The Fan Studies Network

June 16, 2015 at Middlesex University London

Keynote by Mary Celeste Kearney (University of Notre Dame, USA), author of Girls Make Media

Girls and women are arguably producing more media than ever before. As bloggers, vloggers and “tweeters”, filmmakers, television showrunners, web designers, game developers, and musicians – to name only a few – girls and women are active contributors to contemporary media production cultures. Yet, recent incidents such as Gamergate point to the continuous precarious positioning that girls and women occupy as both amateur and professional media producers within a context shaped by what Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) has recently called “popular misogyny.” What is at stake for female media producers within this context? How do identities such as gender, race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, and ability shape one’s participation in production cultures? How are gendered neoliberal imperatives to be constantly productive informing who is producing media and what these media texts look like? And in what ways are girls and women mobilizing media production as an activist strategy to challenge sexism, racism, classism and other social inequalities across local, national, and international contexts?

We are seeking papers for a one-day symposium that aims to examine these questions and explore girls’ and women’s production of a wide range of commercial and alternative media texts.

Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Historical analysis of girls and women as media producers

• The production and circulation of feminist and activist media texts

• Gendered labour in media industries

• Methodological approaches to studying production cultures

• Relationship between gender, media production, and neoliberal entrepreneurship

• The politics of media production training programs

• Female media producers across global media networks

• Participation in digital media cultures

This one-day symposium, featuring a keynote lecture by Mary Celeste Kearney (University of Notre Dame, USA), will be held at Middlesex University in London UK on June 16, 2015. It will serve as an opportunity for discussion and networking for feminist media scholars focusing on production cultures prior to the Console-ing Passions Conference in Dublin from June 18 – 20. This event is organized as part of Middlesex University’s FemGenSex Research Network and the Media Department’s Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster.

Please submit abstracts of 250-words and a 50-word bio by March 15, 2015 to Jessalynn Keller (j.keller@mdx.ac.uk), Feona Attwood (f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk), and Mariam Kauser (m.kauser@mdx.ac.uk).

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