A fascinating conference idea ...
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Vesna Goldsworthy" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue Oct 22, 2002 4:05:59 pm Europe/London
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: CFP: The Good Life -- Suburban Studies (UK) (1/31/03; 7/11/03)
>
> THE GOOD LIFE CONFERENCE: 11 July 2003
> Centre for Suburban Studies, Kingston University (UK)
>
> Kingston Universityís new interdisciplinary Centre for Suburban
> Studies announces its first conference on The Good Life, on 11 July
> 2003.
>
> Twenty five years after its first run, The Good Life, the BBC TV
> series which made the London suburb of Surbiton as famous as
> David Lynchís Twin Peaks or John Cleeseís Torquay, returns to its
> roots in South-West London for a day conference organised by the
> new Centre for Suburban Studies at Kingston University. We are
> expecting some of the makers of the original series for a day of
> lively discussion, video screenings and The Good Life exhibition.
>
> The Good Life ñ broadcast in the US as The Good Neighbors ñ
> remains one of the most successful sitcoms in British TV history. It
> enjoys an afterlife of repeats, video-sales and cyber-adulation
> matched only by such classic serials as Dadís Army or Fawlty
> Towers. It remains among the highlights in the career of its four
> stars ñ Penelope Keith, Felicity Kendal, Richard Briers and Paul
> Eddington. More memorably than any other TV programme, The
> Good Life encapsulates the spirit of suburban life in the Britain of
> the late 1970s, but the lifestyle choices it reflects remain just as
> relevant today as they were when the series was first broadcast
> between 1975 and 1978.
>
> Born out of the search for alternative lifestyles in the 1960s and
> 1970s, The Good Life raises questions of sustainable development
> and self-sufficiency. It highlights the issues of suburban identity, in
> its Protean division between the urban and the rural way of life.
> Through the lives of its main characters, childless couples Tom and
> Barbara Good and Margo and Jerry Leadbetter, the series depicts
> different patterns of suburban life and aspects of the material culture
> of the suburb. In its representation of Surbiton, The Good Life is
> both enduringly relevant and yet already dated in its portrayal of a
> world typified by two white, English, heterosexual couples.
>
> Weíd welcome proposals for panels or individual papers that reflect
> on any aspect of The Good Life, as well as papers that pick up
> broader themes from the programmes and relate them to debates
> within suburban studies, such as:
>
> -- Fictional, TV and film representations of the suburb: international
> comparisons,
> -- Comparative representations of the suburb (from Stepford Wives
> to American Beauty),
> -- Suburbs, the ignored in-between of British culture: neither
> Ambridge nor White Teeth,
> -- Gender and the suburb: Suburban femininities. Suburban
> masculinities: e.g. the notion of ìSurbitonî man (links with ìSelsdon
> man, ìEssexî man, etc. welcome),
> -- Suburban lifestyles: Escaping The Rise and Fall of Reginald
> Perrin,
> -- Town-planning for the suburb,
> -- Suburban consumption,
> -- Suburban design and fashion,
> -- Suburban architecture and landscapes,
> -- Alternative policies, ecology and the suburb, etc.
>
>
>
> Proposals of up to 300 words accompanied by a short statement of
> interest in suburban studies welcome by 31 January 2003, by e-mail
> of by post, to Dr Vesna Goldsworthy, at
> [log in to unmask] or the Centre for Suburban Studies,
> Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University, Penrhyn
> Road, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE, United Kingdom.
>
>
> Kingston University's Centre for Suburban Studies, established in
> 2002, is the first interdisciplinary centre for the study of the suburb
> in the UK, bringing together literature, history, media and cultural
> studies, architecture, history of art and design, sociology and
> geography.
>
>
>
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