Thursday 30 October 2014

Keele Work in Progress Seminars

Please see the CFP reminder below for the Keele Work in Progress Seminars. Please get in touch with the organisers directly.


--------------

We would like to remind you about the Humanities Work in Progress
Seminars that will be running at Keele University throughout the year.

 
 

The Research Institute for the Humanities’ Work in Progress seminar
series provides an opportunity for postgraduate students in the
Humanities to present current research and receive feedback from
fellow postgraduates and staff in a welcoming peer-led, supportive
environment. The interdisciplinary nature of Keele Postgraduate Work
in Progress seminars encourages academic exchange between disciplines
and can also benefit students who would like to receive insightful
feedback and perspectives from outside of their research field. The
seminar series welcomes work at various stages of development,
providing an engaging and creative forum to voice research ideas,
methods, and generate discussion.

We are currently looking for any PGT and PGR students who would like
to present for our Autumn/Winter seminar programme. Slots are for 20
minute papers/presentations and a 10 minute Q & A/ discussion period
so that speakers can receive constructive feedback on research in an
informal, friendly setting, and we will also be serving tea and coffee
and sandwiches.

The Work in Progress seminars will be held once a month. If you would
be interested in presenting a paper in the Autumn/Winter programme
seminars will be held on Wednesday 19th November 2014, and Wednesday
17th December 2014. We still have speaking slots available on these
dates. Or, if you are interested in presenting at a later date then
please do contact us via the following email address:
keelepgworkinprogress@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter:
@KeelePGWiP.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Gemma Scott, Hannah Bayley, Jo Taylor and Rob Croton

The Work in Progress Team

Friday 24 October 2014

SAM PGR graduate talks: "Making Your Way in Academia" / "Beyond Beatlemania"

29th of October, room 2.20, Media City 3.30-5.45

Internal Speakers: Professor Seamus Simpson and Dr Michael Goddard (CCM Research Centre, SAM)

Making Your Way in Academia (3.30PM to 4.20)

Academic careers have always been challenging to develop. Securing a PhD is often only the start of a long process presenting many exciting opportunities, but also challenges. Given the level of competition, many young scholars are now plotting a career strategy whilst they are in the throes of a PhD. In this session Michael Goddard and Seamus Simpson give a perspective on what to do, and what to avoid, in the development of an academic career. In this session, intended to be informal and interactive, we will focus on:
• Deciding whether or not an academic career is for you
• Development of a publication portfolio
• Participation in professional academic communities of interest
• The relationship between teaching and research


 
External Speaker: Dr Mark Duffett (University of Chester) (4.30PM to 5.45PM)

Beyond Beatlemania: The Shea Stadium Concert as Discursive Construct

On August 15, 1965, the Beatles played to a crowd of over 55,000 of their fans at the Shea Stadium in New York City. Five decades later, the history-making show is remembered less for the band’s thirty minute music set than for how it was drowned out by the crowd’s deafening din (Millard 2012, 25). In actuality, however, there are, however, three Shea Stadium events: one in 1965 (documented on television), another in 1966, and the third a more mythic, discursive entity. This talk examines the last of these – Shea Stadium as a discursive construct, one which came to symbolize the way that popular music fandom had entered the public sphere as a collective and emotional phenomenon. Shea has been was framed by notions of parasocial interaction to suggest that young fans did not care about music and instead ‘worshipped’ band members as hero figures. In deconstructing the discursive Shea Stadium, my aim is to rescue the event from its own history. The concert enabled the Beatles to secure their place in the emergent rock revolution and position themselves as a more serious, ‘adult’ and ‘music’ orientated band. Yet it has also become a cornerstone of stereotypical perceptions of music fandom in the public sphere.

 
 
 
 
 
Dr Mark Duffett is Senior Lecture in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Chester. His research interest is primarily in fandom and the dynamics of popular music audiences. Mark is the author of Understanding Fandom (Bloomsbury, 2013). In 2012 he was keynote speaker at the MARS conference in Finland. He is currently writing a book on Elvis Presley for Equinox Press and has recently edited a special edition of the journal Popular Music and Society. Duffett also contributed a chapter on the public image of Phil Spector to The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (Edgar, Fairclough-Isaacs, Halligan, Routledge, 2013).

Wednesday 22 October 2014

CFP: Popular Music Fandom and the Public Sphere: A One Day Symposium

CFP: Popular Music Fandom and the Public Sphere:
A One Day Symposium

University of Chester,
Friday, 10th April 2015

Keynote speaker: Dr Cornel Sandvoss, University of Surrey

In the mainstream media, postwar popular music fandom has traditionally been associated with collective displays of emotion. Yet fandom is actually about a range of things: shared tastes and personal convictions, individual subjectivity and wider community. Fandom does not exist entirely in private nor entirely in public, but is characterized a process of continual mediation between the two. Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere suggests that shared spaces of discussion have political consequences, making the crossing of the private/public boundary a political act. It is possible for fans to have relatively public experiences in private and private experiences in public. What new forms of public sphere does popular music fandom create? Edward Comentale suggested that Elvis Presley created a “public sphere within the public sphere.” Furthermore, both ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ are transforming in a networked society and neoliberal era. As communities of imagination, fan bases are providing new models for public activism based on shared values. Fandom can therefore help to indicate where conceptions of the private and public might require some reformulation. We invite papers associated with this subject on specific topics such as the following:



·      Closet popular music fandom
·      Fandom and intimacy
·      Music fan diaries and confessionals
·      Voyeurism and fandom
·      Fan mail and its representation
·      ‘Masses’ and ‘manias’ - collective fandom in the mass broadcast era
·      Fan communities as their own public spheres
·      Fandom, festivals and spectacles
·      Collecting, exhibiting and curating and music fandom
·      Genre fandom and the public sphere
·      Fan philanthropy and activism
·      Fan productivity as social commentary
·      ‘Drive by’ media, news and documentary portrayals
·      Interaction on social media
·      Fandom, affect and the public display of emotion
·      The public/private boundary and historical fan studies
·      Abject heroes and music fan shame

Papers will be 20 minutes in length with 10 minutes for questions. Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a bio of no more than 50 words to: m.duffett@chester.ac.uk before Wednesday, 19th November, 2014.

Organized by:
Dr Mark Duffett, University of Chester,
Dr Koos Zwaan, InHolland University of Applied Sciences.

This event is free to staff and students from any university - for more details go to:

http://pop-music-research.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/cfp-popular-music-fandom-and-public.html

Cofilmic Event

28 – 29 October 2014
The Comedy Store



The 3rd Cofilmic Comedy Film Festival is coming to The Comedy Store, Deansgate next week and we’d love to see you there.  This year’s event features an award ceremony where the best short film will be awarded with a £10,000 grand prize, plus various workshops in stand-up, sketch writing, improvisation and more. There will also be unmissable opportunities to network with some of the industry’s biggest movers and shakers.

Films shortlisted include:
·         The Butcher – Written by David Earl (Derek, Extras) and starring Steve Spiers (Big School)
·         Stranger Danger – Starring Prunella Scales (Howards End)
·         Ivan Blackberry – Sitcom pilot directed by Media Shorts prize winner Jason Wingard and starring Tom Binns (The IT Crowd)
·          

The University of Salford has quite a presence at this year’s event. Dr Kirsty Fairclough, Associate Director of International Music & Performance is on the judging panel alongside people such as Steve North (General Manager: Dave, Gold and Watch), Jon Montague (Commissioning Editor of Comedy for Sky1) and Rebecca Papworth (Executive Producer: BBC North).

There is a University of Salford Comedy Showcase (28 October – 18:00pm, FREE) featuring sketch comedy, improve and stand-up from some of our funniest alumni, as well as a Comedy Improvisation Workshop (28 October 16:30pm, £3) where Comedy Practices lecturer Brianne Edge will teach you how to test funny ideas and create new characters.

For the full programme of events and to book tickets visit http://bit.ly/1nyKie6

Monday 20 October 2014

PGR research conference at MMU (7/11)

Full details: http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/graduate-school/postgraduate-research-conference-2014/



Friday 17 October 2014

School of Arts and Media Graduate Programme: 2014-2015

Graduate Programme
School of Arts and Media
2014/15



It is my pleasure to present the Graduate Programme for the School of Arts and Media 2014-2015. Twelve events have been arranged for this academic year. The programme features a number of internationally renowned invited academics and practitioners, as well as academics from across the School of Arts and Media, and this year we have assembled a series of talks that explore such areas as literature and creative writing, film practice, emergent technologies, live music and performance and media and performative politics, reflecting the diverse research make-up of the School of Arts and Media. We are also presenting practical training sessions on career building, PGR assessment presentations, locating and using archives, and practice-led research.
These talks are open to all in the PGR and research communities at Salford, and beyond, and are a forum for intellectual stimulation, innovation and discussion as well as a chance to meet and socialise with fellow researchers. As in previous years, I’ll email out detailed reminders a couple of days before each talk. Very much looking forward to seeing you there!

 
Dr Michael Goddard,
Postgraduate Co-ordinator, School of Arts and Media
(m.n.goddard@salford.ac.uk)
 

Our Facebook group: SAMPGR 

Blog of PGR events in Greater Manchester:
www.mmppgrhub.blogspot.co.uk



Locations:
Room 2.20, University of Salford campus at MediaCityUK (unless otherwise stated).
http://www.salford.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/42500/MediaCity-map.pdf

Times:
Internal speakers, 3.30-4.20pm; External speakers, 4.30-5.45pm.



15th of October, 1pm Centenary Foyer, Adelphi Campus
PGR Welcome Event
Prior to the start of the Graduate Programme we are holding a special welcome event to welcome all new PGRs who registered this year. This event will be held in the foyer of the Centenary building from 1pm. Lunch is provided.


29th of October, room 2.20, Media City
Internal Speakers: Professor Seamus Simpson and Dr Michael Goddard (CCM Research Centre, SAM)
Making Your Way in Academia
Academic careers have always been challenging to develop. Securing a PhD is often only the start of a long process presenting many exciting opportunities, but also challenges. Given the level of competition, many young scholars are now plotting a career strategy whilst they are in the throes of a PhD. In this session Michael Goddard and Seamus Simpson give a perspective on what to do, and what to avoid, in the development of an academic career. In this session, intended to be informal and interactive, we will focus on:
•    Deciding whether or not an academic career is for you
•    Development of a publication portfolio
•    Participation in professional academic communities of interest
•    The relationship between teaching and research

External Speaker: Dr Mark Duffett (University of Chester)
Beyond Beatlemania: The Shea Stadium Concert as Discursive Construct
On August 15, 1965, the Beatles played to a crowd of over 55,000 of their fans at the Shea Stadium in New York City. Five decades later, the history-making show is remembered less for the band’s thirty minute music set than for how it was drowned out by the crowd’s deafening din (Millard 2012, 25). In actuality, however, there are, however, three Shea Stadium events: one in 1965 (documented on television), another in 1966, and the third a more mythic, discursive entity. This talk examines the last of these – Shea Stadium as a discursive construct, one which came to symbolize the way that popular music fandom had entered the public sphere as a collective and emotional phenomenon. Shea has been was framed by notions of parasocial interaction to suggest that young fans did not care about music and instead ‘worshipped’ band members as hero figures. In deconstructing the discursive Shea Stadium, my aim is to rescue the event from its own history. The concert enabled the Beatles to secure their place in the emergent rock revolution and position themselves as a more serious, ‘adult’ and ‘music’ orientated band. Yet it has also become a cornerstone of stereotypical perceptions of music fandom in the public sphere.

Dr Mark Duffett is Senior Lecture in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Chester. His research interest is primarily in fandom and the dynamics of popular music audiences. Mark is the author of Understanding Fandom (Bloomsbury, 2013). He is currently writing a book on Elvis Presley for Equinox Press and has recently edited a special edition of the journal Popular Music and Society. Mark has also contributed a chapter on the public image of Phil Spector to The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (Rob Edgar, Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Benjamin Halligan, Routledge, 2013).


12th of November, Room 2.19, Media City
Internal Speaker: Dr Benjamin Halligan (Director of Postgraduate Research, CASS)
Progression Points, Regulations, Submissions and Vivas
This session with review paperwork required by all PGRs across the course of the year, offer tips for successful completion and registration, and offer guidance on the “before and after” of the Viva experience.

External Speaker: Terry Victor (freelance playwright and performer)
Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird
Terry Victor’s practice-led research talk will focus on his Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird, a multi-media exploration of gestural slang as immersive theatre and gallery installation: physical-verbatim theatre, by turns playful, dark, romantic, surprising and dangerous, blending live action with documentary visuals. The Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird project is conceived and directed by Terry Victor with choreography by Rob McNeill. Hundreds of everyday gestures, familiar and fanciful, dance through their fractured narratives. This is thought to be the first time anyone has ever attempted to stage a dictionary, and doing so presents a number of interesting challenges. The notion of staging some form of dictionary has challenged our Artistic Director for a number of years. The two main threads in his professional life are creative performance and slang linguistics - the gestural vocabulary of slang is where they meet and the sparks fly.
Terry Victor is a playwright, storyteller, comedy sketch writer, short story and article writer plus dictionary compiler. He combines writing with a career as an actor and performer. He has scripted numerous "murder mystery" events. Terry’s New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English was published with Routledge in 2005. Further titles are contracted to follow. He is a regular contributor to the BBC as lexicographer, book reviewer and ranconteur.


17th and 18th of November:
International Conference: Challenging Media Landscapes
The theme of the Challenging Media Landscapes conference is Exploring Media Choice and Freedom. It is hosted and organized by the University of Salford at MediacityUK and is part of the five day 2014 Salford International Media Festival. The aim of the 2014 Challenging Media Landscapes conference is to undertake an exploration of a range of the main conceptual and practice based issues which have framed the academic analysis of ideas, and practical expressions and critiques of freedom and choice in media environments over the course of at least the last decade.

Keynote speakers:
Professor Milton Mueller (Syracuse University, USA)
Professor Katharine Sarikakis (University of Vienna, Austria)


26th of November, Room 2.19, Media City
Internal Speaker: Caroline Magennis (English, SAM)
Beyond the Past: Theoretical approaches to ‘post’-conflict culture
This paper seeks to complicate the ways in which trauma theory has been readily applied to post-conflict literature and culture, with a focus on Northern Ireland. It will examine the ways in which discourses of conflict resolution can be complicated by attitudes to narrative and memory in contemporary fiction and the ways in which theoretical work on grief, affect and hope can be productively used to discuss these texts. The aim is to explain the broad theoretical basis for my current work on the Northern Irish novel, so as to start conversations with colleagues and post-graduate students engaged in work around memory, history and culture.

Dr Magennis is a Lecturer in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature at the University of Salford. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary literature, with particular intellectual interests in contemporary fiction, Irish literature, Northern Irish cultural production and critical theory. She is the author of Sons of Ulster: Masculinities and the Contemporary Northern Irish Novel. She sits on the Executive Council for the British Association for Irish Studies and on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Irish Studies Review.

External Speaker: Dr K. M. Sumathi (Visiting Scholar in English)
Marriage as the Medium of Exploitation in Wife by Bharati Mukherjee       
This talk highlights marriage as the medium of exploitation in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife. Women are seen as indissoluble from the family and most functions assigned to family are indirectly assigned to women. The family places mammoth obligations on women’s shoulders and contours on their place and rewards in the toil market their roles in local, national and international affairs.  Marriages are rooted in the Indian tradition: they are arranged by the family, and the people concerned have no choice. Social anxiety and social convention lead to the failure of marriages but since divorce is not allowed, people still have to live with each other. As a consequence, the characters experience alienation, and the terrible pressure children are subjected to, generally has its roots in failed marriages. Let us take the case of women: they cannot find fulfillment in marriage. The modern woman lives in a society dominated by men and marriage recurrently brings annihilation of the wife’s individual persona. The view embodied female cohort Amit Basu is no company for Dimple, they are mismatched. Mukherjee takes up the quandary of a wife’s adjustments in her husband’s home.
       
Dr.K. M. Sumathi, a specialist in Indian Writing in English, has 16 years of teaching experience and 10 years of Research experience (and has supervised 3 PhD scholars). She is the Recipient of the First Time Speaker Award instituted by the British Council, UK, and chaired at the First International Conference of the English Language Teachers Association of India (ELTAI) in association with British Council, Chennai, Tamilnadu on 3 and 4 of Feb 2005. She was also awarded a Major Research Project (2011-2013) funded by University Grants Commission of  India for her project entitled Strengthening Communication and Vocational Skills of the Differently Abled for Self-Employability in Dindigul District, Tamilnadu, India. She was competitively selected as an Academic Visitor to visit University of Salford this year.


10th of December, Room 2.20, Media City
Internal: Dr Kate Adams (English, SAM)
Transforming Us: Beyond the Utopian Moment.
After looking at the ways in which experiential participatory theatre opens up the potential for transformative moments of performance, I became interested in two things: first the language we use to talk about the transformative in performance and second, the way processes of transformation actually work and how the experiences we are able to generate in an artistic context map on to wider personal and sociopolitical change. This talk will discuss the practice based research I have been working on with choreographer Medie Megas over the past year and a half, which explores this on a formal level, through textual and movement based experiments with repetition and transformation.  In our work we refer to these contrasting experiences of transformation as closed or open systems where the closed system of transformation moves between two well defined points and the open begins from a fixed point and works outwards from it. This model acts as a frame for the practical research tasks and processes during the research phase and more recently, the creative approach to improvisation and devising we have taken in making Transforming Me: a Bilingual Solo, Medie’s solo performance at the Mir Festival in November. In terms of theoretical framing, the practice we have done brings into question the focus in performance research on the notion of the transformative as a bounded moment. I draw on Griselda Pollock and Bracha Ettinger in this presentation to explore how the sharing of intense emotional experience, an ‘encounter’ within a liminal space can open up an enduring experience of trans-subjective transformation and how stasis, duration, repetition and latency form a part of that.

… followed by Christmas Social: The Dock Bar, MCUK


13-17 January 2015, MCUK
Graduate Week: PGR Training and Presentations
A week of talks, workshops, discussions and presentations designed for the Postgraduate Researchers in the School of Arts and Media and convened by Dr Benjamin Halligan. A full programme will be published in December.


11th of February
Internal Speaker: Annabelle Waller (CCM, SAM)
Media Practice Based Academic Research and the PhD by Published Works
Annabelle Waller, who spent 16 years as TV producer and director in industry before joining Salford University will be talking about the options for practice based academic research and, in particular, different routes to undertaking a PhD as a media practitioner. She will talk about her own PhD research on Meta Television which draws heavily on the TV programmes she made in industry and how choosing to do a PhD By Published Works, where those works may be media artefacts, could work as a route for other practitioner/researchers.

External Speaker: Dr Noha Mellor
The Egyptian Dream: On Egyptian national identity and the uprisings
After being celebrated by Barack Obama as “the power of human dignity”, the 2011-Egyptian revolution later turned into violent outbreaks and ongoing socio-ideological fragmentation. In this lecture, I discuss one of the central problems in Egypt in post-independence era, namely the inability of its leaders to construct a coherent and solid ideology that could appeal and unite the majority of Egyptians. Indeed, there exist rhetorical and social strategies of inclusion and exclusion, thereby dividing society into those who are regarded as true representatives of Egypt versus others who may constitute an economic, political or social burden. I’ll discuss the role of religion, education, language and culture in constructing this sense of Egyptian-ness and how the issue of identity has been used in political discourse. 

Professor Noha Mellor’s main research interests are Arab journalism, mediated religion and media and gender. Besides her academic experience, she has previous professional experience in journalism as News Producer both for the Danish Broadcasting and the BBC World Service, and contributed to international media outlets such as the New York Times and Financial Times. She contributes her expertise in Arab journalism to current trans-national initiatives to promote peace such as the UN Alliance of Civilizations, and was also the EUROMED and Media representative at the EU Ministerial Meeting on Culture, 30 May 2008, Athens. Books include Modern Arab Journalism (Edinburgh), Arab Media Industries (Polity) and, forthcoming, Cyber Islam and Social Media and the Pan-Arab Newsroom.

25th of February
Special Screening Event: Professor Erik Knudsen (CCM research centre). The session will last from 3.30-5.30.
Perspectives on Cinematic Narrative: The Raven on the Jetty
Professor Erik Knudsen, will give a presentation entitled “Perspectives on Cinematic Narrative: exploring through creative practice the transcendental narrative as an alternative to dominant narrative structures in film”.  Erik will screen and discuss his latest feature film, The Raven on the Jetty, in the context of its research aims and objectives. The format for this meeting will be a brief introduction highlighting some of the questions and problems Erik is exploring around cinematic narrative, screening of The Raven on the Jetty concluding with a short Q & A session.

11th of March
Internal Speakers: Rosie Miller and Jonathan Carson
Combining practice based and non-practice based research
This session examines strategies for students interested in combining practiced based and non-practice based research. It will also discuss the value of this combining especially in relation to reflexive thinking and the development of research work and a research profile. The session will be led by collaborative artists Carson & Miller.

External Speaker: Dr William Brown (Surrey Roehampton)
Zero Budget Filmmaking: Why It Matters (and Why I Do It)
In this talk, I will discuss various forms of zero- to low-budget filmmaking from across the globe, including Uruguay, China, Iran, the Philippines, South Africa and the USA. I shall contend that zero budget filmmaking is, in the contemporary era, enabled by digital technology – and that the technology, in conjunction with the low budget, often leads to formal innovation that makes of this kind of filmmaking a vibrant and important form. Nonetheless, distribution remains a key issue for such films and filmmakers, in spite of the utopian promise of online distribution and exhibition sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. What is more, while often supportive of such films, film festivals are forced increasingly to be risk-averse in their film choices. Perhaps this means that academia is the realm where zero-budget filmmaking might thrive. Indeed, I query that the academic sphere is the best hope for zero-budget filmmakers, among whom I include myself: cheap enough to be formally adventurous, too cheap for festivals to risk losing an audience for.

William Brown is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the author of Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (Berghahn, 2013) and Global Digital Cinema: Cinema and the Multitude (Berghahn, forthcoming). He is the co-author, with Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin, of Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe (St Andrews Film Studies, 2010) and the co-editor, with David Martin-Jones, of Deleuze and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). He has also directed several zero- to low-budget films, including En Attendant Godard (2009), Afterimages (2010) and Common Ground (2012). He hopefully will also finish Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux (2013) by the time he gives this talk.

18th of March
Internal Speaker: Professor Andy Miah (Chair in Science Communication and Digital Media, Salford)
OK Glass? The Aspirations and Anxieties of the Google Glass Generation. 
This article explores online discourses about Google Glass, over a period where the devices were not yet available. It examines the aspirations and anxieties of the developers and the perspectives of (potential) user groups, so as to develop an understanding of how people imagine the impact of wearable technologies on society. The research draws on videos made by various parties, which show Google Glass in use, but which also parody the discourse surround its transformative potential. It also the content within the Google Glass lens itself - the lens within the lens - providing an additional layer of content and narrative about Glass. Analyses also take place on content related to the Google Glass promotional campaign #ifihadglass, teasing out the ways in which the use of Glass was imagined. The conclusions speak to the imagined, transformative potential of Glass specifically and wearable technologies generally, which may set a new research agenda for the next ten years in studies of digital culture.

External Speaker: Professor Tim Wall (Birmingham City University
Popular Music and the BBC
This presentation will focus on three moments in the history of the BBC’s relationship with popular music. I’ll examine the way that jazz entered broadcasts of the early BBC in the 1920s and 30s, and especially the way the new corporation struggled to deal with the idea that jazz was a sophisticated metropolitan form of entertainment, while others saw it as a radical new form of music that provided a strong sense of a new cultural identity to its listeners. It is interesting to note that the BBC was still struggling with these ideas in the late 1960s when the BBC completely reorganised its radio broadcasting into Radios One to Four. This is often seen as the moment in which the BBC accepted the challenge of the sea-based pilots but, as I will show, it is far more complex than this, and these endeavours resulted in a radical, if compromised, attempt to rethink popular music. I’ll complete the analysis with a discussion of the Later…. and X Factor. As twenty-first century popular music television, these programmes represent very different institutional takes on discourses of popular music and the way it can be mediated for domestic consumption. Rather ambitiously, I’ll use very different approaches to understand each of these moments, framing the 1920s by focusing on the (then) new wired and wireless technologies, grappling with the 1960s through ideas of institutionalised culture, and opening up today’s BBC using Barthesian ideas of mythology. Here I’m consciously seeking to study each period using a framework that is usually used to study other moments. In doing so I hope to open up some fundamental questions about what we think we know about music and the BBC, and about method and insight. This should be an interesting intellectual provocation for anyone studying media and/or music culture.

Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies and Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. He researches into the production and consumption cultures around popular music and radio, and work on knowledge exchange projects with music and radio organisations and the wider creative industries. Most recently he has been applying insights from music to activism and citizen journalism in the Arab region. His recent publications have included the second edition of his book Studying Popular Music Culture, and articles on music radio online, punk fanzines, the transistor radio, personal music listening, popular music on television, television music histories, jazz collectives, Duke Ellington on the radio, The X Factor and jazz on the BBC 1922 to 1955.


22nd of April
Internal Speaker:  Dr Ian Johnston (Archives & Special Collections Coordinator, Library, University of Salford))
Locating and using Archives for Research
The session will show you why looking at archive material can help enhance your original research. It will demonstrate how to use online research tools to find relevant material for your research topic and you will get the opportunity to have a go yourself.

External Speaker: Dr Alice O’Grady (University of Leeds)
Safe as Houses? Guerilla performance and raving with police
Safe as Houses? is a recent guerilla theatre project led by Dr Alice O'Grady in conjunction with West Yorkshire Police, the School of Health Care, Leeds Beckett University’s Northern Film School and Leeds University Union's Knowledge campaign. The piece addressed the emotional impact of crime and burglary and took place in multiple locations, namely people's living rooms, contemporaneously across the Hyde Park area of Leeds, culminating in a rave in a church. Blending her research interests in participatory performance, risk and underground dance culture, the project stretched both ethical and practical boundaries in order to meet its aims. Alice will discuss the dynamics of the event and its outcomes, examining the challenges of working with multiple agencies on a project that blurs the boundaries between practice and research. 

Dr. Alice O'Grady is Associate Professor in Applied Performance in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds. With a background in education her expertise lies in using performance as a means of promoting social agency and engagement. Her research adopts auto-ethnographic methodologies to explore modes of participation, play and performance especially within the contexts of popular music festivals and underground club culture. She is a member of the editorial team for Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture.


6th of May
Internal Speaker: Dr. Gillian James
Making the most of social media to aid your research profile

You may be used to using social media to stay in touch with friends. However, it is also a very powerful tool for making connections with others researching in your field, whether your research is academic or practice-based. This session looks at optimising the use of:
Twitter
Facebook
Linkedin
We explore the most useful aspect of each of these platforms and look at several scenarios and establish which platform is the most appropriate tool for each one. In addition we look at setting up a blog and maintaining it in an effective way, possibly converting it into a full-blown web site. Most people would probably not want to use all of these tools, at least at first. The session will help you establish what is right for you.

External Speaker: Dr Alexei Penzin, (What is to be Done? Collective/University of Wolverhampton)
The Capitalist Continuum: Sleep, Vigilance and Modern Power
Departing from criticisms addressed to the Jonathan Crary’s recent book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (Verso, 2013) and referring to some other works in emergent field of critical sleep studies, I would like to present my own research project, suggesting an account of sleep in the contemporary or “terminal” capitalism. Its essential feature, in my view, is the uninterrupted or permanently “wakeful” continuity of production, exchange, consumption, communication and control. Marx stated already in Capital, vol. 1: “Capitalist production … drives, by its inherent nature, towards the appropriation of labor throughout the whole of the 24 hours in the day”. Maybe, instead of asking desperate though understandable question “when and how, finally, will capitalism end? The Left critique would better investigate this monstrous continuity itself. So the key questions for this account would be: what would be a genealogy of this obsessive continuity of contemporary capitalism? Is sleep just the last “natural barrier”–the term Marx used in the Grundrisse–in front of complete colonization of society by the incessant forms of life, shaped by 24/7 drive of capitalist production? How can the figure of sleeper be related to the constitution of a resisting subjectivity? Do we need a specific ontology to conceptualize and crack the oppressive continuity?

Alexei Penzin is Reader at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Wolverhampton (UK), and Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His major fields of interest are philosophical anthropology, Marxism, Soviet and post-Soviet studies, and the philosophy of art. He lectures widely on these topics and has participated in many international research projects, seminars, and symposia. Penzin has written numerous articles including the essay Rex Exsomnis: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012). Alexei is a member of the group Chto Delat (What is to Be Done?), which works in the space between theory, art, and political activism. Penzin is also a member of editorial boards of the journal Stasis (Saint-Petersburg) and the Moscow Art Magazine. He currently lives and works between London and Moscow.


20th of May
External Speaker: Professor Cahal McLaughlin (Creative Arts, Queens University of Belfast)
The Prisons Memory Archive: representing memories from a conflict
The Prisons Memory Archive is investigating ways that narratives of a conflicted past are negotiated in a contested present in Ireland. The Haas (2013), Eames-Bradley (2009), and the Bloomfield (1998) Reports all recommended storytelling as a way of engaging with this issue that is both politically and psychically sensitive. Given the government’s failed attempts at established an official process for addressing the legacy of the past, there are a number of community and academic initiatives that have taken up this task. The Prisons Memory Archive is one such project, whose aim is to research the possibilities of engaging with the story of the ‘other’ in a society that is emerging from decades of political violence. The Prisons Memory Archive (PMA) filmed interviews back inside the prisons with those who passed through the Maze and Long Kesh Prison and Armagh Gaol, which were both touchstone and tinderbox during the 30 years of violent conflict in the North of Ireland. Using protocols of co-ownership, inclusivity and life-story telling, we filmed a range of participants including prison staff, prisoners, visitors, teachers, chaplains and probation officers.


Cahal McLaughlin is chair of Film Studies at Queens University Belfast. He is a documentary filmmaker and director of the Prisons Memory Archive. His latest films are We Were There (2014) on the role of women in the Maze and Long Kesh Prison, and We Never Give Up II (2012) on reparations in South Africa. His publications include Recording Memories from Political Conflict: a filmmakers journey (2010: Intellect).

External Speaker: Catherine Wheatley (Kings College London)
John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary, a place between faith and uncertainty.
Following the last days of Catholic priest Father James (Brendan Gleeson), John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary contemplates the place of religion in contemporary Ireland, a country hit badly by the economic collapse and struggling with revelations of sexual abuse by priests and its institutional covering-up. McDonagh describes the film thus: “The mise en scène indebted to Andrew Wyeth. The philosophy to Jean Améry. The transcendental style inspired by Robert Bresson.” Yet while the film’s style and subject matter place it firmly in a cinematic tradition which starts with Carl Dreyer and moves through Bresson to, in different ways, Lars von Trier and Terrence Malick, the inclusion of dark humour reframes its consideration of faith and uncertainty. In my talk, I want to pay particular attention to how the director negotiates between satire and the serious possibility of grace in order to create a gap in which a genuine ambivalence towards the film’s subject matter can arise. We can connect this gap, this space which is inhabited by both Father James and by the film’s spectators to Gillian Rose’s concept of “the broken middle”, a place suspended between immanence and transcendence (Rose, 1992). This is precisely the position in which Father James finds himself. But this, says Rose, is where the sacred is to be found: in the space between religion and secularity; the personal and the institutional; faith and cynicism. Finally, I will briefly consider the film’s reception amongst critics and audiences, with whom Calvary has seen surprising success. I want to ask whether this critical success comes in spite or because of the fact that the film is, to quote Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, “far less anti-clerical than one might expect” (Bradshaw, 2014).

Catherine Wheatley is Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London. She has published books on the films of Michael Haneke, Film and Ethics, and French Film in transit. Catherine is a regular contributor to Sight and Sound Magazine, and is currently writing a monograph on iterations of Christianity in contemporary European Cinema.


3rd of June
Internal Speaker: Dr Benjamin Halligan (Director of Postgraduate Research Studies, CASS)
“Slide Away”: PowerPoint Presentations and PhD Panels
This session will consider the do's and don'ts of PowerPoint presentations for IAs, IEs and Vivas. There is a minimum expectation that such presentations will be delivered by the candidate, but there is little consideration as to how they are to introduce, summarise, reflect and enhance the work under examination. Often a badly conceived and executed PowerPoint presentation will ensure that the candidate gets off to exactly the wrong kind of start! This session will provide some strategies for a good use of a PowerPoint presentation, in the context of a discussion about the challenges of talking about often highly complex research and analysis.


External Speakers: Dr Dean Lockwood and Dr Rob Coley
Dream of the Drone
Our illustrated talk begins by diagramming an oneiric Lincolnshire in which puzzle pieces of the drone enigma are gathered and condensed. In preparation for World War 3, we commence with a flying lesson in Kirton-on-Lindsey before journeying on to RAF Tealby Moor, in the quantum environs of which we will map a confluence of magic, mediation, flight and warfare. We are constructing our own ‘Perturbative Adjacent Field’, but it will not be complete until we conclude the expedition four miles south of Lincoln, at RAF Waddington. Finally, in Waddington’s drone room, we can at last be ‘diverted’ into new realms of desire. The drone is the ‘signature device of the present moment’ (Noys) and a metaphysics of the drone, foregrounding divine powers of search and destroy, has captured the imaginations of many. What is at stake in the dream of the drone? Through what vectors is the drone exerting its transformative impact upon philosophy, media, aesthetics, social and cultural theory and how might these disciplines exploit the fabulatory function of the drone?

Rob Coley and Dean Lockwood lecture in the School of Film and Media at the University of Lincoln. In collaboration they have recently produced a book for Zero, Cloud Time, on the enclosure of the virtual by cloud computing, and are currently completing Photography in the Middle: Dispatches on Media Ecologies and Aesthetics for Punctum Books. They are also guest editors of the forthcoming 2015 issue of the journal, Culture Machine, which will focus on the topic of drone culture.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Manchester Uni talks for the current academic year

CIDRAL Calendar of Events 2014-2015: 
SALC, The University of Manchester

Semester One

Manuele Gragnolati (Oxford)
16 October 2014
4pm - 7pm
University Place 3.211

Ann Rigney (Utrecht)
Public Lecture: 22 October 2014 5pm - 7pm
John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre
Postgraduate Masterclass: 23 October 2014 10am-12pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Bob Jessop (Lancaster)
6 November 2014
12pm - 2pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Stefan Collini (Cambridge)
25 November 2014
5pm - 7pm
Samuel Alexander Lecture Theatre

Rachel Fensham (Melbourne)
26 November 2014
2pm - 4pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Rachel Fensham (Melbourne)
2 December 2014
5pm - 7pm
Venue tbc

Speakers include: Marianne Maeckelbergh (Leiden)
Workshop: 4 December 9.30am – 5pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18
Postgraduate Masterclass: 5 December 9.30am – 2pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Speakers include Martin Bright (The Creative Society)
10 December 2014
Venue & Times tbc

Semester Two

CIDRAL Roundtable with Adam Phillips
Adam Phillips (Freelance Psychoanalyst and Writer)
4 February 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc

Anastasia Valassopoulos (EAC)
11 February 2015
2pm - 4pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Poetry Reading in Centre for New Writing
Denise Riley (UEA)
16 February 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc
(Jointly with CNW)

CIDRAL Public Lecture: On the Lapidary Style
Denise Riley (UEA)
17 February 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc

CIDRAL Theory Intensive on Queer Theory
J. Jack Halberstam
25 February 2015 1pm -3pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Vincenzo Susca (Sorbonne)
4 March 2015
2pm - 4pm
Ellen Wilkinson C1.18

Susan Stewart (Princeton)
16 March 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tb
(Jointly with the CNW)

CIDRAL Public Lecture: Poetry, Thinking, and the Senses
Susan Stewart (Princeton)
17 March 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc

Charles Zika (Melbourne)
14 April 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tb
(Jointly with History)


CIDRAL masterclass: The History of Emotions and Visual Culture
Charles Zika (Melbourne)
15 April 2015
10am – 12pm
Venue tbc

Elisabeth Bronfen (Zurich)
28 April 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc

CIDRAL masterclass
Elisabeth Bronfen (Zurich)
29 April 2015
10am – 12pm
Venue tbc

Robyn Wiegman (Duke)
5 May 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc

Robyn Wiegman (Duke)
6 May 2015
10am – 12pm
Venue tbc

Annette Kuhn (Queen Mary)
12 May 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc

Dick Hebdige (Art institute, UC Santa Barbara)
2 June 2015
5pm – 7pm
Venue tbc
(Jointly with CRESC)

Dick Hebdige (Art institute, UC Santa Barbara)
3 June 2015
10am – 12pm
Venue tbc