The Fan Studies Network

CONFERENCE: CULT CINEMA AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

An AHRC Global Cult Cinema in the Age of Convergence Network Conference Aberystwyth University, UK, Tuesday 15^th – Wednesday 16^th April 2014

 

Keynote speaker: Professor Barbara Klinger, Indiana University, USA

 

While academic study of cult cinema can be traced back to the 1980s, there has recently been a surge of scholarly interest in – alongside an increasing popular awareness of – the field. In particular, the advent and development of digital networks has led to an increasing awareness of a variety of cult followings and access to unprecedented cult films from around the world. Research addressing the changes wrought by increased digitization and global connectivity has, however, been relatively scant, as have sustained attempts to discuss and debate these issues. The aim of this conference (organised in association with the AHRC Global Cult Cinema in the Age of Convergence Network) is to bring together scholars to engage in a sustained dialogue addressing the role of technologies in different areas of cult film culture. Whilst technological change is the main theme of the conference, we welcome submissions that place such change within broader socio-historical contexts, and which reflect on the changing nature of cult cinema in relation to a range of technological developments, and the extent to which digital connectivity impacts upon understandings of cult film.

 

Possible topics could include:

 

• Exhibiting cult: How changing technologies have impacted upon the ways in which films are screened/viewed and how this has led to new cultist patterns.
• Promoting cult: New modes of marketing and promotion and how these can facilitate cult reputations.
• Transmedia cult: How altered boundaries between distinct media have led to increasing cross-media content and the extent to which these feed into cult promotion, exhibition and reception.
• Funding: How the web has enabled new forms of funding films, such as Kickstarter, and the implications for this on cultism.
• Informal and formal distribution cultures: New modes of distributing films (such as streaming services), incorporating ‘informal’ networks of file traders and bootleggers, etc.
• Digital Aesthetics: Have cult films made with digital technologies instituted new aesthetic avenues?
• Cult Criticism: The importance of ezines, blogs and similar platforms for cult criticism.
• Fandom: Changing patterns of cult fandom in relation to emerging technologies and platforms.
• Social Media and Cult: The importance of social media to cult film research.
• Public and Private spaces: how have technological developments contributed to the spaces in which cult films are consumed, and how have relations between private/public been reconfigured?
• Techno-cults: Analyses of representations of technology within particular cult films.
• Residual cultism: The role of residual media, or ‘old technologies’ in cultism: for example, fans dedicated to collecting video tapes.
• Historical case studies: Cult films/figures and historical uses of technologies (e.g. William Castle and Percepto and Emergo; 3D and cult, etc.)

 

Proposals for individual papers or pre-constituted panels should be sent to jamie.sexton@northumbria.ac.uk, kte@aber.ac.uk andmjh35@aber.ac.uk by 12^th December 2013.  Proposals should be sent in a word document email attachment, and include the paper title, abstract (350 words), along with the name of the presenter and their institutional affiliation. Panel organizers are asked to submit panel proposals including a panel title, a short description of the panel (150 words) and information on each paper following the guidelines listed above. Panels should consist of three speakers with a maximum of 20 minutes speaking time each.

With best wishes,

Jamie Sexton, Matt Hills and Kate Egan

 

We are inviting abstracts for papers to be presented at a conference on the Cold War and Entertainment Television, to be held at the University of Paris 8, on June 5-7, 2014.

An essential dimension of the Cold War took place in the realm of ideas and culture. A great deal of work, for example, has been done on cinema, especially with regard to the United States although other nations, both East and West, have received increasing attention.  But with certain noteworthy exceptions (primarily in the areas of science fiction and espionage series) relatively little has been done on this subject in relation to television. Yet, television was a technology and popular cultural form that emerged during the Cold War.

This project hopes to rectify that absence by providing a forum for examining the impact of the Cold War on entertainment television. We intend to underline the comparative aspect by studying programs from both blocs – without forgetting, of course, the outsize impact of American television
We would welcome submissions that treat a variety of regions and genres, including (but not limited to) the following topics:

·         Analyses of the reflection of the Cold War in particular genres

·         A close reading of particular episodes or series

·         The presentation of the “other side,” both its elites and the lives of ordinary citizens

·         Depictions of social class and ideologies in Cold War entertainment television

·         The uses of race and gender in depictions of the “other side” or in celebrations of one’s own side

·         Exporting television series to other cultures

·         How audiences received and used a variety of Cold War television series

·         The space race, the military industrial complex, the national security state, and nuclear weapons in Cold War television

·         Cold War discourses in children’s television

·         The impact of censorship, whether official or self-imposed

·         Commercials, public service announcements, documentaries, and Cold War subtexts

·         Changes in Cold War discourses in entertainment television through 1991

The languages of the conference will be English and French, and we anticipate that the conference proceedings will be published in English.

Please email a 250-word proposal, a one-page c.v., and contact information to Prof. Lori Maguire at coldwartv@gmail.com by Sept. 15, 2013.

Notification of accepted proposals will be made by Oct. 15, 2013.

Email inquiries are preferred, especially over the summer, to coldwartv@gmail.com

Organizing committee: Prof. Lori MAGUIRE (Département d’Etudes des Pays Anglophones, Université de Paris 8, St. Denis, France); Dr. Janice LIEDL (Dept. of History, Laurentian University, Canada); Dr. Joseph DAROWSKI (Dept. of English, Brigham Young University Idaho); Dr. Nancy REAGIN (Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies, Pace University, New York); Dr; André FILLER (Département d’Etudes Slaves, Université de Paris 8, St Denis, France) ; Prof. Cécile VAISSIÉ (Département de Russe, Université de Rennes II, France)

The CFP and other details can also be found in English and French here:

 

http://www.ea-anglais.univ-paris8.fr/spip.php?article1231

Transitions is a one-day symposium promoting new research and multi-disciplinary academic study of comics/ comix/ manga/ bande dessinée and other forms of sequential art, now in its fourth year.

Saturday the 26^th of October 2013

School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX

Keynote: Dr. Ann Miller (University of Leicester, joint editor of European Comic Art)

Respondent: Dr. Roger Sabin (Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London)

Transitions is currently the only regular academic comics event based in London, and is part of Comica – The London International Comics Festival.  The symposium offers a platform where different perspectives and methodologies can be brought together and shared.  As an event devoted to promoting new research into comics in all their forms the symposium provides a forum for research from postgraduate students and early career lecturers.

Comics studies occupy a unique multi-disciplinary middle-space, one that encourages cross-disciplinary pollination and a convergence of distinct knowledges: literary and cultural studies, visual arts and media, modern languages, sociology, geography and more. By thinking about comics across different disciplines, we hope to stimulate and provoke debate and to address a wide spectrum of questions, to map new trends and provide a space for dialogue and further collaboration to emerge.

 

We welcome abstracts for twenty minute papers of 250 – 300 words.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

 International iterations: manga, bande dessinée , fumetti etc. – children’s comics – superheroes – non-fiction comics – the (im)materiality of comics – formalist approaches – cultural histories –adaptation/ remediation – autographics – early comics – comic strips – small press –alternative comics/ underground commix – comics narratologies – political comics – comics and cultural theory – contexts of production and circulation – audiences – comics and the archive – subjectivity in comics – graphic medicine – fan subcultures – comics as historiography – key creators…

 

Proposals for papers should be sent as Word documents, with a short biography appended. Abstracts should be submitted by the 30th of July 2013 to Hallvard, Tony and Nina at transitions.symposium@gmail.com.