Please note details of the following conference:

‘Multiplicities: World Cinema, Globalised Media and Cosmopolitan Cultures’ 

Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC) 
Manchester University
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/ricc/

June 16th and 17th 2008 
The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester


Co-organised by:
- Jackie Stacey, Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC) University of Manchester
- Keith Wagner, Film Media, University of Rhode Island  

Co-sponsored by:
Screen 
The Cultural Theory Institute, The University of Manchester
The Centre for Screen Studies, The University of Manchester
CIDRA, The University of Manchester
Film Media, University of Rhode Island

The philosophical, cultural and political effects of contemporary cosmopolitanism have never been 
more contested. Its position within academic disciplines, from international relations to film 
studies and across an increasingly interdisciplinary network, calls for a consideration of its 
significance in understanding globalised media cultures. A justification for cosmopolitanism's 
polysemic perspective is that it challenges the hegemonic and ethnocentric world-view 
reproduced through contemporary mainstream media and cinema. Yet the question of 
cosmopolitanism's global situatedness, so relevant in the work of Craig Calhoun and David Held, 
generates new areas of scholarship concerning the positioning of cosmopolitan theory in relation 
to ubiquitous forms of film and media. Ulrich Beck argues against the idea that 
‘cosmopolitanization [is] simply a new word for what used to be called globalization?’ but what 
how might we understand such a distinction in the context of film and media cultures? How might 
the changing meaning of world cinema connect to a growing concern with cosmopolitan cultures? 
This conference will interrogate the intersection of cosmopolitanism, global media cultures and 
world cinema, prompting a forum for interdisciplinary exchange and debate. 

Anchored in these discursive terms, Multiplicities addresses the following questions:

-How is contemporary cosmopolitanism relevant to media and film
studies today?
- To what extent does world cinema operate as a cosmopolitan category?
- How are public communication and moving image practices re-created within cosmopolitan 
cultures? 
- How are new relations of sameness and difference configured in the production, circulation and 
regulation of cosmopolitan cultures? 
- Can cosmopolitanism transform the mediation of human rights and through what cultural 
forms?
- How has the category of ‘world cinema’ entered global relations of production and consumption 
and what is the place of cosmopolitism in such transformations?
- What is the place of migration and diaspora in the circulation of transnational forms of cultural 
production?
- What modes of belonging or displacement are produced through the notion of cosmopolitan 
cultures?

Screening planned at Manchester’s Cornerhouse, June 16th:

Invited Speakers include:
Pheng Cheah, (Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley)
Craig Calhoun  (NYU) 
Shohini Chaudhuri (Essex University)
Ranjani Mazumdar (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Dehli)
Gyan Prakash (Princeton University and RICC, Manchester) 
Lucia Nagib (Leeds University)
Felicia Chan (RICC, Manchester)
John Leo (University of Rhode Island)

NB: Places are limited so early registration is advised and also discounted

Early Bird Registration Fee, before April 30th 
Academic: £65

Postgraduate: £30

Full Conference Registration Fee, after April 30th
Academic: £85

Postgraduate: £40

No conference accommodation is being block booked but if you would like further details of 
Manchester hotels or bed and breakfasts near the Oxford Road in Manchester, please email: 
[log in to unmask] (available Monday-Wednesday only). 

The registration form is attached to this posting.