May 24, 2019

Georgetown University, Washington, United States

Deadline to register: May 3, 2019

Contact: Eve Ng, evecng@hotmail.com

Non-presenters are warmly welcomed to register and attend. Early registration, by Mar 31, is $US40; regular registration (Apr 1-May 3) is $US60.

Register here.

As part of an ongoing movement to decenter white masculinity as the normative core of scholarly inquiry, the recent article, “#CommunicationSoWhite” by Chakravartty et al. (2018) in the Journal of Communicationexamined racial disparities within citational practices to make a broader intervention on ways current Communication scholarship reproduces institutional racism and sexism. The underrepresentation of scholars of color within the field in regards to citations, editorial positions, and publications and ongoing exclusion of nonwhite, feminist, queer, post-colonial, and Indigenous voices is a persistent and systemic problem in the production of disciplinary knowledge. ICA President Paula Gardner echoed similar sentiments in her 2018 presidential address, calling for steps for inclusion and diversity within the International Communication Association as well as the larger field.

This pre-conference aims to highlight, consider, and intervene in these issues. We seek submissions that address areas such as:

• The marginalization of communication scholarship in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other axes of exclusion are central;
• Communication scholarship in the context of the global rise of white supremacy and right-wing ethno-nationalism movements;
• Communication scholarship from postcolonial and decolonial perspectives;
• Who tends to be hired and who serves as leaders/gatekeepers in the field;
• The politics of citation and publication;

How #CommunicationSoWhite can function as an intervention within communication studies organizations, departments, and scholarship.

We anticipate many submissions will center on the U.S. and other Western contexts; we also hope the pre-conference will provide a discussion that spans both global North and South, and we encourage participation by submitters from outside North America and the U.K.