We invite authors to think through modulation as a theoretical concept1 and activity embedded in everyday processes: through variations and adjustments in affect, meaning, and culture; modular logics of design; the systems that fine-tune and regulate us;2 and fluctuations in inflection, pitch, or tone.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:- Political resistance and/or contestation
- Modularity in computational systems
- Modulation in sound/music
- Affect and emotion
- Political Economy
- Media and Cultural Studies
- Surveillance
- Critical Data Studies
- Governance, Power, Agency and Control
- Language and Modularity
This upcoming publication will jointly serve as a special issue, as well as conference proceedings for the 2026 CONDUITS Conference, with the theme of "Modulations: Affect, Resistance, and Control." We welcome submissions from all applicants, as well as graduate students attending the conference who wish to have their work published as proceedings. For details on the upcoming CONDUITS Graduate Conference (May 8, 2026 in Burnaby, BC), please visit their website here.
We are currently accepting papers and extended abstracts 5–20 pages in length. If you wish to submit works using sound, video, databases, or other multimedia, please contact the editors.
Submission Deadline: May 29, 2026
Author Guidelines | Submit a Paper
1 For example, Deleuze (1992) uses modulation to describe the logic of control societies: an infrastructural form of control that operates through the fine-tuning of affect and behaviour in real time via continuous calibration.
2 See also Cheney-Lippold (2011): A New Algorithmic Identity: Soft Biopolitics and the Modulation of Control.