CFP: "McLuhan and Beyond," 10th Annual Conference, Society for Phenomenology and Media, February 21-23, 2008.

The Society for Phenomenology and Media is accepting abstracts (200 – 400 words) for its 10th annual international conference to be held in Puebla, Mexico. The theme this year is "McLuhan and Beyond." Media and thinking about the media have evolved greatly since Marshall McLuhan introduced the global village to itself and, with his catch phrase, 'the medium is message,' directed attention to the way in which media transform our world. Television and telephoning, the radio and the movies have morphed and mutated and mixed to create numerous hybrids since the mid-1960s when McLuhan published Understanding Media: Extensions of Man. The 60s-era global village, gathered in the glow of the “tube,” has come to meet in the ether of cyberspace. The Society invites your thinking about media old and new, the way the media have changed, and the way changing media have changed (again and again) our world. We welcome your papers on specific media forms and on the concept of mediation itself. Papers need not explicitly address the work of Marshall McLuhan although thoughtful assessment of the relevance of McLuhan’s key ideas is welcome along with media studies ranging as broadly as McLuhan’s own work. The Society offers a venue for phenomenological thinking, broadly conceived, but also encourages interdisciplinary approaches (with the humanities and the social and natural sciences) and theoretical diversity (semiotics, hermeneutics, pragmatism, Marxism, critical theory, cultural studies, speech-act theory and other approaches in philosophy, contemporary and historical). Deadline for abstracts is December 1, 2007. Please send to conference host and the Society President (below). Conference host: SPM President: Alberto Carrillo-Canan cs001021@siu.buap.mx; Dennis Skocz skocz@verizon.net. For more information, visit: http://www.clafen.org/noticias/0208.htm.