The Fan Studies Network

September 2nd and 3rd 2017

The Institute of the Humanities and the Gendered Subjects Research Group at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Keynote speaker: Prof. Jack Halberstam (University of Southern California)

We invite submissions which tackle diverse aspects of queer representation, and that question the extent to which the new influx of queer on-screen visibility works at once both to liberate
and obfuscate certain queer identities and cultures. How, for example, should we perceive representations of the legalization of gay marriage in numerous countries, while taking into account that these changes in law also mark the entrance of queer individuals
into reproductive and familial time? In England and Wales, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized private homosexual acts between male individuals aged 21 or over. As such, this anniversary comes at what is arguably
a troubling time; one where right-wing nationalism spreads across the US and Europe and ‘homonationalism’ (Puar, 2007) allows for the appropriation of queer and feminist discourses so as to legitimize xenophobia and contemporary colonialism.

We encourage submissions dealing with queer representation in any on-screen form (ranging from the established forms of film and TV to gaming, music videos, advertisement,
web-series, and social media, amongst others) in what can be broadly defined as a contemporary context, promoting both explorations of the historical development of queer visibility and of its recent media examples. Additionally, we welcome further explorations
of what it means to be ‘queer’ on screen, to gaze queerly, and the value of queerness as not only a political but aesthetic term. Topics may include yet are not limited to:

● Queer intersectionality on contemporary screens
● Queer temporalities and geographies
● Specific regional, national or transnational contexts of queer representation
● The relationship between various media platforms and queer visibility
● Representations of queer activism and the (re)framing of activist debates
● The queer body and its relationship to the neoliberal context
● Adaptations and appropriations that queer canonical authors and texts
● Queering notions of success and failure in neoliberalism
● Homonationalism and its role in representation
● Queer anarchism. Queerness as a vehicle for change. Queer utopias and potentialities.

Organizers: Anamarija Horvat (anamarija.horvat@northumbria.ac.uk) &
Inmaculada N. Sánchez-García (inmaculada.garcia@northumbria.ac.uk)

Please send 300-word abstracts for 20-minute presentations and a biographical note to queerscreens2017@gmail.com by May 1st 2017.

For further information check our website: https://queerscreens2017.wixsite.com/conference

Follow us on:

https://twitter.com/queerscreens17

https://www.facebook.com/queerscreens17/

​

Liverpool Hope University, June 21st-22nd2017

The Popular Culture Research Group at Liverpool Hope University is delighted to announce its seventh annual international conference, ‘Theorising the Popular’. Building on the success of previous years, the 2017 conference aims to highlight the intellectual originality, depth and breadth of ‘popular’ disciplines, as well as their academic relationship with and within ‘traditional’ subjects. One of its chief goals will be to generate debate that challenges academic hierarchies and cuts across disciplinary barriers.

The conference invites submissions from a broad range of disciplines, and is particularly interested in new ways of researching ‘popular’ forms of communication and culture. In addition to papers from established and early career academics, we encourage proposals from postgraduate taught and research students.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Film and Television
• Media and Communications
• Politics and Populism
• Literature (Fiction and Non-Fiction)
• Music
• Drama and Performance
• Fan Cultures
• Sport
• Celebrity
• Social Media
• Gender: Feminism/Femininities/Masculinities/Queering/Sexualities/Representations of the Body
• Language/Linguistics

The conference will be held at Liverpool Hope’s main campus, Hope Park. Situated in a pleasant suburb of Liverpool, just four miles from the city centre, Hope Park offers superb facilities in beautiful surroundings.

Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please send abstracts of 300 words to Dr Jacqui Miller and Dr Joshua Gulam (ttpconference@hope.ac.uk) by March 17th2017. The abstract should include your name, email address, affiliation, as well as the title of your paper.

Successful abstracts will be notified by April 3rd 2017.

Conference fees: £100 for both days, including lunch and all refreshments (£80 for students and unwaged). 

Contact Info: 

Dr Joshua Gulam (Liverpool Hope University) and Dr Jacqui Miller (Liverpool Hope University)

Contact Email: 

ttpconference@hope.ac.uk

08.11.2017-10.11.2017
Neuchâtel, Switzerland

In November 2017, the Universities of Neuchâtel, Zurich and Bern in
Switzerland will host the first international conference to focus
specifically on visual communication in/about new media. In this regard, we invite the submission of abstracts for scholarly presentations in any of four overlapping thematic areas.

1. Social interaction
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on the communicative uses of visual resources in the context of new media; for example: orthography and typography, graphematic design, the use of emojis (pictograms, emoticons, smilies), and/or the social-interactional uses of video, GIFs and non-moving images.

2. Meta-discourse
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on people’s talk or writing about visual practices; for example: journalistic commentary about visual practices in new media (the use of emojis, for instance) or communicators’ discussions about their own or others’ visual practices in new media spaces.

3. Visual ideologies
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on the visual depiction of new media in, for example, the context of commercial advertising, print or broadcast news, cinema and television narratives and/or public policy and educational settings.

4. Industrial design
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on perspectives related to, for example, the visual-material design of technologies and apps, as well as the look or layout of screen interfaces, especially insofar as they concern the communicative (as opposed to technical) affordances of new media.

Kontaktperson: Etienne Morel / Christina Siever / Vanessa Jaroski
Email: contact.vinm2017@unine.ch

Conference date: Friday 10th and Saturday 11th November 2017.

Venue: University College Cork, Ireland

Organised by: ECREA Film Studies Section

Deadline for abstracts: 2 May 2017.

Conference website: https://ecreafilmstudies2017.wordpress.com

European cinema has evolved from a homogenous and selective object of
study, mostly shaped by frameworks of national industry, identity and
culture, to a much more diversified field, reflecting the shift to a post-colonial, post-communist, post-national, globalised Europe. In the context of an increasingly diverse but also split society, in which social polarisation is on the increase due to the crisis of the Eurozone and the decline of the welfare states, and in which populism and nationalisms are on the rise, resulting in the strengthening of the Fortress Europe project, this conference aims to turn the spotlight on the less-represented and less-audible voices in European cinema in all its forms: fiction, documentary, mainstream, art house, independent, exploitation, art film. With an inclusive focus encompassing issues of production, distribution and reception, of representation and of form, of dissent and of control, the conference invites contributions that engage from a wide range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches with the politics of difference and with the representation and/or expression of alternative viewpoints in European films / in films made in Europe.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Ewa Mazierska (University of Central Lancashire)

Professor Chris Wahl (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf)

Abstractsare invited on topics related to Multivoicedness in European Cinema, including but not limited to:

   * Multivoicedness in national and transnational European cinemas
   * Peripheries, borders, and grey areas: falling between the cracks,
     speaking from the margins
   * Ethics and/or aesthetics of alternative voices
   * Audiodescription, subtitling and dubbing of multivoiced films
   * Cultural and market negotiations: translating cultures, crossing borders
   * Participation, dissent, resistance: audiences, politics, and public
     discourse
   * Alternative European cinemas and the global market
   * Other voices: niche markets, new forms of consumption
   * Deterritorialising identities, becoming migrant/minoritarian
   * Polyglot cinema: speaking from multiple subject positions
   * Genders and genres: decentering and in-betweenness
   * Alternative film festivals and other cinemas
   * Speaking in tongues: the audiences of multivoiced films
   * Queering European cinema
   * Nonfiction and commitment: documenting the silenced subject
   * Speaking for oneself: multiple forms of first-person filmmaking
   * Transnational, cosmopolitan, global: what European cinema?
   * A continent in motion: multiple commitments, divided belongings
   * The “New Europeans” in films / making films
   * Margins of industrial practices, alternative forms of production,
     distribution and reception
   * Speaking parts: person, character, actor, star

The conference will also be the host to special panel sections prepared by the HoMER network (History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception) and FFRN (Film Festival Research network).

Abstract submission: Please submit your abstract (max 300 words) along with key references, institutional affiliation and a short bio (max 150 words) or a panel proposal, including a panel presentation (max 300 words) along with minimum 3, maximum 4 individual abstracts.

Submission deadline: May 2nd 2017.

Proposal acceptance notification:June 23rd 2017.

Please send your abstract/panel proposals to the conference email
address:filmstudiesecrea@gmail.com <mailto:filmstudiesecrea@gmail.com>

Submissions for the HoMER sectionshould be sent to Daniela Treveri Gennari: dtreveri-gennari@brookes.ac.uk and submissions for the FFRN section should be sent to Skadi Loist: skadi.loist@uni-rostock.de

ECREA membership is not required to participate in the conference. Delegates will be required to contribute towards administrative and catering costs.

Conference details: The Conference is hosted and supported by the
Department of Film and Screen Media, University College of Cork,
Ireland: http://www.ucc.ie/en/filmstudies/

Conference organisers:Laura Rascaroli (University College Cork), Sergio Villanueva Baselga (Universitat de Barcelona), Helle Kannik Haastrup (University of Copenhagen), Anders Marklund (University of Lund), Gertjan Willems (Ghent University).

Conference email address: filmstudiesecrea@gmail.com

Conference website:https://ecreafilmstudies2017.wordpress.com

Television Shows, Brands and Properties in the Global Television Scenario

Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti, May 23rd-24th, 2017

Confirmed keynote speakers: Jérôme Bourdon, Jean Chalaby

Organized by Luca Barra and Paola Brembilla, in collaboration with
Andrea Esser, the Media Across Borders network and the ECREA Television Studies section.

Media Mutations, the international conference of studies on audiovisual media hosted by Dipartimento delle Arti of Università di Bologna, comes to its ninth edition. This year’s theme is the cultural and industrial role of global formats in television production, distribution and viewing practices.

In the last fifteen years, following a long history that already started in the early years of the medium, television all around the world has been constantly and successfully broadcasting global formats: big brands and franchises, with a codified set of rules, sold at international audiovisual markets, distributed in many countries and on numerous networks and channels, and adapted and remade according to the tastes and needs of local audiences. Beginning with Big Brother, Survivor and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and later with The X Factor, Masterchef, Peking Express, In Treatment, The Bridge, Pulseras Rojas and many others, formatted shows have contributed to creating a shared television aesthetics, spreading best practice in production, distribution and marketing, and establishing similar consumption habits.

At the same time, differences and national specificities are still at work, and the success of global formats in individual national markets depends on successful localization. The process of formatization is now used in both TV fiction and entertainment productions, and it is relentlessly expanding, both at the economic and cultural level, and in a convergent media scenario.

Some classic and more recent studies have established the field of format research over the past 18 years, defining various format dimensions and analyzing their ability to travel across different countries and cultures (e.g. Moran 1998, 2007; 2009; Oren and Shahaf, 2012; Chalaby 2016; Ellis, Esser and Gutiérrez Lozano 2016; Aveyard, Moran and Jensen 2016). The conference aims to expand the academic knowledge of this important phenomenon, establish new research perspectives in the field, and strengthen the understanding of national and transnational distribution and reception practices. The focus will not only be on cultural and linguistic format issues, but on the legal, economic and productive aspects of format development and format trade, and the different genres and types of formatted audiovisual products.

Media Mutations 9 encourages submissions that cover the following subjects and topics, favoring proposals and case histories that are able to intersect across different areas:

– The economic/trade dimension of TV formats: rise and evolution of the format market; formats as commercial properties; format distributors and buyers; negotiation aspects; sales; format companies; mergers and acquisitions; trade rituals and habits; global buying and selling practices and national specificities; emerging production regions and established format centers.

– The legal dimension of TV formats: intellectual properties, franchise and copyright issues; legal protection of formats, globally and nationally; protecting original ideas from copycat shows and piracy; forms of contracts and license deals; formats on digital platforms and as reruns.

– The productive dimension of TV formats: advantages and disadvantages of making or buying formats; format development process; developing original programs vs. adapting international formats; professional skills and roles; production processes; branded content formats.

– The distributive dimension of TV formats: circulation of formats
across different countries and television models; national adaptations and mediations of global formats; remakes vs. ready-made programming; programming, scheduling and promotion practices; digital distribution of formats on over-the-top and on demand audiovisual platforms.

– The aesthetic dimension of TV formats: formats as symbolic and narrative forms; formats as a set of fixed rules; formats as branding devices; aesthetic innovation vs. conservation; formats and television genres/texts (game, reality, talent, fiction, general entertainment, factual programming); scripted vs. unscripted formats; specificities of fiction formats; transmedia storytelling.

– The audience dimension of TV formats: national appeal of global formats; limits and constraints imposed by local taste; format success and consequences on viewing habits and consumption practices; formats and convergent television/media; quantitative (ratings) and qualitative analysis of format audiences.

– The historical dimension of TV formats: evolution of formats and markets; different steps/models; “formats” before the advent of licensed formats; formats on PSB, commercial TV and pay TV; role of national/transnational television cultures in creating successful formats.

– The life-cycle of television formats: from development and broadcast in the first country to international circulation and national adaptations, to the “death”/re-birth of a format.

– Theoretical and methodological approaches to television formats.

– Transnational case histories: global formats and their adaptations; key brands and franchises; leading and upcoming format countries.

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian.

Abstracts (250-500 words for 20-minute talks) should be sent to mediamutations.org@gmail.com by February 15th 2017. Please attach a brief biography (maximum 150 words) and an optional selected bibliography (up to five titles) relevant to the conference theme. Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 15th. A registration fee will be requested after notification of paper acceptance (€40 for speakers and professional attendants; free conference admission for students).

This Conference is financially supported by Centro Dipartimentale La Soffitta and Dipartimento delle Arti, Università di Bologna. For more information on the previous editions of Media Mutations, please check the conference website, http://www.mediamutations.org.

Liverpool Hope University, June 21st -22nd 2017

The Popular Culture Research Group at Liverpool Hope University is delighted to announce its seventh annual international conference, ‘Theorising the Popular’. Building on the success of previous years, the 2017 conference aims to highlight the intellectual originality, depthand breadth of ‘popular’ disciplines, as well as their academic relationship with and within ‘traditional’ subjects. One of its chief goals will be to generate debate that challenges academic hierarchies and cuts across disciplinary barriers.

The conference invites submissions from a broad range of disciplines, and is particularly interested in new ways of researching ‘popular’ forms of communication and culture. In addition to papers from established and early career academics, we encourage proposals from postgraduate taught and research students.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

* Film and Television
* Media and Communication
* Politics and Populism
* Literature (Fiction and Non-Fiction)
* Music
* Drama and Performance
* Fan Cultures and Audience Research
* Sport
* Celebrity
* Social Media
* Gender: Feminism/Femininities/Masculinities/Queering/Sexualities/Representations of the Body
* Language/Linguistics

The conference will be held at Liverpool Hope’s main campus, Hope Park. Situated in a pleasant suburb of Liverpool, just four miles from the city centre, Hope Park offers superb facilities in beautiful surroundings.

Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please send abstracts of 300 words to Dr Jacqui Miller and Dr Joshua Gulam ttpconference@hope.ac.uk by March 17th 2017. The abstract should include your name, email address, affiliation, as well as the title of your paper.

Successful abstracts will be notified by April 3rd 2017.

Conference fees: £100 for both days, including lunch and all
refreshments (£80 for students).

Responding to the shifting focus from audiences as consumers to their role as cultural producers aided by various technological developments, fan studies have gained significant attention as a sub-field in media and film studies in the early 1990s. Despite extensive works that have shed light on fan practices surrounding Western cultural products, limited accounts have paid attention to transcultural exchanges and fans within a specific regional context. Lori Morimoto and Bertha Chin’s work that put forward a theory of transcultural fandom (2013) points to the need to expand ways of exploring fandom by engaging with alternative models of fan practices across different geographical contexts. This special issue seeks to extend further the discussion on fandom within a small but vibrant region of Southeast Asia, as well as Southeast Asia in relation to other parts of the world.

Existing literature on cultural studies have begun to explore how fans in different Southeast Asian countries have embraced and appropriated popular cultures, particularly pop music and television series from Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile, festival films from Southeast Asia have been discussed as part of the renewed attention on global cinema and cinephilia studies. To address various practices within the increasingly transmedia cultures in the region, this special issue highlights the crossover between fans, cinephiles and other committed audience groups. Therefore, we welcome a wide range of papers that seek to explore fans of various cultural products within the Southeast Asian context (i.e. film, music, television drama, video-game, animation and other transmedia content) and fans of different personalities (i.e. film director, producer, star, idol, celebrity). Possible papers can focus on fan activities, as well as textual, aesthetics and performative aspects of fans/cinephiles.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Fan vids/mashups/tributes/video essays and transformative works in relation to Southeast Asian transmedia context
• Fan re-enactments and performances in Southeast Asian context
• Fan meet-ups, fan clubs, cons and festivals in Southeast Asia
• Fan tourism/cinephile pilgrimage in Southeast Asia
• Crowd and fan funding in Southeast Asia context
• Fan subtitling and other activities as part of distribution networks in Southeast Asia
• The relationship between fans and producers/filmmakers/stars/idols within Southeast Asia
• Anti-fans and conflicts within Southeast Asian transmedia cultures
• Fan activism in Southeast Asian context

Submissions are to be e-mailed to the Issue Editors and the Managing Editor in MS Word format without any identifying information such as author(s) name and institutional affiliations. Authors should also submit a separate title page with the manuscript title, author name(s), institutional affiliation and contact information for the corresponding author.

Issue Editors are: Wikanda Promkhuntong (wikanda.pro@mahidol.ac.th) and Bertha Chin (bchin@swinburne.edu.my)

Deadline: 05 May 2017

For submissions and further inquiries, email:

Patrick F. Campos, Managing Editor (plarideljournal@gmail.com)

​Call for Papers

Frames Issue 11, Spring 2017

The Future of Horror

The horror genre can be seen as a genre that is continually re-inventing itself whilst simultaneously cannibalising (and regurgitating) itself to produce both new and interesting takes as well as tired remakes of genre classics in equal measure. Throughout the 2000s the horror genre within the United States sped through multiple short-lived cycles. The most prominent examples of these were remakes of East Asian horror films, the wave of horror dismissively-titled ‘torture porn’ films, and the return of the found footage style en masse following the success of Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007). Since the turn of the decade, there has been interesting movements in horror, with the emergence of new genre directors such as Adam Wingard and Ti West alongside horror efforts by directors more known for their festival films, such as The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016) and Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012), all of which have resulted in new critical attention and worldwide interest being directed towards the horror film.

In other countries, such as South Korea, the horror genre dwindled throughout the 2000s and in doing so lost its prominent place and audience support during the summer box-office period. In response, the South Korean film industry recently produced its first large budget zombie film, Train to Busan (Busanhaeng,Yeon Sang-Ho, 2016), which proved to be a hit not only with domestic Korean audiences, but also in international markets. This success hints at the presence of horror as a globally disseminated and understood genre. Much like the recent trend towards global science fiction cinema, there has been a similar upswing in the production of horror films by countries not normally known for producing works in the genre. Perhaps the most prominent recent example of this can be seen in Dearest Sister (Nong Hak, Mattie Do, 2016), the first horror film produced by Laos which was quickly brought to the horror-specific online streaming service Shudder following its screening at the BFI London Film Festival.

This issue of Frames seeks to take stock of the horror genre as it has developed since the turn of the decade by tracking its influences, shifting industrial hierarchies, emerging voices, evolutions and developments in order to better understand its presence today. We are interested in papers that examine the following topics:

Horror films produced since 2010 – Present
The influence of older horror films on contemporary works
Industrial responses to the horror genre
Contemporary horror film fandom and the resurgence of classic horror on home video/streaming services
Responses to technology in contemporary horror cinema
Regional influences and approaches to horror
The return of folklore in contemporary horror
Horror remakes from 2010 – Present
The potential influence of technology (e.g. VR) on horror media
We seek abstracts for our features section (5,000-7,000 words) and our POV section (1,000-3,000 words) as well as video contributions enquiring the proposed topics.

Proposal abstracts of no more than 250 words (plus brief bio and indicative bibliography) are to be received by 15th February 2017. Please submit your proposal to:

Connor McMoran and Sarah Smyth (editors-in-chief)

E-mail: framesjournal@gmail.com