[Linganth] Talking Politics 2023: Silences + Voices in Global Media

[SLA Online]

Dear SLA community,



I hope this email finds you well! I am writing to invite you to join us on
a returning SLA-sponsored webinar series, *Talking Politics 2023: Silences
+ Voices in Global Media*. The series features experts from the academy and
beyond who will be discussing pressing, global political issues of our
time, from LGBTQ+ politics to the politics of indigenous language, U.S.
school board meetings, left/right political binaries, and more.



Jointly organized by UChicago’s Center for the Study of Communication and
Society (CSCS) and University of Colorado Boulder’s Culture, Language, and
Social Practice (CLASP), *Talking Politics 2023*
<https://cscs.uchicago.edu/talking-politics/> is a series consisting of
five individual events which will begin on *Apr 21, 4 pm* (Central Time)
and end on *June 1*. All events will be held on Zoom and are free and open
to the public. This series seeks to showcase to fellow scholars and the
general public alike how experts analyze empirical data to ground their
findings on pressing political issues and is designed to be interactive.
All events will be followed by a live Q&A session where audiences can ask
questions and engage in dialogue with the speakers. Learn more and register
for the series here: https://bit.ly/TalkPol2023.



The events and presenters include:



*April 21, 4 pm CST*

*Talking Politics with Nicholas Mararac (Georgetown University)*

*Queering the Military: How Ideologies About Gender and Sexuality Shape(d)
the U.S. Armed Forces*



Opponents to social change in the military often say, “Keep politics out of
the military.” However, the military is inherently political: mandated
civilian oversight by the U.S. Congress has since World War I regulated who
can serve and on what terms, and all language use is itself
political—especially talk about what counts as politics at all. This
webinar will explore the discourse of the politicization of the U.S.
military through the regulation of gender identity and sexual expression.



*May 5, 4 pm CST*

*Roundtable: Transnational Language Politics, Old and New*

Featuring: Jessica S. Chandras (University of North Florida), Jaime Pérez
Gonzáles (UC Santa Barbara), Martina Volfolvá (University of British
Columbia), and Keisha Wiel (Temple University)



What is a mother tongue? What is an indigenous language? Who uses them, who
defines them, and who gets included or excluded when their boundaries
change? These categories might seem self-evident, but they’re backed by
decades – even centuries – of political confusion, contestation, advocacy,
activism, study, and institutionalization, both national and transnational.
This roundtable’s participants will share how “mother tongue(s)” and
“indigenous language(s)” appear across their research, advocacy, and
revitalization work, and discuss what is made possible or impossible
through these large-scale categories.



*May 19, 11 am CST*

*Talking Politics with Joshua Babcock (University of Chicago) and Ilana
Gershon (Rice University)*

*How Does the State Ignore? The Contested Case of U.S. School Boards, from
the Screen to the Meeting Hall*



With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, public commentary at U.S. school
board meetings became an important ideological battleground for citizens to
air their dissatisfactions to the state. Entertainment media like SNL
reflected this dissatisfaction, crafting comedic fantasies of shutting down
the voices of undesirable others. Yet it turns out that the state got there
first. This webinar doesn’t focus on arguments for or against specific
policies. Instead, we ask: how does the state work to ignore (potentially)
everyone? What effect does this have on speech in democratic contexts? And
how do citizens understand democratic utterances that seem to revolve
around voice without uptake?



*May 26, 11 am CST*

*Roundtable: Afterlives of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, Beyond Tankie*

Featuring: Taras Fedirko (University of Glasgow), Jessica Greenberg
(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Yukun Zeng (University of
Chicago), and TBD



What do “left” and “right” mean today? As words, how are “left” and “right”
used, and toward what political ends? How can we think about politics
beyond the left–right binary? And just what (or who) is a “tankie”? In this
roundtable, our experts share examples of how the left–right paradigm has
appeared during their research, and how it organizes politics in different
contexts around the world.



*June 1, 4 pm CST*

*Talking Politics with Krystal A. Smalls (University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign)*

*TBD*



Learn more and register for the series here: https://bit.ly/TalkPol2023.



As this workshop series is designed to promote public participation and
accessibility, feel free to share it with your friends and family both
within and beyond the academy.



Best regards,



WeeYang Soh

Talking Politics 2023 Lead Organizer

@The University of Chicago





-- 
*Society for Linguistic Anthropology Online*
Digital Media Directors: Catherine Tebaldi (Universite du Luxembourg),
Shannon Ward (University of British Columbia Okanagan)
SLA Social Media Manager: Nora Tyeklar (University of Texas at Austin)
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