Dolores' List of CFPs

Please respond directly to John C. Hawley, Chair of the English
Department, Santa Clara University 408 554 4956 jhawley@scu.edu

I am editing a three-volume 600,000 word encyclopedia for Greenwood
Press, entitled LGBTQ America Today. The book is well-advanced, and I
have received 525 entries. With such a large endeavor, however, it is
not surprising that various writers who have committed to the project
find that personal matters sometimes intercede and make it impossible
for them to complete their writing for the book in time for our
contractual obligations to the press. The following topics, therefore,
have become available. You will see that many of them are extremely
important. If you are able to commit to completing any of these by the
end of October (a firm deadline: do not accept an assignment unless you
are committed to its completion by that date, or sometime sooner),
please let me know immediately and I will let you know whether or not it
still remains available. When you express interest in a particular
topic, I'll send more details of the project. Thanks. -John C. Hawley,
Chair of the English Department, Santa Clara University 408 554 4956
jhawley@scu.edu

Adrienne Rich 1000 words
African American Interface with LGBTQ Movement and Issues 3,000 words
Alison Bechdel 250
Art and Photography, Intro essay 1500
Asian American Feminism 1200
Barbara Seyda 300
Bertha Harris 350
Butch-Femme 1000
Camille Paglia 300
Canonical Issues (the incorporation of gay topics into the elementary
and secondary school classroom, etc) 1500
Christopher Isherwood 750
CLAGS 1500
Coming of Age Fiction 1500
Conrad Susa 250
David Zamora Casas 300
Doris Grumbach 300
Down Low, The 500
Ethan Mordden 300
Fat Acceptance 500 words
Feliz Gonzalez-Torres 300
Gay Ghettoes 750
George Segal 300
GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders) 750
Health and Health Care Law and Policy 3000
Isabel Miller 300
Jennifer Levin 300
Joan Snyder 300
Joe Goode 500
Katherine V. Forrest 500
Larry Kramer 500
Leo F. Cabranes-Grant 300
Lesbian 1500
Linda Besemer 300
Lisa Alther 300
Margaret Randall 300
Mark Doty 500
May Sarton 500
Michiyo Fukaya 300
Midwest (GLBT life in) 400
Mixed-Orientation Marriages (gay/straight) 1250
Monogamy, Non-Monogramy, and Promiscuity 2500
Muriel Rukeyser 500
NAMES Project 2000
Online Hook-ups, Phone Sex, Queers in Cyberspace, Sex on Camming 2500
Paul Monette 1250
Politicians (including Barney Frank, James Hormel, et al) 1,000
Privacy and Privacy Rights 2900
Provincetown 500
Reinaldo Arenas 750
Ricardo Bracho 250
Robert Rauschenberg 400
Ross Bleckner 300
Ruth Geller 300
San Francisco Bay Area poets (Blaser, Robin; Broughton, James;
Duncan, Robert; Ginsberg, Allen; Gunn, Thom; Spicer, Jack; Wieners,
John) 1,700
Susan Stinson 300
Sylvester 500
Tony Kushner 750
Trailblazing Artists and Photographers (Abbott, Berenice,Bernhard,
Ruth; Brooks, Romaine; Cadmus, Paul; Eakins, Thomas; French, Jared;
Hartley, Marsden; Touko Laaksonen, Leyendecker, J. C.; Lynes, George
Platt; Mars, Ethel; Bob Mizer; Parsons, Betty; Squire, Maude; White,
Minor) 2,500
Transgender Health Issues 2000
Truman Capote 1000
Wayne Koestenbaum 300
Women's and Gender Studies in Universities 2500
Women's Music and Festivals 1500

3 to 9 July 2008
Madrid, madrid, Spain

Website: http://www.mmww08.org

10th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women THEME: New Frontiers:
Dares and Advancements The experience of dislocation whether physical or
conceptual affects women in specific ways. Congress is open to proposals in
ALL fields.

Organized by: University Complutense of Madrid
Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 4 February 2008
(Check the event website for latest details.)

Mundos de Mujeres / Women's Worlds 2008 is open to proposals in ALL fields and themes related to women, gender and sexuality in contemporary societies, as well as historically. However, we have established some thematic guidelines to facilitate classification of proposals for the congress final program. We are placing a special emphasis on two central themes: violence and migrations, but these themes are by no means the only ones to be addressed at the conference. MMWW08 organizers will like to receive a wide variety of proposals in ALL fields of knowledge and working areas.

New Frontiers: Dares and Advancements
The experience of dislocation whether physical, conceptual or symbolic, affects women in specific ways. We have chosen three concepts to encompass the general theme of the congress: frontiers, dares and advancements, in order to address a wide range of themes, issues and disciplines that ought to be taken into account for a better understanding of the present world. On the one hand, the congress theme refers to physical dislocations as having to do with migration, illegal trafficking of women for sexual exploitation and slavery, cheap labour, racism, xenophobia and all forms of physical violence against women and those who are "in transit". On the other hand, it refers to imaginary and conceptual forms of dislocations and frontiers as having to do with survival mechanisms that women in extreme situations develop, many forms of conceptual dislocation and imaginary borders, "other worlds", the Internet and scientific revolutions that we are experiencing in the 21st century, new venues and ties among people who are fighting for gender equality and social justice around the World, new time/space frames, new feminist theoretical proposals, etc.

MMWW08 will be the ground for a deep and constructive analysis and an optimistic outlook at all the issues that affect women and have to do with feminist enterprises today.

Resources for Feminist Research
Call for manuscripts for a Special Issue

Healthy Environments for Women Teachers and Faculty

Deadline for Submission: December 31, 2007

How healthy are schools and universities? What are the characteristics of a healthy or unhealthy educational setting? How healthy are the women who work in these settings? What initiatives would support a healthy physical and social environment for women teachers and faculty?

Historically, empirical studies of occupational health focused on the incidence of illness, injury, absenteeism, and disability. By contrast, a population health approach examines the social, environmental and biophysical factors that support health. Gender, culture, income and social status, social support networks, working conditions, physical environment and other interrelated factors influence the health of individuals and populations. From this perspective, teacher health is not simply a clinical descriptor or the absence of disease. Rather, the health of individual teachers and teachers as a group is an essential social resource. Safeguarding and promoting teacher and faculty health and wellbeing can be achieved by creating and sustaining healthy educational environments.

This special issue will explore the health of women teachers and faculty and the educational environments where they work. Invited are articles that explore the complex and varied experiences of women teachers and faculty, the factors that nurture and support their safety, and physical and mental health and well-being, and the processes, interventions, and institutional structures that create and strengthen healthy environments for women teachers and faculty.

Diana L. Gustafson and Roberta F. Hammett are the guest editors of this special issue of the Resources for Feminist Research. We invite submissions of original manuscripts that explore broader theoretical questions as well as those that report on innovative research studies and policy-oriented issues on a range of topics such as:
* Social well-being in rural, northern and isolated community schools
* Homophobia and chilly classroom climates
* The healthy communities movement in the educational context
* Healthy or health-related institutional policies and initiatives
* Promotion and tenure anxiety among visible minority women
* Women teachers' mental health issues
* The production and mediation of women faculty's occupational stress
* The control and surveillance of women's bodies in schools and universities
* Safety and risk for women working in unsafe physical spaces
* Women teachers' perspectives on health hazards
* Incentive programs for teachers' healthy lifestyle choices
Manuscripts may be submitted by e-mail to RFR. Manuscripts should conform to RFR's editorial policy as described at www.oise.utoronto.ca Contributions must be original research or scholarly articles approximately 6,500-7,500 words, in English or French with a short abstract (75 words) which will be translated into the other official language. Submissions should be double-spaced. All manuscripts are reviewed anonymously by at least three qualified readers.

Please address questions about this special issue to:

Diana L. Gustafson, Associate Professor of Social Sciences and Health
Division of Community Health and Humanities
Faculty of Medicine, HSC 2834
Memorial University
St. John's, NL A1B 3V6
diana.gustafson@med.mun.ca



Respectfully

Diana L. Gustafson RN BA MEd PhD
Associate Professor of Social Sciences and Health
Graduate Program Coordinator
Division of Community Health and Humanities
Faculty of Medicine HSC 2834
Memorial University
St. John's, NL A1B 3V6
tel: +1-709-777-6720
fax:+1-709-777-7382
diana.gustafson@med.mun.ca
www.med.mun.ca/comhealth/CV/cv_gustafson.htm

National Women's Studies Association (10/19/07; 6/19-22/08)
Guaranteed Panel (Aging and Ageism Caucus)

Life writing is full of visible and invisible connections to people's ideas
about aging and old age. When younger people do creative pieces about their
own lives' futures, they often kill themselves off before they have to
imagine what being old is like. Many of the life writing projects created
for multigenerational collaboraton are life review studies, as if the past
was the main part of an old person's life worth considering and the future
was not going to be as interesting. How can feminist aging studies
positively affect these experiences? Panel presentations might consider, but
are not limited to, questions such as these:
-What is feminist life writing, inside and outside of academia?
- How might assignments channel the ideas of traditional-aged student or
returning students to reconsider ageist stereotypes?
- How might service learning projects incorporate such reconceptions?
- What is the value of doing revisiting our ideas of aging and old age via
course assignments and our own work, and what is the value of asking people
to bring feminist Aging and Age Studies concepts to focus on life review?

Queries and 1-page abstracts arriving by October 19, 2007 to
Leni Marshall
leni@agingstudies.edu

Email submissions preferred, but hard copies may be addressed to
Leni Marshall
Department of English
Century College
3300 Century Avenue
White Bear Lake, MN 55110

In recognition of the central place of
“intersectionality” in contemporary Women’s Studies—a
widespread disciplinary commitment to analyzing race,
class, and gender as powerful interlocking principles
by which people are organized globally and locally—the
Southeastern Women’s Studies Association is building a
Women of Color caucus. The objectives of the group
will be to provide a strong network for support and
the sharing of scholarly and pedagogical ideas around
issues of race throughout the region.

As a first step towards establishing this network of
scholars, activists, and students, and in celebration
of our keynote speaker, bell hooks, the Women of Color
caucus of SEWSA calls for papers that explore the
production of Black feminist knowledge in the U.S.
Southeast, to be presented at the SEWSA 2008
conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in connection
with the conference theme, “Frontiers of Feminism at
Home and Abroad.”

TOPIC: STILL TALKING BACK—BLACK FEMINISM IN THE U.S.
SOUTHEAST
In her oft-cited essay, “Talking Back,” bell hooks
describes the punishments she received as a child for
talking back to authority figures. “I was taught that
it was important to speak but to talk a talk that was
in itself a silence,” she writes. “Taught to speak
and yet beware of the betrayal of too much heard
speech, I experienced intense confusion and deep
anxiety in my efforts to speak and write.” The
problem of developing and sustaining a progressive
Black feminist voice in the U.S. southeast could be
framed in similar terms, given the obstacles to
antiracist education faced by professors and scholars
of this field, ranging from student resistance to
faculty isolation and tokenism to what Patricia Hill
Collins calls “the new racism,” a post-Civil Rights
cultural belief that racism is a thing of the past.

In this call for papers, the Women of Color caucus of
SEWSA seeks treatments of race in the context of this
region. What are the obstacles and punishments—and
the rewards and necessities—for “talking back” about
race in the new millennial U.S. southeast? What are
the methodologies and pedagogies and theoretical
possibilities of Black feminism as a discourse of
resistance and social transformation? How can we
counter the problems of old racism, new racism, and
internalized racism in the production of knowledge as
teachers and scholars of Black feminism? What is at
stake? How can we generate a voice that not only
speaks but is heard? Why/how/and to what effect are
we “still talking back”?

Abstracts due by: Oct. 15, 2007. Send to Dr. Merri
Lisa Johnson (mjohnson@uscupstate.edu)

Panelists will be selected by Oct. 30, and the panel
will be submitted to SEWSA by the conference deadline
of Nov. 2.

If the paper is not selected as part of this panel, it
will be considered automatically for inclusion in the
conference as an individual paper submission.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Libraries & the Cultural Record – Special issue on Women in Information Science

GUEST EDITORS

Diane Barlow and Trudi Bellardo Hahn
College of Information Studies
University of Maryland
dbarlow@umd.edu, thahn@umd.edu

ISSUE FOCUS

This special issue will spotlight the lives and contributions of remarkable women pioneers in information science. Papers may be about women whose field of specialty and accomplishments fall in a wide variety of areas—documentation, classification, standards, information retrieval, library technologies, LIS education, social epistemology, information use, information policy, STI, or other. A paper may address a subject’s leadership, innovation, advocacy, research, or other significant contributions, and should place the subject historically in her social, cultural, and professional context. Further, bios should show the relationship of her particular specialty to the larger discipline.

Possible subjects for bios are Jean Antes, Henrietta Avram, Marcia Bates, Helen Brownson, Elfreda Chatman, Pauline Atherton Cochrane, Diana Crane, Susan Crawford, Edith Ditmas, Margaret Egan, Madeline (Berry) Henderson, Mary Herner, Karen Sparck-Jones, Barbara Kyle, Lotsee Patterson, Phyllis Richmond, Jane Robbins, Claire Schultz, Jean Tague-Sutcliffe, Winifred Sewell, and Martha Williams. These individuals are named as examples. We welcome papers on other women pioneers in information science as well.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please submit the name of the individual you wish to write on and a brief outline of your paper by October 7, 2007. Authors will be selected by October 19. Submit full papers (4,000-8,000 words) by March 15, 2008. Authors will receive reviews by May 1. Final papers will be due by June 15, 2008.

ANTICIPATED PUBLICATION: spring 2009

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Libraries & the Cultural Record is an interdisciplinary journal that explores the significance of collections of recorded knowledge--their creation, organization, preservation, and utilization--in the context of cultural and social history, unlimited as to time and place. It is the only journal that covers the broad history of the related disciplines and professions of the emerging Information Domain. For more information, see: www.ischool.utexas.edu/~lcr.

Society for Disability Studies 21st Annual Conference
New York City, June 18-22, 2008
?Cosmopolitan? Disability Studies Crips the City?
Submission Deadline: 1 December 2007

As Disability Studies becomes more aware of the boundaries of its own
discourses, we want to explore critically the lands of its origins,
the limits of its imagination, and the challenges of experiencing
wider space. Bodies, ideas, and words travel across borders, negotiate
restricted space and resistance, and become transformed as they
journey. How do notions of disability, Disability Studies, and
disability culture shift in these travels? Who participates in these
travels and who is denied entrance? How is space produced, enacted,
and lived in by disabled people? How are local life worlds configured
in space? What is at stake in seeing ourselves as citizens of a more
complex world in which multiple, simultaneous identities are engaged
in transit and dialogue?

New York, this city of immigrants, is the staging ground for the 2008
SDS conference. Thus, many cherished American ideas are up for grabs:
melting pots and assimilation, the energy of new beginnings, the
emergence of undergrounds and renaissances, beliefs in rugged
individualism and transnational capitalism, mechanisms of control and
security, and architectures of access. As we imagine disability and
disability studies in this iconic location, we ask, What are our Ellis
Islands, our Statues of Liberty, our Grand Central Stations, our
Stonewalls? Where are our Christopher Streets, our Broadways, our
Greenwich Villages?

How might New York City, a site both global and local, guide our
understandings of disability and Disability Studies from international
and transnational perspectives? How might such multiple locations in
turn illuminate, enrich, and challenge disability experiences and
Disability Studies within the United States? What are the assumptions
at work in casting New York as a cosmopolitan city, and to what
effect? What does it mean to imagine cosmopolitanism?evoking the city
without borders, people as citizens of the world?from disability
perspectives? How might notions of the city, cosmopolitanism, and the
urban produce Disability Studies scholarship that speaks to applied
disciplines and theoretical examinations of identity, citizenship,
space, and authenticity?

We invite proposals from any field that examine the ways in which
disability and urban issues intersect; engage the mobility of metaphor
and the refiguration of space; and/or explore the ways in which
Disability Studies shifts and translates in application to specific
sites and communities. Potential topics include:

? Public Health
? Violence, War, and Terror
? Mobility and Metaphor
? Housing, Home, and Homelessness
? Access and Spatiality
? Immigration and Translation
? Education
? Globalization and Transnational Critique
? Artistic Practices, Cultural Production, and Crip Culture
? History and Memory
? Categorization and Citizenship
? Public Policy in the Global City
? Bodies and Borders
? Surveillance and Security, Visibility and Invisibility
? Activist Communities, Strategies, and Identities
? Architectural Mappings and Geographical Textures
? Pollution, Garbage, and Environmental Devastation

SDS invites activists, artists, and scholars to submit proposals for
all work in progress in Disability Studies. We welcome
interdisciplinary proposals that bring together scholars in different
fields or using different methodologies, embodying the kinds of
translation and movement evoked in this year?s theme. Work can be
submitted in a variety of formats, including workshops, paper
presentations, poster sessions, performances, video/DVD recordings,
etc. For the 2008 conference, we also would like to introduce new
seminar slots for the discussion of shared readings, pre-circulated
papers, or other focused topics.

Accessibility in presentations is central to the philosophy of SDS.
Presenters should explore ways to make physical, sensory, and
intellectual access a fundamental part of their presentation. All
presenters are required to, at minimum, provide e-text versions of
papers in advance of the conference (for open captioning), large-print
hard copies (18 point font or larger) of all handouts, hard copies or
outlines of their talks in 12 point and 18 point fonts, audio
description of visual images, charts, and video/DVDs, and open or
closed captioning of films and video clips. Presentations should also
be planned so that their delivery will accommodate open-captioning and
ASL translation. In order to facilitate ASL interpretation and open
captioning, drafts of accepted presentations will be due by 1 May
2008. If you have questions about making your presentation accessible,
please contact Alison Kafer at kafera@southwestern.edu or Petra
Kuppers at petra@umich.edu. Please note: English and ASL are the two
main languages in use at SDS; if you have other language needs, please
indicate such on your proposal and we will try to assist you in
obtaining accommodations.

For details on submission, please visit the SDS website
www.disstudies.org. Questions about the conference program or
submission process should be directed to Alison Kafer at
kafera@southwestern.edu or Petra Kuppers at petra@umich.edu.

Call for Papers
The Department of Philosophy at the University of Dayton will sponsor
the 33rd Richard R. Baker Colloquium in Philosophy
March 6-8, 2008 on Building Coalitions Across Difference.

Invited Guest Speakers are Sally Haslanger [Professor of Philosophy,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Author of: Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays (with
Charlotte Witt), Theorizing Feminisms (with Elizabeth Hackett,) and
Persistence (with Roxanne Marie Kurtz)] and Tommie Shelby [John L. Loeb
Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and African American Studies,
Harvard University. Author of: We Who Are Dark, and Hip Hop and
Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (with Derrick Darby)]

The focus of the colloquium is on the intersection of race and gender in
contemporary philosophical reflection. Papers that approach the topic
from a wide range of philosophical perspectives are welcome.

Papers might address questions such as: Is solidarity based on group
membership still a valuable practice or concept? What aspects of race
theory and feminist theory are supportive of, or prevent, coalition
building? How can we learn from the past, making use of what is
valuable, without being tainted by what is harmful? How should we think
about ideology and how ideologies function in the construction of race
and gender? What would count as an ethics of the oppressed? How should
oppressed groups respond to each other? How should they respond to
oppressors?

Papers should be no more than 3,000 words, double-spaced, with a maximum
reading time of 25 minutes. Include an abstract of no more than 250
words. Submission deadline is October 30, 2007.

Papers should be submitted to: Patricia A. Johnson, Professor of
Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio
45469-1546. Electronic submissions in MS-Word are welcome. Send these
to patricia.johnson@notes.udayton.edu

Perspectives on Gender and Technology: An interdisciplinary conference
sponsored by The University of Texas Center for Women's and Gender Studies

April 11, 2008

8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

The University of Texas at Austin

Purpose: To look at the interaction of gender and technology in the
contemporary world from three perspectives: ways of knowing, ways of doing,
and ways of changing.

* Ways of knowing - These papers will consider how technology
mediates/facilitates/responds to cultural and social realities, especially
those related to gender.

* Ways of doing - These papers will explore gendered constructs of "doing"
technology. (E.g., norms related to technological expertise, the impact of
gender on growth/advancement/entrance into technologically-oriented careers,
etc.)

* Ways of changing - These papers will consider the intersection of women
and technology in the developing world, especially the use of technology as
a tool for positive social change.

Who is invited: Because some of the most fruitful studies of gender and
technology are interdisciplinary, all methodologies and approaches are
welcome, from ethnographic studies to feminist theorizing to quantitative
empirical studies (and all points in between). We hope to attract a broad
representation of scholars and practitioners.

How to submit a proposal: PROPOSALS (500 WORDS) ARE DUE DEC 1, 2007.

Email proposals to Hillary Hart: hart@mail.utexas.edu. Please use MSWord
2003 (or earlier) or PDF for file formats, or embed the proposal in the
e-mail message.

Accepted proposals will be notified by DEC. 15, 2007; full manuscripts will
be due MARCH 15. Papers presented at the conference will be published in the
conference proceedings. NOTE: Editors of the following journals have
expressed specific interest in considering appropriate papers from this
conference for publication: Journal of Strategic Information Systems,
Science Communication, Journal of Technology in Human Services.

Featured Keynote Speakers:

Lucy Suchman, Professor & Co-director, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster
University. Suchman joined the faculty at Lancaster after twenty years as a
researcher at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. She researches the
relationship of ethnographies of everyday practice to new technology design.
Her 1987 book, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine
Communication, is a watershed work in the field of human-computer
interaction. Among many other awards, in 2005, she won the Outstanding
Contribution to Research Award from the Communication and Information
Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association.

Rachael Muir, Founder and Executive Director of Girlstart. Girlstart is a
non-profit organization founded in Austin, Texas in 1997 to empower girls in
math, science, engineering and technology. Girlstart's programs have been
featured on the Today show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and in Glamour,
Texas Monthly, Fast Company, and CosmoGIRL magazines.

September 27, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

On behalf of the Conference Committee, I am pleased to announce a call for papers for a multidisciplinary conference, The Art of Gender in Everyday Life V, to take place at Idaho State University (ISU), March 6 & 7, 2008. In addition to sessions, the conference will include: a keynote, "No More Tears: On the Persistence of Melodrama in Representing Women's Lives," by Dr. Tania Modleski, Florence R. Scott Professor of English at the University of Southern California, on the evening of Thursday, March 6; a Friday, March 7, lunchtime talk, “Mind-Body Equality” by ISU faculty member, athlete and businesswoman, Dr. Lori Head; and a screening of LUNAFEST on Friday evening.

The Conference Committee invites abstracts from university faculty and staff as well as from graduate and advanced undergraduate students. ALL submissions related to the art of living gendered lives will be considered. This year, given our speakers, we are especially interested in submissions that address gender and the arts (including the presentation of gendered performances, films, etc., as well as academic papers) gender and popular culture, and gender and the body. Abstracts must be postmarked by November 5, 2007.

This conference is an occasion to showcase current work being done in the area of gender studies. Participants from past years have consistently commented on the friendly atmosphere at The Art of Gender in Everyday Life conferences, and it is our principal mission to continue our tradition of creating a collegial, supportive and nurturing environment for the discussion of gender issues across the disciplines.

The Art of Gender in Everyday Life V is a special opportunity to network with colleagues in the relaxed setting of Pocatello, Idaho, nestled in the picturesque Bannock Range of the Rocky Mountains. We are pleased to announce that this year, for the first time in the history of the conference, participants will have the opportunity to register for a day trip to near-by Lava Hot Springs. Those taking part in the trip will experience a day of relaxation in the naturally-occurring mineral hot springs, the temperatures of which range from 102-112 degrees. More information about Lava Hot Springs is available at
.

Getting to Pocatello is easy! Delta flies to the Pocatello Regional Airport, and ground shuttles are available from the Salt Lake City International Airport to Pocatello through Salt Lake Express .

Please find attached a formal call for papers, an announcement of our student paper competition, and a registration form. Should you prefer not to open an attachment, these documents can also be found on our website at <http://www.isu.edu/andersoncenter>. On behalf of the entire Conference Committee, I invite you to join us for this important event.

Kind regards,

Rebecca Morrow, Ph.D.
Director
Anderson Gender Resource Center

To learn more, visit our website:
www.isu.edu/andersoncenter

Call for Chapters for the
Handbook of Research on Multimodal Human Computer Interaction and Pervasive Services: Evolutionary Techniques for Improving Accessibility
Editor: Dr. Patrizia Grifoni, IRPPS-CNR, Italy

Introduction: People usually communicate using all the five senses in parallel. They communicate and interact based on a set of key-concepts that can be expressed with different modalities and/or by means of more than one modality simultaneously. The effectiveness and naturalness of communication is particularly relevant for services. The great diffusion of mobile devices, along with the development of multimodal interaction, presents a new challenge for telecommunication companies and all organizations that can be involved in providing new services using mobile devices. One requirement for these services is that they and their information have to be accessible to every mobile situation.

In the last twenty years, a significant amount of work in human-computer interaction has focused on Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) and only in recent years has multimodality on mobile devices allowed an implicit and natural interaction between end-users and devices. In fact, the growing development and interest in mobile devices, which now give users the ability to effectively interact anywhere and anytime, has changed this scenario. In particular, mobile multimodal applications must now be able to adapt themselves to the users’ needs and to the context (where the context contains knowledge of the environment and the device) and one or more modalities can be involved in the user-system interaction according to “where” and “when” s/he is.

Multimodal interaction systems combine information provided visually (involving images, text, sketches and so on) by voice, by gestures, and so on according to flexible and powerful dialogue approaches, enabling users to choose one or more interaction modalities. The use of multimodality combined with mobile devices allows a simple, intuitive communication approach and generates new and pervasive services for users. In developing multimodal services it is essential to consider perceptual speech, audio, and video quality for optimum communication system design and effective transmission planning and management in order to satisfy customer requirements. Due to the naturalness of multimodal interaction, interpretation algorithms and technologies must manage uncertainty and ambiguities connected to sequential and simultaneous inputs.

This handbook will collect significant contribution on the theories, techniques and methods on multimodality and mobile devices for pervasive services.

Coverage: The Handbook of Research on Multimodal Human Computer Interaction and Pervasive Services: Evolutionary Techniques for Improving Accessibility will provide complete and original theoretical and practical scenarios about concepts, methodologies, definitions, algorithms and applications used to design and develop multimodal systems. These systems make information and services accessible according to the natural manner provided by multimodal interaction and the use of mobile devices. The handbook will discuss many challenges of multimodal systems with a particular focus on mobile devices. It will give an overview of the existing works in this sector, discussing the different strategies adopted in the fusion process, optimization processes on mobile devices, ambiguity and error handling related to one or more modalities, user modeling and context modeling for enhancing adaptation and context-awareness of multimodal mobile services, which will make them more and more accessible and usable. Moreover, the handbook will contain some significant examples of pervasive multimodal mobile services.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Multimodal interaction and pervasive services
Multimodal interaction on mobile devices
Multimodal interfaces and Multimodal interaction languages.
Methods of multimodal integration and algorithms.
Inputs fusion algorithms and approaches.
Fission algorithms and approaches.
Interpretation of multimodal interaction.
Ambiguities and error handling in multimodal interaction.
Computational aspects and optimization for multimodal interaction on mobile devices.
Evaluation of multimodal interfaces.
Adaptivity for multimodal mobile systems: user and context modeling.
Usability evaluation methodologies for pervasive application.
Accessibility evaluation methods for a multimodal and mobile pervasive application.
Applications and services connected to the personal communication, assistive and home market, location based services, e-commerce, online banking, mobile learning etc..

Submission: Individuals interested in submitting chapters (8,000-10,000 words) on the above-suggested topics or other related topics in their area of interest should submit via e-mail a 2-3 page manuscript proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of the proposed chapter by December 18, 2007. We strongly encourage other topics that have not been listed in our suggested list, particularly if the topic is related to the research area in which you have expertise. Upon acceptance of your proposal, you will have until April 30, 2008, to prepare your chapter of 8,000-10,000 words and 7-10 related terms and their appropriate definitions. Guidelines for preparing your paper and terms and definitions will be sent to you upon acceptance of your proposal.

Please forward your e-mail of interest including your name, affiliation and a list of topics (5-7) on which you are interested in writing a chapter to Patrizia Grifoni, editor, at patrizia.grifoni@irpps.cnr.it, no later than December 18, 2007. You will be notified about the status of your proposed topics by January 10, 2008. This book is tentatively scheduled for publishing by Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference), www.info-sci-ref. com, an imprint of IGI Global (formerly Idea Group, Inc.) in 2009