The Rundle Summit, An Academic and Professional Exchange
February 19 - 20, 2016 The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta
Call for Abstracts: Deadline January 4th
This Year's Theme: Mediated Voices
"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium-that is, of any extension of ourselves-result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
The ubiquity and interpenetration of communications technologies into every aspect of our lives has catapulted Marshall McLuhan's famous words about the medium and the message from pithy observation, into profound analysis. Yet, the concepts of "media" and "mediation" in the study of communication, goes further than the structural mediation of technologies. Whether it is the news media representing the voice of the people, activists speaking for the oppressed, artistic mediums that deeply express human experience, or how language negotiates meaning; our central role as communications experts is to understand, explain and improve these mediation processes. While human communication may begin "simply" with voice or gesture, the complexity of mediation creates rich and diverse areas for study. Finally, McLuhan's Canadian perspective launched an analytic legacy, a conscious awareness of the importance of understanding how communication is also extension. Following this lead, our conference encourages analyses pertinent to Canada, considering our own unique, diverse voices that speak on local, national and international stages.
The conference is sponsored by the Graduate Program in Communications and Culture at the University of Calgary and the Communications and Technology Graduate Program at the University of Alberta.
For more information, to submit an abstract, and to register for the conference, please visit: www.rundlesummit.ca
Questions? Please contact Andrea Whiteley at ashak@telus.net or Sean Jones at saj1@ualberta.ca