood Hall/Morgantown, WV
26506/304/293-5121

Website: http://worldlang.wvu.edu/home/colloquium
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2012 2nd International Conference on Education, Research and Innovation - ICERI 2012

2012 2nd International Conference on Education,
Research and Innovation - ICERI 2012
28 to 29 September 2012
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

ICERI 2012 will be published in the IPEDR (ISSN:
2010-4626) as one volume, and will be included
in the E&T Digital Library, and indexed by
EBSCO, WorldCat, Google Scholar, CNKI and sent
to be reviewed by ISI Proceedings.

The deadline for abstracts/proposals is 10 May
2012.

Enquiries: iceri@iedrc.org
Web address: http://www.iceri.org/
Sponsored by: IEDRC
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2012 International Conference on Information and Computer Technology (ICICT 2012)

2012 International Conference on Information and
Computer Technology (ICICT 2012)
15 to 16 September 2012
Beijing, China

ICICT 2012 will be published in IJCCE, ISSN:
2010-3743) as one volume, and will be indexed by
WorldCat, Google Scholar,and E and T Digital
Library, and sent to be reviewed by Ei Compendex
and ISI Proceedings.

The deadline for abstracts/proposals is 15 May
2012.

Enquiries: icict@iacsit.org
Web address: http://www.icict.org/
Sponsored by: IACSIT
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1st International Symposium: Awe, Wonder and Passion: Music and the Creation of Meaning

1st International Symposium:
Awe, Wonder and Passion: Music and the Creation
of Meaning

Part of the Research Program on:
Aesthetic Lives, Artistic Selves

International Network for Alternative Academia
(Extends a general invitation to participate)

Saturday 10th to Monday 12th of November, 2012
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Call for Papers

This trans-disciplinary project seeks to
understand the value and meaning music has in
our lives, as well as the multiple ways music
structures and informs our relationships, sense
of place and self across historical periods and
within cultural, political and social contexts.
Exploring how music is created, received,
consumed and appropriated, this symposium offers
an opportunity to consider the ways in which
music is interweaved with social and cultural
processes of the construction of self,
membership and community, and conversely with
the generation of otherness, exclusion and
isolation.

We invite colleagues from all disciplines and
professions interested in sharing these
explorations in a collective, deliberative and
dialogical environment to send presentation
proposals that address these general questions
or the following themes:

1. Speak to Me: The Language of Musical Creation

- Can music be theorized?
- Is music analogous to language? How to
understand a musical phrase, as a spoken or
written sentence? What is the grammar of music?
- Are spaces between notes similar to pauses
between words? What is the place of silence and
pause in music? Can we conceive of the force and
power of silence?
- Who do we hear speaking when we listen to
music? What do we hear?
- Can there be neutrality in musical creation?
Must music have an inherent meaning? Must it be
created with intent?
- Can a novel be transformed into a piece of
music? Can a piece of music be transformed into
a painting? What are the challenges of ekphrasis?

2. Phenomenology of the Musical Realm: Emotions
and Meaning

- What questions does music allow us to ask?
What answers does it facilitate us finding?
- Can we conceive of music as a mode of enquiry?
What would it require?
- How do context, culture and time link music
and meaning?
- Is music love by another means?
- How is it that music taps into our emotions
giving rise to great passion and great pain?
- What is the transformative value of music?
- How can we tell the story of the lived
experience of ever present appreciation, yet
ever changing meaning of music?
- What would a life devoid of music feel like?
What would it sound like?

3. Creativity and Critique

- What metaphors can be most aptly employed to
capture the process of musical creation?
- What is it about music and the musical
experience that seems to invade and take over
all senses, to overwhelm life-worlds?
- How does musical creation pay homage to the
past? How does it allow for the re-envisioning
of the future? What about the link to the
present?
- Can the creative process be articulated? Can
it be mapped? Can it be captured by discourse?
- How can we account for the awesome capacity
that music has for breaking frontiers, shifting
boundaries, inventing new forms of expression,
redefining terrains, envisioning new horizons?
- How does music subtlety confront, contest and
overturn even its own language and metaphors?

4. Roots of Music: Grounding, Context and
Politics

- How is music and musical taste culturally and
socially constructed?
- Given its roots in whorehouses and backrooms
to its performance in music halls, how is music
legitimized and sanctified?
- Is music politics by another means? What is
the role of music during times of social,
economic and/or cultural crisis?
- What is the interstitial value of music? Does
it dissolve or re-instill binary oppositions
created based upon race, ethnicity, gender, sex,
geography and class? Does music challenge or
reinforce such divisions as those made between
center and periphery, self and other; and, the
western and the non-western?
- How does improvisation encourage and inform
challenges to the meanings and messages found in
and through music?
- How are new technologies affecting the
production, dissemination and appreciation of
music?

5. Everyone's a Critic?

- Do we need special translators to appreciate
music?
- Is there a need for music critics? How is the
role of the critic being re-configured in the
new media?
- Who gets to define the value of music, to
dictate what constitutes musical "taste"?
- Who is talking back to critics? Are there
efforts in sidestepping the place that critics
have in the institutionalized visions of music
evaluation?
- Is there space for debate about quality and
creation of music?
- What can we learn from musicology and ethno-
musicology?

6. Productive Forces/Instructive Bonds

- What institutions constrict and confine
musical creation? What institutions expand it?
- Are new technologies and new modes of funding
challenging traditional models?
- What factors -social, political and artistic-
are informing the recent trend towards remakes,
remixes and replays?
- What is alternative in alternative music?
- Why is there a need for music? What does it
add and what does it subtract from our lives?
Why does music persist?
- What does the investigation into the
neurological foundations of music add to our
understanding of music? What does it take away?
- Who is defending and protecting the dreams and
fantasies made by music and the musical
experience?

If you are interested in participating in this
Annual Symposium, submit a 400 to 500 word
abstract by Friday 8th of June, 2012. Please
use the following template for your submission:

First: Author(s);
Second: Affiliation, if any;
Third: Email Address;
Fourth: Title of Abstract and Proposal;
Fifth: The 400 to 500 Word Abstract.

To facilitate the processing of abstracts, we
ask that you use Word, WordPerfect or RTF
formats, only and that you use plain text,
resisting the temptation of using special
formatting, such as bold, italics or underline.

Please send emails with your proposals to the
Annual Symposium Coordination address (mcm-
1@alternative-academia.net) with the following
subject line: Music & the Creation of Meaning
Abstract Proposal.

For every abstract proposal sent, we acknowledge
receipt. If you do not receive a reply from us
within one week you should assume we did not
receive it. Please resend from your account and
from an alternative one, to make sure your
proposal does get to us.

All presentation and paper proposals which
address these questions and issues will be fully
considered and evaluated. Accepted abstracts
will require a full draft paper by Friday 31st
of August, 2012. Papers presented at the
symposium are eligible for publication as part
of a digital or paperback book.

We invite colleagues and people interested in
participating to disseminate this call for
papers. Thank you for sharing and cross-listing
where and whenever appropriate.

Hope to meet you in Montreal!

Symposium Coordinators:

Cheryl Sim
Commissaire Associée
DHC/ART Fondation pour l'art contemporain
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Email: c-sim@alternative-academia.net

Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
General Coordinator
International Network for Alternative Academia
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Email: acc@alternative-academia.net

*****

Informational Note:

Alternative Academia is an international network
of intellectuals, academics, independent
scholars and practitioners committed to creating
spaces, both within and beyond traditional
academe, for creative, trans-disciplinary and
critical thinking on key themes. We offer annual
and biannual symposiums at sites around the
world, providing forums that foster the
development of new frames of reference and
innovative structures for the production and
expansion of knowledge and theory. Dialogue,
discussion and deliberation define both the
methods employed and the values upheld by this
network.

Visit our website at: www.alternative-academia.net

----------------------------------------------------------------
This announcement is distributed via Conference Alerts.
We aim to provide correct and reliable information about
upcoming events, but cannot accept responsibility for the text
of announcements or for the bona fides of event organizers.
Please feel free to contact us if you notice incorrect or
misleading information and we will attempt to correct it.
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2nd Global Conference: Communication and Conflict

2nd Global Conference
Communication and Conflict

Sunday 4th November – Tuesday 6th November 2012
Salzburg, Austria

Call for Papers:
Our ability to communicate successfully affects so many aspects of our lives.
Difficulties, indeed failures, or breakdowns in communication can play a
major role in hostility, conflict and war. Communication problems can also
lead to personal frustration and desired outcomes not being realised.

The nature of our communications can raise larger contextual issues about
human learning, exchange of knowledge and the nature of humanity. How can we
communicate where those involved have quite different languages,
specialisations and views of the world? How can we avoid conflict when we
strongly disagree based on the great differences in how we perceive things?
How can we appreciate and consider highly divergent views from our own? How
can we still communicate effectively when the conceptual gap is so large? How
can we make good decisions and complete tasks when communication is difficult?

Wars may be started and sustained by communication difficulties. When we
communicate we are not just stating facts, but also emotions and personal
positions that may underlie them. In the cut and thrust of everyday life,
being able to recognise, track, and respond to the varied levels in
communication can be challenging. It may require us to appreciate knowledge
and realities vastly different than our own; bridging communication gaps may
place us well outside our comfort zone.

This new inter- and multi-disciplinary conference project seeks to explore
these and other topics and create dialogue about communication and conflict.
We seek submissions from a range of disciplines including communication
studies, journalism, public affair's, public relations, philosophy,
psychology, literature, management, business studies, information technology,
science, the visual and creative arts, music, politics and also actively
encourage practitioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic to
participate.

We welcome traditional papers, preformed panels of papers, workshop proposals
and other forms of performance recognising that different disciplines express
themselves in different mediums. Submissions are sought on any aspect of
Communications including the following:

1. Non-violent, or compassionate, communication (NVC)
- Honest self-expression
- Empathy
- Spiritual Connections
- Active Listening

2. Communication and Conflict
- Workplace
- Domestic
- International Relations
- Cultural
- Spiritual
- War
- Terrorism

3. Communication breakdowns and breakthroughs
- Breakdowns (e.g. language and gender differences, misinterpretations, mental
illness, failure to notice, to listen, effects of complexity, and
disagreements etc.)
- Breakthroughs (Creative responses such in music, drama, literature, art,
humour, etc.)

4. Dehumanising Communication
- Reification
- Alienation
- Portraying others, strangers, the enemy
- Effects of technology (electronic communication)

5. Dialogue
- Friendship
- Philosophy
- Dialogical Relationships
- Counselling
- Teaching
- Respect and recognition

6. Communication in Health and Illness
- Stories and symptoms
- Communicating meaning
- Role of communication in treatment
- Communicating identity and experience
- Communicating care

7. Communication and decision making
- Role of communication in making decisions (group decisions)
- Conflicting opinions and views
- Group think

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel
proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word
abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th May 2012. If an abstract is
accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday
23rd September 2011.

300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising
Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the
following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body
of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Communication2 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and
any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the
year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We
acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not
receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your
proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an
alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Paul James
Project Leader, IP Australia
Australia
Email: pj@inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader,Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
Email: cc2@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries programme of research
projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests
to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and
exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be
eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed
for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s).

For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/hostility-and-
violence/communication-and-conflict/

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/hostility-and-
violence/communication-and-conflict/call-for-papers/

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not
in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.
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We aim to provide correct and reliable information about
upcoming events, but cannot accept responsibility for the text
of announcements or for the bona fides of event organizers.
Please feel free to contact us if you notice incorrect or
misleading information and we will attempt to correct it.
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1st International Symposium: Representations - Struggles for Reality

1st International Symposium
Representations – Struggles for Reality

Part of the Research Program on:
Aesthetic Lives, Artistic Selves

International Network for Alternative Academia
(Extends a general invitation to participate)

Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th of November, 2012
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Call for Papers

This trans-disciplinary project explores the
creation, consumption and dissemination of
representations. It aims to map out the
relationship between representations,
conceptions of the real and cultural
constructions of reality. Examining
representations as developing at the
intersections of epistemological, political and
ethical modes of enquiry, this symposium offers
the opportunity to reflect on the practice and
the theory of the constitution, legitimation and
social implications of image, art and the new
media.

We invite colleagues from all disciplines and
professions interested in sharing these
explorations in a collective, deliberative and
dialogical environment to send presentation
proposals that address these general questions
or the following themes:

1. Real and Imaginary – A Political History

= To Represent or To Reproduce?
- How is it that representations reflect,
reproduce and create our sense of reality?
- How are representations and our concepts of
reality interlaced and intertwined?
- What role do abstractions, conversions and
distortions play in the construction of
representations and our bonds to 'weighty'
conceptions of reality?

= Power and Legitimacy
- What is at stake in the battles over
representation? What is the relationship between
power, reality and representation?
- What are the processes through which
representations are legitimized and canonized?
- How is a sense of belonging and identity
established in and through media, art and/or
artistic creation? How are the threads of power
and the needs for legitimacy played out in this
context?
- How are self-representations to be assessed?
How are misrepresentations to be responded to?
- Who gets to name what is real? What standard
of evaluation should be employed?

= You Say You Want A Revolution?: Rebellious
Representations
- How are images and ideas transformed into
action?
- What is the role of representation in
political activism, religious proselytism, and
contestation movements?
- How do representations fuel transformation and
change? How do representations thwart such
efforts?
- How are representations contested? What are
the spaces for such deliberations?

2. The Authentic, The Original, The Real

= On Authenticity
- In a world of reproduction, what is the
meaning and the value of judgments of
authenticity?
- What factors and institutions fuel the quest
for the perfect representation in art and
science?
- How are new technologies reconfiguring our
understandings of authority and expertise?
- Are distortions of reality necessarily
destructive? What are the potential productive
forces of distortion?
- What does the return to the representative in
contemporary representations reveal about
present day conceptions of reality?

= On Originality
- What is the relationship between The Original
and the original?
- How are new understandings of originality
reconfiguring our ideas of genius?
- In an era defined by pastiche and bricolage,
how is originality to be assessed?
- Given the prevalence of prequels and sequels,
remakes and remixes, are we bearing witness to
the end of creativity and/or the end of
originality?
- How are forgeries and fakes to be defined,
identified and valued?
- What is the role of the signature in new forms
of representation?

= On Reality
- How are images transformed into icons?
- In what ways do icons reflect reality? In what
ways do they deconstruct reality?
- How are multiple realities to be represented?
- How can emergent realities be captured?
- In what manner should competing
representations be assessed? What standards of
evaluation should be employed?
- What do pastiche, bricolage and hybridity
reveal about our notions of reality?

3. Being, Becoming and Performing the Aesthetic

= The Politics of Art and the Art of Politics
- What are the conditions for the possibility of
an aestheticization of politics? How are those
conditions met in contemporary cultures?
- What is the role of modern day patrons in the
artworld?
- How will the history of the politicization of
art be written?
- What does the history and the practice of
curating reveal about the intersection of art
and politics?
- What does the structure, organization and
operation of art schools reveal about the
politics in and of art?
- What factors shape and inform the development
of a political economy of representations?
- How are representations interpreted as
political gestures?

= Technology as Practice
- How are new technologies for the creation,
consumption and dissemination of representations
leading us to reconceptualize The Artworld?
- How is art being commodified in and through
new media? How are new technologies shaping and
being shaped by the commodification of art?
- How do new technologies redefine our
understanding of imagination?
- How is the relationship between technology and
practice being re-established in a post-internet
era?

= Creativity and Critique
- How might art be conceived of as a form of
critique?
- Can creativity be charted? What new models of
creativity might be offered to capture how
reality is transformed by representation and
representations are transformed by reality?
- How might creativity be conceived of as
critique?
- How are digital and virtual representations
leading us to define creativity?
- What new horizons, new metaphors, new means
for re-signifying life and experience in the
virtual and non-virtual worlds are being
envisioned?

If you are interested in participating in this
Annual Symposium, submit a 400 to 500 word
abstract by Friday 8th of June, 2012. Please
use the following template for your submission:

First: Author(s);
Second: Affiliation, if any;
Third: Email Address;
Fourth: Title of Abstract and Proposal;
Fifth: The 400 to 500 Word Abstract.

To facilitate the processing of abstracts, we
ask that you use Word, WordPerfect or RTF
formats only and that you use plain text,
resisting the temptation of using special
formatting, such as bold, italics or underline.

Please send emails with your proposals to the
Annual Symposium Coordination address (rsr-
1@alternative-academia.net) with the following
subject line: Representations – Struggles for
Reality Abstract Proposal.

For every abstract proposal sent, we acknowledge
receipt. If you do not receive a reply from us
within one week you should assume we did not
receive it. Please resend from your account and
from an alternative one, to make sure your
proposal does get to us.

All presentation and paper proposals that
address these questions and issues will be fully
considered and evaluated. Accepted abstracts
will require a full draft paper by Friday 31st
of August, 2012. Papers presented at the
symposium are eligible for publication as part
of a digital or paperback book.

We invite colleagues and people interested in
participating to disseminate this call for
papers. Thank you for sharing and cross-listing
where and whenever appropriate.

Hope to meet you in Montreal!

Symposium Coordinators:

Cheryl Sim
Commissaire Associée
DHC/ART Fondation pour l'art contemporain
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Email: c-sim@alternative-academia.net

Wendy O'Brien
Professor of Social and Political Theory
School of Liberal Studies
Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced
Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email: w-obrien@alternative-academia.net

Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
General Coordinator
International Network for Alternative Academia
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Email: acc@alternative-academia.net

*****

Informational Note:

Alternative Academia is an international network
of intellectuals, academics, independent
scholars and practitioners committed to creating
spaces, both within and beyond traditional
academe, for creative, trans-disciplinary and
critical thinking on key themes. We offer annual
and biannual symposiums at sites around the
world, providing forums that foster the
development of new frames of reference and
innovative structures for the production and
expansion of knowledge and theory. Dialogue,
discussion and deliberation define both the
methods employed and the values upheld by this
network.

Visit our website at: www.alternative-academia.net

----------------------------------------------------------------
This announcement is distributed via Conference Alerts.
We aim to provide correct and reliable information about
upcoming events, but cannot accept responsibility for the text
of announcements or for the bona fides of event organizers.
Please feel free to contact us if you notice incorrect or
misleading information and we will attempt to correct it.
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from Conference Alerts, please visit: http://conferencealerts.com/unsub.mv