National Council on Public History

Dijia Chen, University of Virginia

PROPOSAL TYPE

Traditional panel

SEEKING

• Seeking General Feedback and Interest
• Seeking Additional Presenters
• Seeking Specific Expertise

RELATED TOPICS

• Digital
• Public Engagement
• Theory

This panel investigates how alternative newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, online forums, etc. function as contact zones for marginal groups to connect, communicate, interact, and eventually develop into virtual or even real communities with their own narratives and voices against the dominating discourse. This panel welcomes papers from all fields and disciplines that explore how these grass-root media platforms come into being, what historical narratives or ephemera are produced through these platforms, how marginalized groups experience communal senses of the community by participating in the discursive production, and whether the media platforms empower them against the status quo.

DESCRIPTION

The notion of the “imagined community,” as is developed by Benedict Anderson, features the collective in which members “never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their community.” While Anderson’s notion is tied to communal structures, such as shared spatial, cultural, and linguistic domains, the “virtual community” created by new forms of media extends across geographical and temporal borders. These media platforms, connecting people and disseminating mediated messaged through alternative newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, online forums, etc., produce particular forms of knowledge and narratives against the dominating discourse, either in cultural, social, political, or disciplinary senses. The formation of “imagined communities” through alternative media practices allows for underrepresented, marginalized, or heterodoxic groups that do not usually have access to develop “real-life” communities to gain mental support, seek practical advice, and voice their opinions by slipping the structural suppression from the dominating discourse. Alternative media platforms, in this regard, allow for marginal groups to produce their own history, which may even eventually turn over the dominating historical narrative in certain circumstances.

This panel focuses primarily on the analysis of media platforms, including their patterns of communication, representation, dissemination, etc. as the pre-conditions that structure and nurture the formation of alternative “imagined communities”. We are especially interested in how media technologies interfere with particular social, cultural and political conditions, and what historical narratives are produced in this process. As John Fiske explains, the peripheral meaning-making process “always bears traces of the constant struggle between domination and subordination”. We seek proposals that explore topics but not limited to: the alternative representation of gender, racial, and sexual minorities, cross-cultural hegemony and resistance, democratization of elitist discourse, media-centered formation of collectivity in virtual space, etc. from all fields of humanities and social science. We are especially interested in how alternative media practices empower marginal groups, and what effects they have on the dominating historical narratives.

If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Dijia Chen, University of Virginia, [email protected]

ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 1, 2021. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.

Discussion