Founded as a haven for religious dissenters, Providence is a city intimately shaped by discourses of disagreement. This year’s conference theme, “Communities of Dissent,” is inspired by the tradition of dissent that has marked the city’s long and notable history. Dissent can be transformational, a lively experiment in tolerance and freedom of conscience. When accepted and encouraged, dissent can be an important monitoring force, providing correctives for unethical behavior, unfavorable decision-making, and insensitivity to others’ needs. Dissent can also be dangerous, undermining sound and orderly government, and fueling conflict and aggression.
This year’s theme explores the expression and suppression of dissent across communication contexts—relational, organizational, mediated, social, and political—and the attendant implications for such concerns as relational quality, community identification, civic engagement, public dialogue, accountability, and justice.
The convention, as always, features panels, round tables, short courses, and programming on the convention theme. In addition, the Fourth Annual James C. McCroskey and Virginia P. Richmond Undergraduate Scholars Conference (USC) will run concurrently with the ECA convention on Friday and Saturday (April 25-26). USC papers will be accepted through December 20, 2013, to enable scholarly student papers from the fall semester to be submitted.
Planners for the convention at large and for specific interest group programming are listed on our website, http://www.ecasite.org/aws/ECA/pt/sp/p_convention_papers. Co-sponsorship of panels between interest groups is especially encouraged, given the theme’s embrace of a “lively experiment.” Proposals that relate to the convention theme but do not directly relate to one of the interest group areas should be sent directly to Thomas R. Flynn, Primary Program Planner and ECA First Vice-President at ECA2014@sru.edu.
Come and be part of our “Lively Experiment”.