This year's ICA conference will feature a preconference sponsored by the Communication History Interest Group. This preconference, entitled "Mediating War and Technology," brings together communication and history scholars in 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. "Mediating War and Technology" will help to create new connections between communication and history.

This is a broad purview for a preconference, and the programmed panels for the preconference will feature papers touching on such diverse topics as: the role of the virtual in war and technology; histories of visualizing war through technology; war photojournalism and mythmaking; epistemology and war technology; material dimensions of networked communication as it relates to war; and gaming cultures as they relate to war. There will be four highly interactive panels programmed into this preconference. The panels will be very much open to participation from all who attend.

We will also be featuring a special multimedia workshop that explores the relationships between aesthetics, politics, and scholarship by three noted scholars and installation artists. This workshop will be a hands-on discussion and practicum.

In addition to these panels, "Mediating War and Technology" will also feature a roundtable devoted to historical methods and theory as they relate to the intertwining issues of media, war, and technology. This roundtable, to be moderated by Sharrona Pearl, will feature: Menahem Blondheim, Carolyn Marvin, Fred Turner, and David Kaiser.

A centerpiece for the preconference will be a keynote address by John Durham Peters, who will illuminate ongoing concerns related to communication, technology, and war.

A preliminary schedule for the preconference can be found here: http://www.communicationhistory.org/precon/precon.html

The preconference will take place at the conference hotel, the Westin Waterfront, on May 26, beginning at 8:45 a.m. The schedule for the day is quite full, and the preconference will end at 5:00 p.m. to allow all participants to join the opening reception for the ICA conference.