We have programmed seven miniplenary sessions featuring community activists, international researchers, and new media designers and producers, as well as our own distinguished members, the ICA Fellows.

These sessions are dedicated to our conference theme of Communicating for Social Impact but in very different ways. As a set, they touch upon the interests of every ICA division and special interest group. They also offer opportunities for the kinds of social and professional networking that our members say that they so greatly desire.

Although only some sessions are designed specifically to be completely interactive, others promise to distinguish themselves from the usual conference fare in their content and engagement on topics between panelists and audience members. Our hope is that ICA members who would like to continue the conversation begun by our miniplenary speakers' presentations will attend all or part of an open reception hosted in their honor on Saturday, May 24, 2008, at 6 pm at Le Centre Sheraton.

Friday's Miniplenaries

On Friday, May 23, there are three 75-minute miniplenaries from noon-1:15 pm.

Arthur Frank will speak about healing, health, and narratives in the panel, "Narrating Our Health: A Discussion with Arthur Frank," Arthur W. Frank, an elected fellow of The Royal Society of Canada, is Professor of sociology at the U of Calgary and author of At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live, and the forthcoming Stories Make Up People While People Tell Stories: A Storyteller's Book About Narrative. Our Theme Session Co-Chairs, Mohan Dutta and Lynn Harter will chair this panel.

Our "Regional Communication Scholarship for Social Change" miniplenary showcases both ICA's continued progress towards greater internationalization and the communication work of specific world regions and researchers in social change endeavors.

• Our speakers from Brazil are: Professors of Communication Maria do Carmo de Souzo Reis and Adriana Machado Casali of the U Federal de Minas Gerais, and Professor Claudio Cardoso (of the Escola de Administração at the U Federal da Bahia, Núcleo de Pós-Graduação).
• Our Russian scholars are: Professor Olga Leontovich, Head of The Center of Communication Studies at Volgograd State Pedagogical U, and Professor Irina N. Rozina of the Department of Information Technologies at the Institute of Management, Business and Law. Olga and Irina are Past and Current President of the Russian Communication Association.
• From the People's Republic of China, we welcome as our speakers Professor Zhengrong Hu who is Chair of the China Association of Communication, Director of the National Center for Radio & TV Studies, and Vice President of the Communication U of China in Beijing; and Guoliang Zhang, Dean of the School of and Design at Shanghai Jiao Tong U, and past president of the Chinese Communication Association.

The chairperson of this panel is Donal Carbaugh, Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Distinguished Professor, Bicentennial Chair for Finland at the Renvall Institute of the University of Helsinki.

Our ICA Fellows panel, "Projections for the Future from Reflections on the Past: A New ICA Fellows Forum on Communication, I," seeks to provide a forum in which several recently inducted Fellows can discuss what they have learned over the course of their lives and careers. Taking a cue from the "last lectures series" promoted in the Wall Street Journal, YouTube, and other media outlets (without the morbid overtones!), our Fellows will distill a lifetime of wisdom into one single talk. Rather than focusing solely on the implications of their research programs, they open up discussion about what matters in our work and what, in their opinions, should be passed down to the next generation. As Peter Monge so eloquently puts it, our Fellows "will offer their insights, expectations, and concerns about the future of communication based upon their past involvement in our collective efforts to make us the discipline we are today." In this first Fellows panel of two for our 2008 conference, we hear from:

• Jennings Bryant, University of Alabama, "Drawn and Halved: Torn Between Entertainment Theory and Media Effects Research."
• Annie Lang, Indiana University, "What Hath All Our Ferment Wrought: Vinegar, or Wine, or Naught?"
• Jim Taylor, University of Montreal, "The Notion of Theory"

We have two co-chairs and facilitators for this lively discussion. Peter Monge, Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and Professor of Management and Organization at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and Past President of ICA and ICA Fellow. Patrice Buzzanell, Professor of Communication and Redding Fellow at Purdue University (and ICA President-Elect).

Saturday's Miniplenaries

On Saturday, we have four miniplenaries scheduled.

Our Saturday ICA Fellows panel, "Projections for the Future from Reflections on the Past: A New ICA Fellows Forum on Communication, II," also enables our distinguished members to reflect on what is meaningful in their own and in our field's collective work. The ICA Fellows who will address us during this session are:

• John Daly, University of Texas at Austin, "Making Communication Count."
• Cindy Gallois, University of Queensland, "Hard Problems in Health Communication and Identity: Issues for the Future."
• Larry Gross, University of Southern California, "From Cultivation to Participation: Rethinking Media and Culture."

Once again, Peter and Patrice will be cochairing and facilitating this session.

 "Beyond Moore: Considering the Resurgence of Political Documentary Films," takes a look at the resurgence of interest in political documentaries. Our guests address the why and how of the recent rise of the political documentary amidst our diverse media landscape:

• Emily Russo, Cofounder and Copresident of Zeitgeist Films (along with Nancy Gerstman)
• Sean Farnel, Director of Programming at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
• Jeffrey P. Jones, Old Dominion University

Emily has been key in the distribution of award-winning documentaries such as the recent Into Great Silence, as well as The Corporation, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Mr. Conservative - Goldwater on Goldwater, and My Country, My Country.

Sean Farnel is Director of Programming at Hot Docs which is billed as North America's largest documentary festival. Prior to that he programmed documentaries for the Toronto International Film Festival. Sean sees the nature of documentary today as "an eclectic, poetic, playful form, and incredibly relevant." To read more about his views and work, see his interview when he was the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival: http://citypages.com/databank/23/1144/article10849.asp. Sean is one of the most highly regarded doc film programmers in the world.

Jeffrey Jones critiques political and other documentary and film work. You can catch some of his articles on FlowTV at http://flowtv.org/?author=160

Professor Christian Christensen of Karlstad University is chairing and facilitating this panel discussion.

Our National Film Board of Canada miniplenary features three films and projects of the NFB, including the following:

• The Homeless Nation Project. Daniel Cross, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist who produces films on homelessness in Canada, will speak about his vision for the interactive website and projects he initiated, The Homeless Nation Project (see http://homelessnation.org/en/node/1720).
• Citizen Shift (http://citizen.nfb.ca) is previewed by Dan at the following website. In this brief discussion, Dan talks about initiatives to wire the homeless community in the city: http://citizen.nfb.ca/node/847&dossier_nid=1131
• Manon Barbeau will speak about her work as producer and designer of Wakiponi Mobile (see http://www.onf.ca/aventures/wapikonimobile/excursionWeb/formateur.php?id=2). Manon also is a best-selling novelist (Merlyne), screenwriter, and film director at the NFB.

Katherine Baulu, a Canadian film producer, will chair and facilitate this panel. Kat produced "The Rogers' Cable," a film about a dysfunctional family that won the 1997 NSI (National Screen Institute) Drama Prize.

In "Linking Scholars to Communication Policymaking: The COMPASS Experience," Bob McChesney, Gutgsell Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, is facilitating a discussion among the following speakers:

• Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean, Anneberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
• Hope Cummings, Ph.D. student, University of Michigan
• Russell Newman, Ph.D. student, University of Southern California
• U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont)

As Bob puts it, this is a panel on communication research and policy making that addresses "new developments for communication scholars to become involved in the crucial media policy debates of our era, in a manner that has never existed before. … and to dramatically increase the presence of the field in the academy and the nation." Speakers will discuss a multi-institutional program that enables doctoral students to do residencies on media policy issues in Congressional offices and speakers' hopes that this program will be expanded to other institutions of higher education in the next few years.

Reception in Miniplenary Speakers' Honor

We are hosting our miniplenary speakers at a reception in their honor on Friday evening at 6 pm on the 32nd floor of Le Centre Sheraton. We hope that many of our members will attend all or part of this informal reception.