Greetings everyone from Doha, Qatar! As an aside, if you are in the vicinity, please let me know and I may be able to arrange for a visit to our campus here. While a historian of computing, I come from a communications program. Members of one of the major communication professional organizations (ICA- International Communication Organization) has launched an interest group in communication history. They will be hosting a relevant pre-conference this May in Boston. ICA is a larger organization than SHOT and many areas are not relevant to our work. That being said, this newly formed interest group is squarely within our purview and I strongly invite all interested members to please submit proposals. Announcement follows. Please forward to interested parties. Call for papers: Mediating War and Technology ICA Preconference sponsored by the Communication History Interest Group Boston, May 26, 2011 This ICA pre-conference brings together communication and history scholars for an exchange of ideas concerning war, technology, media, and history. War and technology are established themes in the fields of history and communication, though hoped-for connections between scholars in both fields have been slow in coming. Careful attention to how historical methods can assist communication scholars in their understanding of these broad themes will offer to pre-conference attendees and presenters alike valuable tools for more thoroughly working history into the field of communication. At the same time, historians will gain new insight into archival texts through the application of communications theory and methodology, leading to exciting developments in both fields. The pre-conference will feature invited speakers from both fields. Submitted papers should connect with ideas related to the history of war and technology. The following illustrations of topics suggest-but are not intended to limit-topics suitable for paper submissions: * The role of recording media (including photography, audio technology) in chronicling atrocity and war; * The history of war journalism, as it relates to issues in the history of technology; * The history of information warfare; * The history of the study of communication, as affected by war and technology; * Considerations of transportation as related to the history of war and technology; * New media and war, including perspectives on surveillance; * The changing roles of technology in the history of battlefield censorship; * Media technology as a variable in home-front morale; * Geopolitical advantage as related to media developments; * The role of military initiatives and investment in the evolution of civilian media technology; * The international circulation of propaganda in wars hot and cold; and * Comparative studies of conflict, technology and media We also encourage multi-media presentations and other non-traditional scholarly formats that explore preconference themes in novel ways. Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted no later than November 15, 2010. Send abstracts to David Park at: park@lakeforest.edu . Authors will be informed whether abstracts have been accepted by December 10, 2010. Completed papers will be due by May 1, 2011. The pre-conference will take place on Thursday, May 26, 2011, at the Westin Boston Waterfront, the site of the ICA conference. Organized by * Sharrona Pearl, the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania * Jefferson Pooley, Muhlenberg College * David W. Park, Lake Forest College This CFP can also be found at: http://www.communicationhistory.org/precon/precon.html John Laprise Visiting Assistant Professor in the Communication Program Northwestern University in Qatar