NYSCA 2011 Annual Conference

SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 30, 2011

October 21-23, 2011
Conference Theme: Communication Connections: Contributions and Collaborations between Distanced Groups

The New York State Communication Association invites you to send proposals for the 69th annual conference, where we will be investigating the ways in which communication can create connections.

About the conference theme: In the middle of the last century in his lecture and book, The Two Cultures, C.P. Snow famously described the breakdown of communication between the sciences and the humanities.

Today, despite global connectivity and our nearly complete immersion in communication and information, we continue to find ourselves forming groups which are distanced from each other. Some examples:

 Business people sometimes consider academics to be unrealistic and unworldly, while some academics might describe business people as greedy and unthinking. How can colleges and universities help students to move from academia to business?

 Some urban and rural groups regard each other with suspicion. In college towns, there is often a split between the people who attend and teach at the school and others who live in the community. This distinction is so long-standing that there is a centuries-old name for the differences between town and (academic) gown. How can these neighbors live more comfortably and effectively with each other?

 Many citizens feel distanced from their governing bodies. Is government intervention in everything from economic policy to health care connecting citizens and policy makers? Or is it widening the gap? What new forms of citizen participation are enabled by new forms of media?

Please send abstracts of 300 words or full papers (in Word) to Mary Ann Allison by June 30, 2011, via email: mary-ann.allison@hofstra.edu.

Please encourage your students to send full papers or poster abstracts and images which will be considered for student paper awards. Student papers may be on any communication-related topic.

Download the 2011 Call for Papers (pdf format)

We’re also going to have a pecha kucha with people from the NYSCA community on Friday night. Here’s some info on pecha kuchas:

First developed in Japan in 2003, Pecha-Kucha 20×20 is a presentation format developed to suit today’s needs in which each presentation consists of 20 images, each displayed for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and presenters talk as the images are displayed. Pecha-Kucha nights are now held in hundreds of cities around the world. For more information, see http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

For more information, please contact: Mary Ann Allison, conference chair, mary-ann.allison@hofstra.edu.