Spend Some Time Thinking With Us
Given the massive shifts in both communication technologies and political climate that have defined the last decade, we propose a symposium that explores how these changes affect young people at the local and global level. We propose that young people are engaging in conversations and actions facilitated by digital networks that significantly impact local and global politics, social environments, and ways of living. Child and Youth Engagement, Civic Literacies and Digital Ecologies explores these concerns from an interdisciplinary vantage point.
In 1996, The New London Group coined the term multiliteracies, meant to highlight both the shifting relationships of language in relation to increasingly present global networks as well as the multiple communicative forms young people use to make meaning. Since then, global networks facilitated by digital media have significantly changed how knowledge is produced and shared, and ever-more diverse groups of young people are challenging scholars and educators alike to rethink literacy, equity, and civic engagement. By invite only, this symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to reconsider how we might frame theories of multiliteracies, and digital engagements to examine social justice issues in young people’s lives, including issues arising from race, gender, sexuality, class and other inequalities in the context of global digital networks.
This symposium asks: What new concerns regarding globalization, power, and equity have emerged for scholars working in the traditions of young people’s digital engagements, activism, multiliteracies and The New London Group, given the exponential rise in access to participatory media and the intensive prominence of global networks, flows, and relationships in shaping the lives of young people? How have the concerns laid out by the New London Group and other scholars working in multiliteracies and digital engagements impacted how we make sense of, understand, and support young people doing social justice work in digital networks? What kind of updated framework for multiliteracies and digital engagements can account for the relations of power along lines of race/sex/gender/class/location that have historically structured access to digital media? How might scholars reframe the debate around access to digital media as a response to injustice to one that more carefully attends to forms of engagement and global relationality?
Around these issues of young people’s engagement, digital worlds, globalization and social justice we invite proposals which address but are not limited to the following themes:
We will ask participants to share their work with the group in a password-protected online site prior to the symposium, so each submission will require some kind of digital representation that can be shared in that format. If you have questions about a particular kind of submission please contact [email protected], [email protected] [email protected]
Completed abstracts are due on May 1 and completed papers/projects are due August 1, and will be made available to all symposium participants. All participants are expected to read all papers in advance. Participants will be provided with more information and details regarding the symposium and process once they have been accepted to participate.
We plan to produce a peer-reviewed publication from this event in the Studies in Social Justice Journal. To that end, papers/projects that have been revised from the symposium will be expected by January 15, 2018.
Meals will be provided throughout the duration of the symposium. Some bursaries for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars will be made available to cover accommodation and travel.
To enquire further, please contact Jennifer Turner, [email protected], or, Dr. Chelsey Hauge [email protected].
In 1996, The New London Group coined the term multiliteracies, meant to highlight both the shifting relationships of language in relation to increasingly present global networks as well as the multiple communicative forms young people use to make meaning. Since then, global networks facilitated by digital media have significantly changed how knowledge is produced and shared, and ever-more diverse groups of young people are challenging scholars and educators alike to rethink literacy, equity, and civic engagement. By invite only, this symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to reconsider how we might frame theories of multiliteracies, and digital engagements to examine social justice issues in young people’s lives, including issues arising from race, gender, sexuality, class and other inequalities in the context of global digital networks.
This symposium asks: What new concerns regarding globalization, power, and equity have emerged for scholars working in the traditions of young people’s digital engagements, activism, multiliteracies and The New London Group, given the exponential rise in access to participatory media and the intensive prominence of global networks, flows, and relationships in shaping the lives of young people? How have the concerns laid out by the New London Group and other scholars working in multiliteracies and digital engagements impacted how we make sense of, understand, and support young people doing social justice work in digital networks? What kind of updated framework for multiliteracies and digital engagements can account for the relations of power along lines of race/sex/gender/class/location that have historically structured access to digital media? How might scholars reframe the debate around access to digital media as a response to injustice to one that more carefully attends to forms of engagement and global relationality?
Around these issues of young people’s engagement, digital worlds, globalization and social justice we invite proposals which address but are not limited to the following themes:
- Participatory methods and research on and with young people
- The impact of and young people’s relationship to globalization and global activism
- Young people producing social justice, activist and participatory digital projects
- The exponential rise in access to participatory media and prominence of global networks, flows and relationships in shaping the lives of young people
- Issues of multiliteracies, pedagogy, and teaching and learning in the context of global digital networks
- Social, political and pedagogical issues emerging from global digital youth movements
- Theoretical concerns that highlight young lives including affect, new materialisms, and relationality
- Issues of power including gender, race, class, sexuality, ability and location as they manifest in digital literacy, media activism, and other global and/or networked spaces inhabited by young people
We will ask participants to share their work with the group in a password-protected online site prior to the symposium, so each submission will require some kind of digital representation that can be shared in that format. If you have questions about a particular kind of submission please contact [email protected], [email protected] [email protected]
Completed abstracts are due on May 1 and completed papers/projects are due August 1, and will be made available to all symposium participants. All participants are expected to read all papers in advance. Participants will be provided with more information and details regarding the symposium and process once they have been accepted to participate.
We plan to produce a peer-reviewed publication from this event in the Studies in Social Justice Journal. To that end, papers/projects that have been revised from the symposium will be expected by January 15, 2018.
Meals will be provided throughout the duration of the symposium. Some bursaries for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars will be made available to cover accommodation and travel.
To enquire further, please contact Jennifer Turner, [email protected], or, Dr. Chelsey Hauge [email protected].