Apologies for cross posting
Call for Papers:Engaging Media Cultures: Films and beyond
25th June 2013 Leeds Trinity University
An interdisciplinary one-day conference for researchers and practitioners
Media cultures are the localised, collective, multiple and dialogical sites of routine and symbolic interactions with media, through media, and across media.
‘Media cultures’ provide a framework for conceptualising the complex and situated relations for individuals and social groups between the everyday and the discursive/mediated surrounds of media productions. They encompass the interplay of agency and constraint, the intersections of audiences, media, socio-historical contexts and institutional networks.
Media cultures matter because media matter to audiences, because culture is always significant, always matters, whilst they also illustrate the various, contested and imbricated definitions of the place, nature and value of media and culture in society, including but extending beyond the centrifugal figure of the audience.
We are interested in three broad questions and approaches to media cultures, specifically in relation to ‘film’ and would like to hear from researchers and media practitioners, and those involved in both, to develop this discussion.
1) How are media cultures engaging film?
How do audiences engage with films, and the various paratexts and discursive surrounds for both contemporary films and broader film cultures? How do audiences find films engaging?
What different kinds of participation (to use the term espoused by Henry Jenkins and used by Martin Barker and the title of the online journal he founded) are deployed in a range of activities developing out of audience’s contact with films? What are the entry points, motivations, pleasures and meanings underpinning these participations - not only of individuals but supported across and within diverse social and cultural contexts and formations?
2) How do media culture scholars trace/engage with these activities? Issues of methodology and how we conceptualise and analyse audiences in both broader terms (not simply invested audiences and fans) as well as accounting for local detail and richness.
3) How do media and culture researchers and producers engage in media cultures? How do we intervene in issues affecting these media cultures and their activities, where our critical and research stance/framework or cultural authority enables reconsidering/reframing problems (of power and regulation, the consequences of figures of the audience, contestation of value and values) in this era of 'impact'?
How do we work in tandem with film cultures? How do we bring the Academy to media cultures?
Potential topics include, but are not restricted to:
Media Culture Engagements
Online talk about film – blogs, forums, social networks and films mediated within digital everyday life
Digital film cultures – streaming and downloads, film related apps, critical and promotional sites and discourses, cultures around the distribution and exhibition of an ‘ephemeral’ digital cinema of attractions
Engaging production cultures – practitioner researchers and their role in nascent or existing film cultures
Local/regional/national/transnational film cultures
Subcultures and film – how is film adopted/repurposed by subcultures, cult/camp/cool and film related or inspired identities
Film culture and identity – taste and value markers, self-representations and profiles
Film within and across everyday cultures of entertainment (and celebrity/stars) – for instance film stars on chat shows, breakfast television, telethons etc.
Film cultures of convergence and transmedia/cross-media engagement – adaptation contexts, multimodality and film stories, characters and worlds for readers/gamers/theatregoers/television viewers etc.
Methodologies
Modalities of film cultural engagement
Critical reception cultures for film
Performativities of film cultural engagement
Historical reception and cultural contexts for films
Spaces and places of film cultures
Netnography and film
Cultures of exhibition/distribution/broadcast – festival cultures, blockbuster cultures, cult film cultures, gallery cultures for films as art
Tracing Ephemeral film cultures
Tracing enduring film cultures – Cinephilia then and now
Fan studies and film cultures/fan cultures – how do films correspond to fan objects of investment and affection
Production cultures and prod-users – blurred boundaries between producers and audiences/consumers
Interventions
Challenging/Creative production cultures – screenwriting and production to engage the audience
Contesting figures of the audience
Challenging the audience
Challenging power inequities in and around film cultures
Challenging the political tech-onomy of contemporary film culture
Challenging regulation and imposition upon film cultures
De-marginalising cult fans, blockbuster audiences, niche film cultures
Changing the discourse on Demonising media in relation to violence
Politicising film cultures
Alternative/activist film cultures – documentaries and networks of (h)activism
The event is open to both early researchers and established scholars, as well as practitioners working in film or producing other media related to film cultures (websites, podcasts, radio or television, documentary, interactive media about film or particular cultural engagements with ‘film’).
Proposals for papers of 20 minutes, including any audio-visual clips.
marked with the subject ‘Engaging Media Cultures’.
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MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. Membership is open to all who teach and research these subjects in HE institutions, via either institutional or individual membership. The field includes film and TV production, journalism, radio, photography, creative writing, publishing, interactive media and the web; and it includes higher education for media practice as well as for media studies.
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