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CFP The Gendered Politics of Production: Girls and Women as Media Producers
Tuesday June 16, 2015 at Middlesex University London

Keynote Speaker: Professor Mary Celeste Kearney (University of Notre Dame, USA)

Girls and women are arguably producing more media than ever before. As
bloggers, vloggers and “tweeters”, filmmakers, television showrunners, web
designers, game developers, and musicians – to name only a few – girls and
women are active contributors to contemporary media production cultures.
Yet, recent incidents such as Gamergate point to the continuous precarious
positioning that girls and women occupy as both amateur and professional
media producers within a context shaped by what Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015)
has recently called “popular misogyny.”  What is at stake for female media
producers within this context? How do identities such as gender, race,
class, age, sexuality, nationality, and ability shape one’s participation in
production cultures? How are gendered neoliberal imperatives to be
constantly productive informing who is producing media and what these media
texts look like? And in what ways are girls and women mobilizing media
production as an activist strategy to challenge sexism, racism, classism and
other social inequalities across local, national, and international contexts?

We are seeking papers for a one-day symposium that aims to examine these
questions and explore girls’ and women’s production of a wide range of
commercial and alternative media texts.

Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

•       Historical analysis of girls and women as media producers
•       The production and circulation of feminist and activist media texts
•       Gendered labour in media industries
•       Methodological approaches to studying production cultures
•       Relationship between gender, media production, and neoliberal entrepreneurship
•       The politics of media production training programs
•       Female media producers across global media networks
•       Participation in digital media cultures

This one-day symposium, featuring a keynote lecture by Mary Celeste Kearney
(University of Notre Dame, USA), will be held at Middlesex University in
London UK on June 16, 2015. It will serve as an opportunity for discussion
and networking for feminist media scholars focusing on production cultures
prior to the Console-ing Passions Conference in Dublin from June 18 – 20.
This event is organized as part of Middlesex University’s FemGenSex Research
Network and the Media Department’s Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster.

Please submit abstracts of 250-words and a 50-word bio by March 15, 2015 to
Jessalynn Keller ([log in to unmask]), Feona Attwood ([log in to unmask]),
and Mariam Kauser ([log in to unmask]).