We're posting through it. All of it. The organizing committee is excited to present the 2021 First Forum Graduate Student Conference. Check out the complete program and register at firstforumconference.org. All are welcome to attend.

This year's theme is Post(ing) and we invited graduate student scholars to submit their hottest takes that explore the wide range of meanings suggested by the word “posting” as it relates to the fields of cinema and media studies, communication, gender and sexuality studies, ethnic studies, and science and technology studies.

While posting might immediately refer to the work of participating in digital networks and the increasingly visible labor, affect, and resources that participation demands, we invite submissions that touch upon a range of mediums, methodologies, and approaches, from post-production to the postal service. “Post-“ might suggest the numerous post-intellectual moments scholars speculate we have been entering and exiting since the 1970s. Yet, even the formation of these post-modern, feminist, racial, historical moments themselves have been called into question, leading some to ask if we are now in the post-post-modern, the post-post-feminist era or if there was anything “new” about these moments in the first place. Meanwhile, many of us try to imagine a post-Covid era as old and new social arrangements struggle to emerge. The tireless Twitter troll and commenter on the human condition @Dril asks us to consider “posting ethically, within reason,” a position the organizing committee asks applicants to take seriously as they reflect on the multivalent meanings of “posting.” Clearly, the novel social, historical, and political arrangements that make posting and the “post-” meaningful are being reevaluated by people across a wide range of contexts that invite scholarly attention and interrogation.

We hope you'll come and post through it with us over four evenings of panels and speakers, hosted virtually and spread out over two weeks on October 21, 22, 28, & 29. The conference program has been amended from past years to encourage attendance, decrease burnout, and protect the health and safety of participants, students, and the broader Los Angeles community.

We owe thanks to numerous people, departments, and centers at USC for their support of this year's conference: ZdC Cinema and Media Studies Graduate Association, the Division of Cinema and Media Studies, the Levan Institute for the Humanities, the Visual Studies Research Institute (VSRI), and the Media as SocioTechnical Systems Research Collective (MASTS).

REGISTER HERE

Please note that our keynote address requires a separate Zoom registration. See website for more details or contact firstforumconference@gmail.com