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A reminder of this week and next week’s presentations at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, BCU. Do please circulate and all are welcome. We also welcome enquiries from colleagues at all stages of their careers interested in sharing their research. BCMCR Research seminar – Cult, Gender and Sexuality – Understanding the Changing Face of Fantasy: Rethinking the place of a belittled cultural form (Prof. Martin Barker, Aberysthwyth University) 1600-1800 Wednesday 17 February 2016 P424, 4th Floor Parkside Building, Birmingham City University Free registration at this link<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/understanding-the-changing-face-of-fantasy-rethinking-the-place-of-a-belittled-cultural-form-tickets-20741976811> There are a good number of reasons to think that the cultural location and status of ‘fantasy’ has shifted significantly, in the last twenty years. For a long time a dismissed genre, marked as either pointless or pathological – from which therefore great effort was need to insulate ‘the fantastic’ as a legitimate object of intellectual interest – we have seen since the 1990s a flourishing and transformation. A turning point, without question, was the 2001-3 Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which married great cinema with high seriousness. But there are many other markers: the ‘generational’ pull of Harry Potter; the relabelling of shelves in bookshops; the borrowing of motifs from a series of films (Avatar, Hunger Games, V For Vendetta, for instance) by political activists; the self-criticism of the likes of Darko Suvin who has admitted he was wrong to demarcate (good) SF from (bad) fantasy so rigidly; and of course new authors and kinds of writing who have dramatically widened the genre’s scope. What’s going on? And how should we begin to rethink it? Drawing in particular on materials from two enormous world audience projects (on Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) but also picking up on an undeveloped idea from Raymond Williams, I want to try out some new ideas about fantasy and its role. About Prof. Martin Barker Martin Barker is Emeritus Professor at Aberystwyth University. Across his 40 year research career, he has studies a wide range of topics: contemporary British racism; comics, their meanings and audiences; media campaigns and their motives; theories of media ‘effects’; analyses of a variety of films (from Last of the Mohicans to the cycle of Iraq war films); and – in the latter stages of his career, in particular – the study of audiences for comics, films, and theatre. He founded and is now Joint Editor of Participations, the online journal of audience and reception studies. BCMCR Research Seminar - Cult, Gender and Sexuality: The politics of alternative sexualities 1600-1800 Wednesday 24 February 2016 P424, 4th Floor Parkside Building, Birmingham City University Free registration at this link<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-politics-of-alternative-sexualities-tickets-20905096707> Full abstracts at this link<http://www.bcmcr.org/research-events/the-politics-of-alternative-sexualities/> Dr. Galina Miazhevich (University of Leicester) - Branding ‘sexual excess’ at Eurovision: the case of post-Soviet participating states This presentation looks at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC)–an important phenomenon in the cultural life of contemporary Europe, and a useful lens for examining the ‘branding’ of the contributing nations. The paper investigates how recent transformations of sexuality demonstrated at Eurovision by a number of post-Soviet states shape the reconstruction of the boundaries of taste, and in turn reconfiguring their position within the New Europe. It is argued that the sexual excess displayed in several Russian and Ukrainian performances can be read in terms of an implicit dialogue with West European constructions of "bad taste" and the emergent notion of Euro-trash. By looking at allegedly lesbian Russian duo T.a.T.u. , a straight singer D. Bilan and the Ukrainian entry of a cross dresser Verka Serduchka, I problematize the representations of ‘new’ post-Soviet national brands at Eurovision in their interspatial (inter/trans/national) and inter-temporal (post/Soviet) dimensions. Lesley Gabriel (Birmingham City University) - “We don’t have that here!” Planning an ethnographic study of the BDSM scene in Birmingham and West Midlands area This presentation focuses on the BDSM (Bondage / Discipline / Domination / Submission / Sadism / Masochism) scene in Birmingham, the reasons why it is worthy of academic study, and the methods I will be using to study it. I will be drawing on two studies of the scene in San Francisco - the immersive ethnographic work of Staci Newmahr (2011) and the more distantly positioned work of Margot Weiss (2011) to talk a little about researcher positionality. Tim Abbot (Birmingham City University) – What’s the Story? This presentation will discuss the early stages of my practice based PhD research project, which explores the development of a new documentary format that allows for converged narrative storytelling in a coded mobile application. About the speakers: Before joining the University of Leicester in 2013, Dr. Galina Miazhevich was the Gorbachev Media Research Fellow at Oxford University and a Research Associate at the University of Manchester. Galina published on a number of topics including media representations of Islam as security threat, multiculturalism and inter-ethnic cohesion in Europe; press freedom and democracy in post-communist Europe; emergent forms of post-Soviet identity. Lesley Gabriel is a current PhD student at BCU. Her research interests concern alternative sexualities, sexscapes and transgender studies. Timothy Langlands Abbot is a PhD student at Birmingham City University exploring appumentary through the production of a documentary titled 'What’s the Story' that draws on his experiences as a prominent music manager and creative director in the 1990s music business. Paul Long Professor of Media and Cultural History Director, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research Room M.344 Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research Birmingham School of Media Birmingham City University Curzon Street Birmingham B4 7XG tel: 0121-331-5468 BCMCR REF<http://www.bcu.ac.uk/research/excellent-research/ref-2014/communication-cultural-and-media-studies-library-and-information-management> See my profile here<https://bcu.academia.edu/PaulLong> Current project Cultural Intermediation<https://culturalintermediation.wordpress.com/> AHRC Funding for arts and humanities doctoral research training via: Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership<http://www.midlands3cities.ac.uk/midlands-3-cities/index.aspx> Nesta/ACE/AHRC: Performances Birmingham: Pollen. Research & Development Report<http://artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/projects/town-hall-birmingham/> Research Surgery: Wednesday 3-4 -------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA mailing list -------------------------------------------------------- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1 ------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. This mailing list is a free service and is not restricted to members. It is an unmoderated list and content reflect the views of those who post to the list and not of MeCCSA as an organisation. 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