Following the success of the Cinema and Television History Research
Centre’s 2012 conference, ‘Rethinking Cinema and Television History: Texts
and Contexts’ at De Montfort University, we are delighted to announce the
CATH Centre’s second postgraduate conference:
New approaches to gender, film and television: Histories and futures in the
digital age
A postgraduate conference
Tuesday 26th March 2013, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Abstracts of 200-300 words for papers of 20 minutes, plus a short
biography, should be sent to [log in to unmask] by Friday 1st February
2013.
Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Clarissa Smith, Reader in Sexual Cultures (University of Sunderland)
Author of One for the Girls!: The Pleasures and Practices of Reading
Women's Porn (2007, Bristol: Intellect)
In recent years, film and television studies have seen a sustained focus on
gender as both a category and an object of analysis. The CATH Centre has
been an active participant in highlighting the efforts of women through
collaborative ventures such as ‘Cine Sisters’, in conjunction with the
Cinema Museum, and the ‘Adopt a Woman’ campaign as part of the BECTU Oral
Histories project. These projects, as well as research elsewhere like the
AHRC-funded Global Queer Cinema project, indicate a growing interest in
re-examining gendered boundaries in the film and television industries and
in textual representation. Simultaneously, new technologies and digital
practices are changing how archival material is disseminated, while online
spaces are inciting new forms of fan response and interaction, and new
forums are emerging for academics to engage with wider publics, fans and
audiences. These technological and cultural shifts are increasingly
pertinent to the study of gender in film and television studies but remain,
as yet, under-theorised.
This conference will seek to explore the effects of rapidly changing
technologies and platforms on the study of gender in film and television.
What methodological challenges face postgraduate researchers in a context
of constant change? How do new approaches to film and television studies
affect gender representations and the way that we interpret them? And how
do changes in the present affect how we approach studies of gender, past
and future?
We invite papers that engage with studies of gender, new technologies and
digital practices either through specific case studies or in broader
theoretical reflections. Possible subjects include, but are not limited to:
- Past and future issues of gender in the film and television industries;
- The implications of changing platforms to contemporary and future studies
in reception;
- Online film and television criticism and new possibilities for academic
engagement;
- Textual representations of gendered futures and the future of gender
representation;
- How new technologies and digital practices affect studies of gender in
film and television history.
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