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From: <[log in to unmask] -- Kevin Robins
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 2:33 PM
Subject: May 14 Transnational event
Dear John
Here are details of a transnational conference at Goldsmiths on 14 May.
interested? Fuller details are in the attachment. Could you please circulate
to your mailing list?
Best wishes
Kevin
--------------------------
Transnational Cultures
and
Transcultural Studies
An International Conference
14 May 2004
Goldsmiths College
University of London
(from 9.30 a.m. in the Small Hall)
To inaugurate the Transcultural Research Unit, Department
of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College
Speakers include: Roger Rouse (University of California, Davis) Radha
Hegde (New York University) Allen Feldman (New York University) Annabelle
Sreberny (SOAS) Monroe Price (Annenberg School, Pennsylvania) Tessa Watt
(BBC Radio 3 Interactive) Saad Saraf (Media Reach Advertising, London) DJ
Ipek (Berlin) Kira Kosnick (Southampton University) Rita Ray (The Shrine,
London) Naseem Khan (Writer and policy consultant) Ivaylo Ditchev (Sofia
University)
With a screening of Die Mitte (The Centre) dir. Stanislaw Mucha (Germany,
2003).
Places are free, but advance booking is essential. Contact Richard Smith,
Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, London, SE14
6NW, 020 8556 9828, [log in to unmask]
Transnational Cultures and Transcultural Studies
A One Day International Conference - 14 May 2004
Inaugural Event of the Transcultural Research Unit, Department
of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College
A Europe in Motion Event
Contemporary developments, associated with the dynamics of globalisation,
have been giving rise to increasing transnational migrations of people, as
well as transnational flows of goods, media, information, and so on. These
new and various global mobilities and movements have brought with them new
kinds of diversity and complexity, involving new kinds of cultural
juxtaposition, encounter, exchange and mixing. Crucially, these new forms of
complexity and diversity are transnational and transcultural in their nature
- operating, that is to say, across national frontiers and functioning
across different cultural spaces. This proliferation of transnational
mobilities and transnational social spaces has mounted a significant
challenge to essentialising conceptions of culture. What it has
re-emphasised is the idea of complexity and non-congruity into our cultural
imagination. Through the cultural shifts associated with transnationalism,
we are - again - reminded of what cultures actually are - how they are
'formed through complex dialogues and interactions with other cultures; that
the boundaries of cultures are fluid, porous, and contested' (Benhabib).
Transnational migrations and mobilities have given rise to new transcultural
fields that cannot easily be confined within the container spaces of
national cultures, and cannot therefore be conceived as the cultural
property - the exclusive property - of any one particular group. The
development of new transcultures and of transcultural diversities therefore
opens up new challenges and new possibilities that this conference will
explore.
This conference will endeavour to explore the nature and possibilities of
contemporary transcultural developments, considering the new cultural
dynamics at both global and metropolitan levels. What is the significance
now of the 'trans-' prefix? What kind of cultural transformations does it
gesture toward? What are the implications of transnational connections for
nation states and national societies? What is the challenge to prevailing
cultural imaginaire, in which cultures have been conceived as discrete and
bounded entities? What kind of cultural politics and policy might ensue from
the transcultural turn? And what forces stand in its way? The conference
will explore these questions in a number of contexts: transnational
migration and its cultural consequences; transnational and transcultural
media; metropolitan transcultures; transnational and transcultural
developments in Europe.
This conference is organised by the Transcultural Research Unit, Goldsmiths
College in association with the Media Research Programme, SOAS, and
Department of Culture and Communication, New York University
Conference Programme
9.30-9.45 Welcome by Simon McVeigh, Pro-Warden for Research, Goldsmiths
College
9.45-10.00 Kevin Robins (Goldsmiths College) - Introduction to the Day's
Agenda
10:00 - 11:30 - Panel 1 - The Transcultural Turn
Migrants today lead their lives differently; they are multiply connected,
both to their places of origin and settlement. They are transnational
subjects. This transnationalism brings with it increasing cultural
interconnectedness, flows and encounters between spaces. In seeking to
understand their new transnational connections, we can no longer hold on to
existing assumptions about what cultures are. We come to understand that
cultures are not bound to territorially defined nation states. We understand
the ways in which cultural positionings penetrate across different cultural
orders (the availability of lifestyles and genres of cultural expression
across spaces), and how these positionings are multi-layered, complex
affairs. At the same time that we see positive developments in the new
mobilities, there are also clear signs of how these processes may be
perceived in terms of threats and dangers - of how mobilities may come to be
regarded in pathological terms.
Chair: David Morley (Goldsmiths College)
Roger Rouse (University of California, Davis) Trans/Formations: Tracking
Cultural Dynamics Through Transnational Migration.
Radha Hegde (New York University) Transcultural Formations and the Politics
of Gender
Allen Feldman (New York University) Pathologising Transcultural Process:
9/11 and Public Safety
Coffee break
11:45 - 1:15 - Panel 2 - Transnational and Transcultural Media
This aim in this panel is to look closely at the implications of the shift
in the media environment, from the national model of media provision to a
transnational order. The elements of the transnationalisation of media have
been in the making for some time now. International broadcasting ventures
(BBC World Service or Deutsche Welle) and the global media operators (CNN)
have already put a question mark over the authority and monopoly of the
nation-bound model of media provision. Now, through the transnationalisation
of media, we have each and every language-group across the world being
served by different television and radio stations that are broadcasting
across spaces (e.g. Zee TV). The digitalisation of media and the uptake of
the Internet are introducing a whole new set of dynamics, whereby the old
notions of target audiences, consumption patterns and local/non-local
distinctions are being challenged.
Chair: Gareth Stanton (Goldsmiths College)
Annabelle Sreberny (SOAS) The Mediated Orientations of Transnationalism
Monroe Price (Annenberg School, Pennsylvania) Broadcasting and the Market
for Loyalties in the Middle East
Tessa Watt (BBC Radio 3 Interactive) World on Your Street
Saad Saraf (Media Reach Advertising, London) Transnational Media, Markets
and Audiences
lunch break
2:00 - 3:30 - Panel 3 - Metropolitan Transcultures
As a result of the massive influx of migrants and refugees, the metropolitan
city has become a testing ground for thinking in different ways about
questions of cultural complexity, confrontation, interaction, and
transcultural mixtures. The city is the space in which the multiple
trans-boundary processes and flows that characterise the contemporary moment
are being played out. As a result of the networking of transnational
subjects across spaces, cities get connected into different places,
histories, stories and temporalities. We see the city being pulled in
different directions, as distinct neighbourhoods link up with other places.
This panel will address these questions, with a strong emphasis on the
emerging nature of cultural practices, as both locally-embedded but
simultaneously trans-boundary processes.
Chair: Asu Aksoy (Goldsmiths College)
DJ Ipek (Berlin) and Kira Kosnick (Southampton University) The Relevance of
Subcultures: Queer and Post-migrant Dance Cultures in Berlin
Rita Ray (The Shrine, London) The London African Cultural Scene
Naseem Khan (Writer and policy consultant) The Shared Space: Changing City
Cultures
coffee break
3:45 - 6:30 - Panel 4 - Europe in Motion
Recent debates on European culture were triggered by the project for
European integration, with 1992 being the key reference point. Most of this
discussion has been Brussels-centred, and concerned with the development of
a sense of imagined community, from the national to the European level
(where 'Europe' has been synonymous with Western Europe). Recent
developments are subjecting this model to great challenges. We might single
out the enlargement of the EU and the presence of new global migrants across
the continent. These are developments that are again challenging the old
national frame within which European culture has been imagined. The
challenge is to find a new cultural imagination of Europe that will be
adequate to the cultural complexity of the wider European space.
Chair: Nick Wadham-Smith (British Council, London)
3.45- 4.30 Ivaylo Ditchev (Sofia University) Europe: The Marketplace of
Citizenships?
4.30-6.00 Screening of Die Mitte (The Centre) by Stanislaw Mucha, Germany,
2003
The geographical centre of Europe lies somewhere between North Cape, Greece,
Portugal and Russia. But if you ask people where it is, one person will say
he has no idea, another is convinced that it's in Essen, a third happens to
be on holiday; for a fourth person it's right at the crux of the matter,
while a fifth person is still looking for the proper point of view. Polish
filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha is still looking, too. He and his film crew take
off on a lively odyssey until they find just what they're looking for - over
a dozen towns all claiming to be the 'centre' of Europe.
Followed by discussion, introduced by Erica Carter (Warwick University)
6.30 - Reception in the Senior Common Room
List of Participants
Asu Aksoy is a Research Associate in the Department of Media and
Communications at Goldsmiths College. She is currently working on an EU
Fifth Framework project, Changing City Spaces: New Challenges to Cultural
Policy in Europe. Her research interests are in media and cultural
industries in Europe, with specific focus on migrant communities. She is
presently organising another Europe in Motion event in Berlin, looking at
Europe from the perspective of transnational cinema.
Erica Carter is Reader in German Studies at the University of Warwick. Her
books include How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the
Consuming Woman (1997); the co-edited German Cinema Book (2002); and
Dietrich's Ghosts: The Sublime and the Beautiful in Third Reich Film (2004).
Current research interests include the Nazi idea of Europe in cultural
policy in countries of occupation.
Ivaylo Ditchev is Professor in the Department of History and Theory of
Culture at Sofia University. He has been working on the communist imaginary,
the changes in political and institutional culture in the process of EU
enlargement, and urban identity, mostly doing fieldwork in the Balkans. He
has recently published: 'Fluid Belongings: Citizenship During Accession to
the EU', Ethnologia Balkanica no.7, 2004; 'The Eros of Identity', in Balkans
as Metaphor, ed. Bielic, Savic, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2002; 'Communism:
Between Ideological Gift and the Gift in Everyday Life', Dioghne no. 194,
April-June, 2001. Some of his articles and books can be read at
www.ivayloditchev.cult.bg <http://www.ivayloditchev.cult.bg>
Allen Feldman is Associate Professor in the Media Ecology Program,
Department of Culture and Communication, New York University and a cultural
anthropologist who writes on media archaeology and the anthropology of the
senses, and on visual culture and violence. He is the author of the
critically acclaimed ethnography Formations of the
Violence: the Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland
(University of Chicago Press, 1991) and numerous articles on visual culture
and media.
Radha S. Hegde is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture and
Communication at New York University. Her research interests, publications
and teaching are in the areas of globalisation, transnational cultures,
diasporic identities, representation of violence and postcolonial feminism.
Her work has appeared in journals such as Communication Theory, Feminist
Media Studies, Women's Studies in Communication, Critical Studies in Media
Communication. She is finishing a book on motherhood and violence in South
India, and her next project is on women and call centres in India.
Ipek Ipekgioglu is resident DJ at Berlin's SO36 nightclub and one of the
masterminds behind its clubnight 'Gayhane-HomOriental-Dancefloor', which
brings together a mixed crowd of queer, immigrant and non-immigrant
audiences. With a style that she calls 'EclecticArabesk-konFUSION OrAsia',
she regularly spins tunes in different European cities. She is co-founder of
the first group of Turkish lesbians in Germany, and of Gladt (Gays and
Lesbians from Turkey in Germany), and works with several other political
organisations. She has a degree in social work and has published articles on
immigrant queer identity, on racism and homophobia, and on Turkish lesbians
in Germany.
Naseem Khan is a writer and policy consultant, and was previously Head of
Diversity, Arts Council England. She was the author of the pioneering
report, 'The Arts Britain Ignores that, in 1976, opened the national debate
on the nature of British culture and its support. She has contributed to
numerous studies on cultural change, and is co-author of Asians in Britain,
to be published in May 2004 (Dewi Lewis) and contributor to The Politics of
Heritage to be published in the autumn by Routledge.
Kira Kosnick is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of
Southampton. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, her work focuses on the
production and use of media among migrant populations. She has worked as a
journalist for print and broadcasting media in Turkey and Germany, and wrote
her Ph.D. thesis on local and transnational dimensions of Turkish migrant
broadcasting in Berlin. She is currently conducting research for the EU
Fifth Framework project Changing City Spaces, which analyses cultural
transformations in European urban centres brought about by immigration.
Relevant publications include 'Ethnicising the Media: Multicultural
Imperatives, Homebound Politics, and Turkish Media Production in Germany'
(New Perspectives on Turkey, 2003), and 'Speaking in One's Own Voice?:
Representational Strategies of Alevi Turkish Migrants on Open-Access
Television in Berlin' (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, forthcoming
2004)
David Morley is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College. He is
co-author (with Kevin Robins) of Spaces of Identity (Routledge,1995) and
co-editor (with Kuan-Hsing Chen) of Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in
Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1996). His most recent book is Home
Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity (Routledge, 2000).
Monroe E. Price is Visiting Professor, Annenberg School for Communication,
University of Pennsylvania. His research interests centre on comparative
media law and policy, international broadcasting and public diplomacy, and
media regulation in conflict zones. His most recent books are Media and
Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2003), Academy and the Internet (edited with Helen
Nissenbaum) (Peter Lang, 2003), and Public Service Broadcasting in
Transition (edited with Marc Raboy) (Kluwers, 2003). Professor Price has
been involved in media law and policy questions in a variety of contexts,
from Iraq to Kosovo to the post-Soviet transition societies. He has been a
law professor at UCLA and Cardozo in New York, and was founder of the Oxford
University Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy.
Rita Ray is a club and radio dj, and one of the founder members of the
Afrobeat riot that is The Shrine. The Shrine and the Shrine Synchrosystem
tours all over Europe and Africa. It is also associated with Cafe Oran, a
North Africa, Middle East and Mediterranean club excursion. Along with Max
Reinhardt, Rita is a dj member of Andy Sheppard's Short Cuts, an 'out there'
jazz quartet. She also programmes international music festivals in London,
such as Celebrating Sanctuary, the refugee arts festival launching Refugee
Week, and The RESPECT Festival. She contributes to the World On Your Street
website, and also co-presents 'The Africa Review' on the BBC World Service.
She and Max Reinhardt are currently working on a documentary on Fela Kuti,
to be broadcast in September 2004 on Radio 3. Rita also co-hosted the BBC
Radio 3 Awards for World Music.
Kevin Robins is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, and also
Visiting Professor in the Communications Faculty of Istanbul Bilgi
University. Over the last eighteen months, he has been working with the
Council of Europe in a project on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity in
Europe. He is also a member of the London-Berlin based Europe in Motion
cultural platform.
Roger Rouse is in the Department of Anthropology, University of California,
Davis. His research explores the cultural politics of class dynamics,
especially in the United States and Mexico. He has worked ethnographically
with people involved in migration between the two countries, and is
currently looking more broadly at the cultural dimensions of capitalist
restructuring in the United States. Relevant publications include 'Mexican
Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism' (Diaspora, 1991) and
'Thinking Through Transnationalism' (Public Culture, 1995).
Saad Saraf is the Managing Director of Media Reach Advertising, London.
Annabelle Sreberny is Visiting Professor, Media and Film Programme, SOAS,
University of London Her research interests are at the conjunction of global
communication, democratisation and gender, explored in relationship to Iran
and the wider Middle East, and currently in relation to the WSIS as a global
political process. Her new book, Rethinking International News for the New
Millennium (with C. Paterson) will be published later in 2004 by John
Libbey/University of Luton Press.
Gareth Stanton has a doctorate in anthropology from University College,
London. He has worked in North Africa and Spain. His fieldwork focused on
Moroccan migrant workers in Gibraltar. Subsequently his interests have
turned towards questions of literature and postcolonial criticism. For the
last decade he has worked in the Department of Media and Communications at
Goldsmiths College, where he will soon be assuming the role of Head of
Department.
Nick Wadham-Smith is Deputy Director of Counterpoint, the British Council's
cultural relations think-tank, based in London. Counterpoint aims to provide
focus and leadership in thinking about cultural relations, which it sees as
a long-term trust-building activity, independent of government. His
interests include intercultural communication, migration, issues of national
representation, and cultural and literary studies. Publications include
British Studies: Intercultural Perspectives, co-editor (Longman, 2000).
Tessa Watt is Senior Producer, World Music, BBC Radio 3 Interactive. After
10 years as a documentary features producer for BBC Radio, she moved into
Online in 2000. She oversees the 'world music' content for the BBC Radio 3
website. Two years ago, she created a project called World on your Street,
aiming to uncover the diverse musical traditions found within the UK. From
this has evolved Africa on your Street, celebrating the African music scene
in the UK, and aimed at African audiences. These projects have a wider life
beyond the websites, including radio features, live showcases and workshops.
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