Call for Articles : Crisicism – The Cultural Discourse of Crisis

Diffractions – Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture

Call for Articles : Crisicism – The Cultural Discourse of Crisis

Deadline for submissions: February 28 2013

At the end of 2012, “Crisis” has become a widespread buzz word. As moments of disruption, crises challenge and subvert the existing order of things, creating uncertainty and altering daily life. Occurring both at a personal or socio-political level, as in the case of catastrophes, financial meltdown, environmental disasters, institutional turmoil or political instability, crises are turning points that call our foundations into question and suggest the need for change. On the other hand, as fractures in time, crisis can trigger a renewed understanding of the past and cast a new light on the needs and demands of the present. Indeed, Reinhart Koselleck went so far as defining crisis as the “signature of the modern era”, acknowledging its diagnostic and predicative meaning which underlies modern society’s self-consciousness and critical awareness.

Yet, if crises may be seen as system disturbances, as interruptions of the normal order, as critical moments that promote self-reflexion and generate change, they seem nevertheless to have become the new order of things, a condition that morphed into norm. This noun has grown from the grammatical nominative to be a symbolic adjective, signifying a permanent state (of crisis). As Agamben argued about the new governmental state of exception, the recurrence of crises over the last century and particularly over the last few years (in response to various circumstances ranging  from 9/11 to global economic recession) has turned the exception into norm, into what he designates “[…] the dominant paradigm” of global politics (Agamben, 2005: 2). And as Slavoj Zizek has also pointed out, crisis ceases to be regarded as an intermission and becomes naturalized into a “way of life” (Zizek, 2010).

Indeed, at a time of generalized disorder and insecurity, crisis seems to have become the dominant discursive paradigm, threatening to turn into the master narrative of the 21st century. This issue wishes to engage in a critical assessment of the rhetoric of generalized crisis – or “crisicism” – and discuss its impact and effects in the field of culture.  Crises are interwoven into both ethical and aesthetical reality, are given sustenance and channeled socially and culturally. At the same time as the disruptive character of crisis defies previous models of understanding, every new crisis is anchored in cultural imagination and in a shared reservoir of behavioral and representational patterns from which, in turn, societies will draw to face and process them. This issue aims precisely at gauging the effects of crisis upon the cultural structure and the way representations not only articulate and sublimate collective meanings of crisis, but also shape our understanding of crises and the way societies negotiate, come to terms and remember them.

Themes to be addressed by contributors may include but are not restricted to the following:

  • The rhetorical dimension of crisis
  • Crises as turning points
  • Crises as exception and norm
  • Crises and catastrophe
  • Crisis, trauma and memory
  • Politics, policies and crisis
  • Crisis, globalization and mobility
  • Crisis and space
  • Artistic and literary representation of crisis
  • Media framings of crisis
  • The technocultural dimension of crisis
  • Crises and post-humanism
  • Agency and resistance

We look forward to receiving proposals of no more than 20 A4 pages (not including bibliography)  and a short bio of about 150 words by February 28 2013 at the following address: submissions@diffractions.net. DIFRRACTIONS also accepts book reviews that may not be related to the issue’s topic. If you wish to write a book review, please contact us at reviews@diffractions.net.

DIFFRACTIONS is an online, peer-reviewed and open access graduate journal for the study of culture, publsished bi-annually under the editorial direction of graduate students in the doctoral program in Culture Studies at Catholic University of Portugal/Lisbon Consortium. DIFFRACTIONS wishes to constitute a platform where graduate students and junior researchers can showcase their current research as well as reviews of the latest books of interest in the field. DIFFRACTIONS aims at publishing innovative and critical scholarly work at the intersection of disciplinary fields and make it accessible and available to the international community.

Find us online at www.diffractions.net and facebook.com/diffractionsjournal.

Call for Papers (panel) : Conference of Cultural Studies Association, 23-26 May 2013

Call for Papers (CFP) for the 2013 Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Conference

May 23 – 26, 2013

Chicago, IL

Panel Title: Beyond Begging, Borrowing, and/or Stealing: Cultural Studies and Innovative Ethnographic Research Methods

Call for Papers:

Drawing on the 2013 CSA meeting theme of Beyond Disciplinarity, this session asks what it means to do ethnographic research within and beyond cultural studies. This panel seeks to foster a critical and generative conversation about the role of ethnographies as one methodological approach among many within cultural studies. By re-initiating conversations that have continually underpinned cultural studies imagination, we ask, what kind of disciplinary boundary crossing are we engaged in while doing fieldwork? As practitioners of cultural studies and ethnographers of everyday practice, we are continually challenged to participate in and understand the fluid, complex networks in which institutions and people are embedded. This relationship between cultural studies and ethnography is not new; nor is it as deeply entrenched as a formalistic tradition. Yet, as Dick Hebdige, Richard Hogart, and Paul Willis, to name a few, have shown us, the examinations of a lived reality drawing from fieldwork is not only a method but also a deep commitment to cultural studies’ aim of accessing the materiality of subjects, space, and culture.

For this panel, we seek papers that foster a robust conversation about the relationship between cultural studies scholars and their methods of ethnographic research. How do we as cultural studies scholars negotiate the complexities of community-based ethnographic research or research that connects our lives as academics to our lives as activists? How does this differ from and bear similarity to approaches in other fields and disciplines, such as anthropology and sociology? What does cultural studies contribute to the use of ethnography, and what might ethnographic approaches contribute to conversations in cultural studies? Does thinking critically about ethnographic fieldwork open up a space to move beyond disciplinary divisions? We welcome multiple and interdisciplinary approaches and definitions of ethnographic methods, including but not limited to modes influenced by feminist and postcolonial theory, literature on embodiment and the senses, science and technology studies, community-engaged approaches, design, etc.

Abstracts Due by: Friday, January 25th, 2013

Email Abstracts to: nsheoran@gmu.edu AND smcc@ucdavis.ed

Panel Organizers:

Nayantara (Tara) Sheoran (Cultural Studies, George Mason University)

Sarah Rebolloso McCullough (Cultural Studies, University of California, Davis)

Call for papers : ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’, University of Reading, 18-20 September 2013.

Call for Papers:

‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’

University of Reading

Wednesday 18 – Friday 20 September 2013

The culminating conference arising from the AHRC ‘Spaces of Television’ project will be held at the University of Reading from Wednesday 18th to Friday 20th September, 2013. Proposals are invited for papers and/or panels on the theme of ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’. The project is about television fiction produced in the UK from 1955-94. It analyses how the material spaces of production (in TV studios and on location) conditioned the aesthetic forms of programmes. We are interested in how fictional spaces represented on the screen across a range of drama during this period negotiated the opportunities and constraints of studio and exterior space, film and video technologies, and live-ness and recording.

While we particularly welcome papers that specifically address British TV drama during this period, we will also consider comparative perspectives concerning dramas from other television industries, import/export, transnational exchange, co-productions and spatially-themed studies of earlier or later dramas.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • The institutional and aesthetic relationships between the spaces of television production (studio, location) and dramas’ social, political and cultural meanings.
  • Histories and historiographies of television drama, particularly relating to production strategies and institutional contexts.
  • The social and cultural meanings of the spaces depicted in télévision drama: e.g. heritage spaces, the urban and the rural, regional, national and foreign spaces, fantasy spaces.
  • Case studies of television dramatists, actors, directors, producers, designers, or other production staff focusing on mise-en-scene and issues of space.
  • The relationship between television dramatic space and performance, and the social and cultural meanings of performance in different spatial and aesthetic contexts.
  • Analysis of the dramatic conventions of television genres and their realisation through the use of space and mise-en-scene.
  • The spatial significance of particular production techniques and/or special effects in television drama.

Proposals for 20 minute papers in the form of a 250 word abstract (or outline of a three person panel) should be submitted to Dr Billy Smart (w.r.smart@reading.ac.uk) by Friday 25 January 2013.

We welcome proposals from both established scholars and early career researchers including postgraduate students.

‘Spaces of Television’ is an AHRC-funded research project led by the University of Reading in collaboration with the University of Leicester and the University of Glamorgan.

Further details of the project can be found at:

http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/research/Spacesoftelevision.aspx

Parution TV/Series, n°2, "Les séries télévisées dans le monde : Echanges, déplacements et transpositions"

Parution du numéro 2 de TV/Series, “Les Séries télévisées dans le monde : Échanges, déplacements et transpositions”.

Ce numéro est en ligne à l’adresse suivante:

http://www.univ-lehavre.fr/ulh_services/Numero-2-Issue-2,1656.html

SOMMAIRE

Preface (Sylvaine Bataille et Sarah Hatchuel)

1. Échanges : « Mirroir, Mirroir »

  • Donna Andréolle, Gérald Billard, Arnaud Brennetot, Bertrand Pleven, Amandine Prié. « Subversive suburbia : L’effondrement du mythe de la banlieue résidentielle dans les séries américaines »
  • Donna Spalding-Andréolle. « … Paved with the Best Intentions ? Utopian Spaces in Star Trek, the Original Series (NBC, 1966-1969) »
  • Jennifer Houdiard. « La série catalane Ventdelplà, entre réalisme et utopie »
  • Valérie Foulquier. « Promenades au cœur du Village : L’articulation des espaces dans la série Le Prisonnier »
  • Sébastien Lefait. « Dystopian Villages : Surveillance and Re-mediation in The Prisoner »
  • Eric Gatefin. « La représentation de l’espace américain dans The West Wing »
  • Florence Cabaret. « Representations of Power Shifts Between Great Britain and India in The Jewel in the Crown (ITV, 1984) »
  • Amandine Ducray. « Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty ? Déplacements, hybridation et oscillation identitaires dans les séries humoristiques à contenu ethnique à la télévision outre-Manche (1972-2011) »

2. Déplacements : circulation et adaptation

  • Eliane Wolff. « Du Mexique à l’Île de La Réunion : Études de réception de deux telenovelas “créolisées” »
  • Shannon Wells-Lassagne. « Crossing the Pond : Adapting The Office to an American Audience »
  • Justine Huet et Sathya Rao. « Les Invincibles en France : Temps et espace d’une adaptation »
  • Stéphane Thévenet. « La localisation à l’étranger dans les séries télévisuelles contemporaines et l’affirmation internationale de la Corée du Sud »
  • Marine Legagneur. « Importations, transpositions, adaptation dans le feuilleton quotidien Plus belle la vie »
  • Marie Tréfousse. « Jean-Paul Boher, ou le détournement du héros de 24 Heures chrono par Plus belle la vie »

3. Transpositions : intertextualité et transferts

  • Ronan Ludot-Vlasak. « Canon Trouble : Intertextuality and Subversion in Queer as Folk »
  • Natalie Depraz et Frédéric Mauriac. « Figures de la mobilité dans la série télévisée Dr. House et dans le service d’urgence médicale ERIC : Étude comparative de phénoménologie appliquée »

Notices biographiques des auteurs

Call for papers : HOMER Workshop (June 19 2013) & NECS 2013 International Conference (June 20-22 2013), Prague

(for the workshop see below)

1. CALL FOR HOMER-PANELS AT THE NECS 2013 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Submission Deadline: January 21, 2013

The History of movie-going, exhibition and reception or HOMER Group was founded in June 2004 by an international group of cinema scholars to promote the understanding of the complex phenomena of cinema-going, exhibition, and reception, from a multidisciplinary perspective. HOMER has organized panels, conferences and workshops, with the  ‘Cinema in Context’ conference in Amsterdam (April 2006) and the ‘The Glow in their Eyes’ conference  in Ghent (December 2007) as highlights. Since then, the field of ‘new cinema history’ has grown substantially. This body of research has achieved critical mass and methodological maturity. It defines itself a social history of a cultural institute and aims to identify film as a cultural artifact consumed by a variety of audiences. ‘New cinema history’ addresses wider societal, political and other forces in historicizing film spectatorship, cinema-going and exhibition.

The time is right to review the current state of research in the history of movie-going and film exhibition and distribution. For this year, HOMER has joined forces with the major European film and media studies organization NECS, which is so kind to integrate a number of HOMER panels into their 2013 international NECS conference, i.e. HOMER@NECS 2013.

We support the submission of individual papers or pre-constituted panel proposals from HOMER members and interested non-members, as we seek to bring together scholars dealing with these subjects from all over the globe. The growing number of case studies in local film history increases the need for comparative studies of cities, regions, and nations, while the relationship between micro and macro history(ies) is becoming a major issue for the field. The analysis of patterns and networks in film culture also calls for special attention to methodology. We aim to bring European perspectives on cinema-going and film exhibition into dialogue with US, Australian, African, South American and Asian research.

Possible topics for papers are e.g.:

  • Film exhibition, cinema-going and film experience in relation to theories of imperialism, post-colonialism, diaspora, etc.;
  • Long term tendencies such as the rise of cinemas in rural and urban environments, the boom of cinema-going, the decay and subsequent closure of many (provincial and neighborhood) cinemas and the rise of multiplexes;
  • Tensions between commercial and/or ideological film exhibition, between urban and rural areas, and between provinces and regions;
  • Institutional developments, geographical location and programming trends;
  • Audiences and film experiences in urban and rural contexts;
  • A comparative international perspective on cinema-going and exhibition;
  • Representations in films of cinema-going, film exhibition, film culture(s);
  • Reflections on methods: How to reconcile/combine large scale analysis with in depth case study? How to compare national or regional research/databases on exhibition and cinema-going?
  • The “top down” forces of industry, commerce and ideology vs. “bottom up” forces of experience;
  • Contesting concepts of public and private space in media experience;
  • Cinema’s integration into to the metropolitan experience of modernity, vs. its role in the construction of community in less urbanized and rural areas.

We explicitly invite non-HOMER scholars who are working on the mentioned topics and want to share their research with international colleagues. As with the Ghent conference a selection of papers presented at the conference will be published in an edited volume in 2014 (publisher to be confirmed) HOMER@NECS 2013 will be also preceded by a one day HOMER workshop (practical information on the workshop follows below).

Practical information

You can submit an individual paper proposal or a pre-constituted panel proposal. Panels may consist of 3 to 4 speakers with a maximum of 20 minutes speaking time each. All presenters are obliged to provide a title, an abstract of maximum 150 words, 3 to 5 key bibliographical references, name of the presenter and institutional affiliation, plus a short panel rationale (150 words max.) in case of a preconstituted panel.

Please submit all individual paper or panel proposals by Monday January 21, 2013 to liesbeth.vandevijver@ugent.be. You will be notified of acceptance shortly thereafter.  Please note that HOMER papers and panels should not be submitted via the NECS online submission system, but via e-mail to Lies Van De Vijver, as they will be reviewed separately by the HOMER 2013 programming team.

2. CALL FOR PARTICIPATION AT THE HOMER workshop June 19, 2013

Submission Deadline: January 21, 2013

Please email all inquiries to liesbeth.vandevijver@ugent.be

To bring together HOMER members and other interested scholars, HOMER@NECS 2013 is preceded by a one day HOMER workshop. If you are interested in the topics of the CFP, you are kindly invited to participate. The workshop does not consist of formal paper presentations (as the conference will), but of informal discussions on methods, approaches, possibilities for collaboration and an overview of the field.

The aim of the meeting is to discuss the state of the art of the research done by members of the HOMER project and rethink the organizational status of HOMER as a network.

We kindly request your participation by answering six questions (see below). Please answer these questions briefly (max. 10 lines each), but thoroughly to give an accurate picture of your research (stages) today. These answers will be bundled to give an overview of current research. Key-note Richard Maltby will open the discussion on the state of the art during the HOMER workshop.

Provisional program:

  • 10:00   Welcome and general introduction by Daniel Biltereyst (Ghent U.) and Philippe Meers (U. of Antwerp)
  • 10:30   Key note by Richard Maltby (Flinders U.)
  • 11:00   Discussion on the State of the Art  (based on information on projects provided by participants)
  • 12:30   LUNCH break
  • 14:00   Discussion continued
  • 14:30   General comments and conclusion
  • 15.00   Discussing HOMER: organization, visibility, joint projects, etc.
  • 16.15   Coffee break
  • 16.30   Closing discussion
  • 17:00   End

Please submit your participation proposal by Monday January 21, 2013 to liesbeth.vandevijver@ugent.be. You will be notified of acceptance shortly thereafter.

We look forward to seeing many of you in Prague!

The HOMER programming team

  • Daniel Biltereyst
  • Philippe Meers
  • Clara Pafoort-Overduin
  • John Sedgwick
  • Judith Thissen
  • Daniela Treveri-Gennari
  • Lies Van De Vijver

HOMER workshop June 19, 2013

  • Title
  • Promoter
  • Funding body
  • Funded research period
  • Researcher(s)
  • 1. Describe your research SUBJECT.
  • 2. Describe the main OBJECTIVES of the research.
  • 3. Describe the PERIOD your research is focused on.
  • 4. Describe the geographical REGION your research is focused on.
  • 5. Describe your research METHODOLOGY.
  • 6. Describe, if possible, the main OUTCOME / RESULTS of the research and mention PUBLICATIONS.