To whom it may concern




This year’s Journeys Across Media conference will take place on Friday 19th April, 2013, at the University of Reading. Please find attached our streamlined Call for Papers (including practice-led presentations/performances). The revised deadline for submission of abstracts is 8th February 2013. We would be grateful if you could pass this information on to interested parties.

Many thanks,

The JAM Organisers

Gary Cassidy, Edina Husanovic, Matthew McFrederick, Shelly Quirk, Johnmichael Rossi.

Journeys Across Media

The Body and The Digital

Friday 19th April 2013, University of Reading

2013 will mark the 11th anniversary of the annual Journeys Across Media (JAM) conference for postgraduate researchers, organised by postgraduates working in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. JAM 2013 seeks to foster emerging scholarship that investigates interactions and relationships between the body and the digital. 

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty once stated: “The body is our general medium for having a world.” Today, critical approaches and performance/art/media practices concerned with phenomenology, embodiment and the haptic continue to evolve as they encounter, engage with, respond to, incorporate and influence digital cultures.

JAM 2013 would like to open a dialogue about relationships between the body and the digital, particularly as expressed within contemporary scholarship and practices. Our initial questions include: how does the body encounter digital media and how do digital media frames position the body – both in mainstream iterations, social media contexts and in performance contexts? How has digital technology affected the ways in which we understand body movement traditions and conventions, across regional and national borders?  

Topics may include, but are not restricted to: 

 

Interactivity between digital languages and the body 
Sonic representations of the body in digital performance 
The digitized body in performance 
The role of the body in digital games and virtual performance 
Post-colonial bodies in the contemporary moment 
Preparing the body for performance 
Notions of embodiment (e.g. violent, disabled, explicit) 
Traditions of corporeally-focused film, theatre and television 
Embodied spectatorship 
Phenomenology of the lived, performed and screened body 
The haunted body 
Politics of the body 
Unconventional and other bodies 
JAM 2013 invites submissions from PhD and MA/MPhil scholars conducting research in these areas and seeks to provide a broad, cross-medial discussion forum. Previous delegates have welcomed the opportunity to gain experience of presenting and developing their work, and to establish contacts with fellow postgraduate researchers and academic staff. Presenters who are not able to deliver their papers live are offered the option of presenting digitally, either via Skype or digitally recorded presentation. Non-presenting delegates are also strongly encouraged to attend.

 

JAM has an ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Media Practice. Participants of both JAM 2011 and JAM 2012 have had their papers published by the journal. Please see Journal of Media Practice Volume 13, Issue 3, the most recent publication incorporating postgraduate papers originally delivered at JAM. Many of these focus on digitally-related performance and media practices, in the context of the 2013 conference theme, Time Tells. They have been written by scholars working (often through practice) in film, theatre, television, dance and performance.

 

New deadline for submission of abstracts (presentations AND practice-led work): 8th February 2013

If you would like to deliver a fifteen-minute paper, please send a 250-word abstract and a 50-word biographical note to [log in to unmask] 

A forum for practitioners to critically frame and discuss their practice will be made available during the conference. If you intend to present practice-led research, please send a 250-word outline describing your proposed presentation, within its critical/theoretical framework, including information about duration and technical/space requirements. Please also include a 50-word biographical note. Relevant images and links to your work would also be helpful. Please e-mail the conference organisers at [log in to unmask]

We would appreciate the distribution of this call for papers and wider promotion of this conference through your networks. 

Journeys Across Media is supported by the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at Reading and the Standing Conference of University Drama Departments (SCUDD).