CALL FOR PAPERS: Contemporary Queer Screen Cultures Postgraduate Study
Day at the University of Nottingham, Tuesday 5th May 2009
"Contemporary Queer Screen Cultures" is an interdisciplinary
postgraduate study day to be held at the University of Nottingham on
May 5th 2009 in association with the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network. It
is devised with the aim of bringing together researchers from across
the UK who deal with issues of queer visibility and representation,
and so making links across the disciplines and across the academic
spectrum.
Description
There has been a perceptible alteration in media representations of
queer sexualities since the 1990s, on a global scale. The cultural
visibility of queers has increased exponentially, with lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender characters now routinely populating film,
television and other digital media, and the mainstream press
frequently covering gay and lesbian stories as a matter of course.
This interdisciplinary event seeks to explore representations and
negotiations of queerness in contemporary screen cultures, as well as
their determinants. Supporting scholars from film and media studies,
sociology, politics and cultural studies among other disciplines, the
event will cover a number of themes and issues pertaining to on screen
queer visibility, including but not limited to:
• Cultural mainstreaming and the political contexts of queer visibility;
• Film-making and queer aesthetics;
• Queer audiences and participatory cultures: for example, L
Word theme parties;
• "Textual poaching," queer appropriations and slash fictions;
• Queer adaptations;
• Trans and genderqueer visibility: representations and marginalisation;
• National and regional queer identities in cinema and media;
• The impact of digitisation and the multi-platform environment
on queer visibility;
• Network branding and queer narrowcasting, as in the here! and
Logo channels;
• Internet technologies and queer self-fashioning: YouTube and
other online broadcasting.
Gary Needham of Nottingham Trent University, author of the forthcoming
Queer TV, and Dr Michele Aaron of the University of Birmingham, editor
of New Queer Cinema, will be delivering plenary lectures. There will
also be a roundtable discussion which will bring together both
speakers and delegates to debate 'the cultural mainstreaming of
queerness.'
We invite proposals for 20 minute papers from postgraduate research
students on any aspect of contemporary queer screen culture. Abstracts
of between 200-250 words and any other enquiries should be directed to
Natalie Edwards at [log in to unmask] by November 1st 2008.
Natalie Edwards
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
--
Iain Robert Smith
Institute of Film and Television
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
NG7 2RD
Head of Communications,
MeCCSA Post-Graduate Network
website: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/
Articles Editor,
Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies
website: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/
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