Wednesday, 7 December 2011

KEYNOTE SPEAKER CONFIRMED

We are delighted to announce that prolific scholar DR HELEN WHEATLEY (Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick) will be our keynote speaker for Re-Thinking Cinema and Television History

Biography of Dr Helen Wheatley (from University of Warwick's website)
Helen Wheatley has research interests in various aspects of British television history. She has published a range of work on popular genres in television drama in the UK, US, and beyond (particularly the studio-based drama of the 1960s and 70s), and has written a book in this area entitled Gothic Television for Manchester University Press (2006). She also has an ongoing interest in issues of television history and historiography, a topic on which she has recently edited a collection of essays: Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television Historiography (IB Tauris, 2007).


Helen is currently undertaking research on the notion of television spectacle and visual pleasure on television, and is writing about colonial wildlife television in 2011/12. She is also co-investigator on the forthcoming AHRC-funded project, A History of Television For Women in Britain, 1947-1989 (with Dr. Rachel Moseley (Warwick) and Dr. Helen Wood(De Montfort University)). As a member of the Midlands Television Research Group, Helen has undertaken research into 'lifestyle', primetime television, and the ‘real crime’ genre.

This biography was taken from the University of Warwick's official website, and can be found here.

Monday, 5 December 2011

CFP: Re-Thinking Cinema and Television History: Texts and Contexts



Re-Thinking Cinema and Television History: Texts and Contexts


A Postgraduate Conference
Tuesday 3 April 2012
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

KEYNOTE SPEAKER TO BE ANNOUNCED

ABSTRACTS OF 200-300 WORDS FOR TWENTY-MINUTE PAPERS TO BE SENT TO 
BY WEDNESDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2012

Film studies and television studies have frequently been characterised by a polarisation between theoretical approaches and historical/empirical approaches. This conference will question this perceived dichotomy and explore how elements of these two approaches can be productively combined.

Abstracts of 200-300 words are invited from postgraduate students in film studies and television studies, for twenty-minute papers interrogating film and/or TV history, and how we understand, research, and theorise these areas. We welcome specific case studies drawn from your own current research, as well as more theoretical or abstract reflections on the topics below.

Proposals are welcomed on, but not limited to, the following areas:
  • Can texts be considered outside of their contexts, or can contexts be discussed without their texts?
  • Are theoretical and historical approaches to film and television history mutually exclusive?
  • Our understanding of ‘history’: past, present and future
  • The impact of the ‘digital revolution’ on film studies and television studies: impacts on texts; questions of production, distribution, exhibition and reception; questions of archiving 
  • Missing histories: acknowledging previously unexplored territories in film and television 
  • The representation of film history and television history on television and on film 
  • The representation of history on television and film 
  • The interrogation of the concepts ‘cinematic’ and ‘televisual’ 
  • The future of film studies and television studies

Please send your abstract for a twenty-minute paper, plus a biography of 100 words to cath.postgrad@gmail.com, by Wednesday 1 February 2012.