The new issue of Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media is now online. ·4 days ago by Dustin Goltz
http://www.ejumpcut.org/
A cornucopia of original and sprightly articles:
Lars von Trier meets Takashi Miike
Tony Scott and Postclassical Hollywood Cinema
A reception analysis of Brokeback Mountain
Babel commercializing innovation
Race and Queers in Far From Heaven and Transamerica
Cruising through Goodbye, Dragon Inn
New media from Palestine
5 discussions of Latin American films
East German westerns celebrating Native Americans
George Clooney’s American TV
Queer youth on YouTube
Audio Podcasting
Mock Video Blogs
9/11 Truth movement videos
Hostel II and torture porn
Dark Water and fear of mothering
Marketing Asia Extreme horror
And plenty more. Free. Online. Now.
Take a look. Regards, Julia
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ·11 days ago by Natasha Patterson
Dyke Moms, Donor Dads, and Reconceiving the Queer Family: An Anthology
You’re an out dyke about town. You meet someone, shack up, get a cat. You survive the non-monogamy negotiations and a renovation, get jobs in your fields, do lots of therapy, and decide it’s time to expand beyond your twosome into the world of parenthood. Being enterprising women with a solid do-it-yourself streak, you decide to forgo the impersonality and expense of a sperm bank and ask Tony, your gay friend from college, to donate some sperm to the cause. What could be simpler? A few months, a few syringes, some egg white and folic acid, a bit of awkwardness, and baby will make three.
Uh, make that four. Or five. Or maybe six. Because Tony (who, oddly, didn’t just miraculously vaporize as soon as the child was conceived) has a mother and a partner, both of whom want a relationship to the child. Like it or not, baby’s made something a lot more than what you bargained for. But what?
This anthology, to be published in Spring 2009 by Toronto’s Insomniac Press, will explore, through personal essays andfirst-person accounts, the phenomenon of lesbian couples (and the occasional single dyke) who choose a male friend or acquaintance, rather than an anonymous sperm donor, to father their children.
Submit!
With no clear models to follow, this new version of the queer family is creating its own. That’s where this anthology comes in. We are seeking stories that are funny, touching, heartbreaking, provocative, thoughtful — and very, very relevant to the new queer (and queer-positive) family.
We are looking for creative non-fiction and first-person accounts by- lesbian mothers who have chosen known sperm donors in order to conceive;
- gay and straight men who have become sperm donors to lesbian mothers;
- their partners, their children, and other invested parties.
Submissions might explore (but should not be limited to) the following issues and themes:
- When baby-making doesn’t take or takes too long; dealing with infertility, miscarriage, or even routine insemination is difficult enough for the average couple, so what happens when the donor also becomes emotionally involved? What happens when negotiations break down?
- Can his parents come to visit? Is it rude to insist they stay in a hotel? With new family configurations come new questions of etiquette. How to deal gracefully (or at least sanely) with an often unexpected extended family.
- The other mother: What happens to the experience of non-biological mothers when a biological “Dad” is also part of the picture? Non-biological mothers in lesbian partnerships have long had to deal with issues of belonging and recognition in a society that is slow to recognize them as parents. Non-biological moms talk about the processes and challenges of claiming their roles as primary parents.
- “Daddy” doesn’t mean what it used to! How does the choice to become a donor redefine circles of gay male friends and the identities of gay men? From sperm count and motility to number of children fathered, the “donor” phenomenon has sparked new concerns and conversations among gay men.
- My husband is sleeping with lesbians! What does it mean when your partner is the father of the new baby — but the baby isn’t yours? From straight women who never thought they wanted kids to gay men who must put up with their boyfriends’ new “focus,” the new “donor” family has far-reaching implications.
- What if the birth changes everything? The donor who didn’t want to be overly involved is smitten with “his” new son or daughter. On top of figuring out how to live with a newborn, the new moms must find a way to negotiate the demands of a relationship they didn’t realize they were entering into.
- Gay divorce: What happens to the donor if the moms split up? What happens when the relationship between moms and donor deteriorates?
To submit, send two double-spaced hard copies and an electronic copy on disc (in .rtf format) to the address below. Submissions should not exceed 15 pages or 7,500 words. Please left-justify your submission and use a serif font (e.g., Times New Roman) in 12-point size.
Please include your name, address, telephone number, email address, and a brief bio (100 words). Submissions will not be returned. Emailed submissions will not be considered.
Deadline for Submissions: September 15, 2008
Contact us:
Chloe Brushwood Rose & Susan Goldberg, Editors
Reconceiving Anthology
c/o Dr. Chloe Brushwood Rose
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
Canada
reconceivinganthology@gmail.com
New Issue: Darkmatter ·12 days ago by Natasha Patterson
Racism in the Closet: Interrogating Postcolonial Sexuality
Special issue of darkmatter journal:http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/category/issues/3-post-colonial-sexuality/
As sexuality has come to play a major role in shaping dominant Western attitudes towards cultural difference, scholars and activists the world over are becoming starkly aware of the normative racial bias in hegemonic forms of sexual politics. This issue explores the complex and controversial relationship between discourses of race and sexuality, particularly in the context of the War on Terror.
With contributions from:
Henriette Gunkel, Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, Suzanne Lenon, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Zanele Muholi, Ben Pitcher, Silvia Posocco, Jasbir Puar, Catherine Raissiguier, Damien Riggs.
--CALL FOR PAPERS--Postwar Queer Underground Cinema, 1950-1968 ·39 days ago by Dustin Goltz
A Conference at Yale University, February 20-21, 2009
Organized by the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities
Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963), and Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls (1966) are widely regarded as some of the most important and influential films of postwar underground cinema. But cinema studies has only recently begun to take seriously the fact that Anger, Smith, and Warhol were gay filmmakers whose films developed a queer aesthetic to explore questions of queer subjectivity and world-making. Moreover, the field has still barely registered the fact that they were not just brilliant auteurs working in isolation but were enmeshed in and influenced by a larger circle of mostly New York-based queer filmmakers, performers, writers, and artists.
This conference seeks to map the contours and assess the significance of this wider cultural formation, which we call postwar queer underground cinema. This cinema largely developed in the 1950s and 60s in the ferment of downtown New York, the scene of complex interactions, collaborations, and conflicts between mostly gay or bisexual male filmmakers and critics and mostly heterosexual but resolutely anti-heteronormative female (and some male) filmmakers as well as between white, Puerto Rican, African American, bohemian, and gay cultures, communities, and artists. We hope to explore the work, interrelationships, and influence of Marie Menken, Willard Maas, Ben Moore, Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas, Barbara Rubin, José Rodriguez-Soltero, Gregory Markopoulos, Mario Montez, Naomi Levine, Shirley Clarke, Charles Boultenhouse, and Parker Tyler, among others, as well as Anger, Smith, and Warhol.
Papers could focus on neglected individual filmmakers in this scene as well as on groups of filmmakers and other avant-garde artists with the purpose of charting and analyzing the social networks, collaborations, and conflicts that shaped the queer underground, as well as its broader urban, social, cultural, and political sources and ramifications. (Every paper should discuss more than a single filmmaker or film.) Papers might also address questions such as: Did queer underground filmmakers develop a distinctive queer aesthetic, and if so, what were its traits and what was its relationship to and influence on the broader avant-garde? How did underground films explore queer subjectivity, imagine queer futures, or destabilize the boundaries between hetero and homo—and what did it mean that such films were seen and discussed so widely by avant-garde audiences? What was the significance of the queer underground to gay politics and to the politics of the avant-garde as a whole in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly at a time when screening queer films such as Flaming Creatures or Chant d’Amour often provoked the police to shut down avant-garde cinema venues? What was the (social, aesthetic, political) relationship of the film underground to the queer underground theater and arts scenes, to the multiracial social worlds and cultures of postwar New York City, and to other regional avant-gardes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas?
Confirmed participants include Callie Angel (Whitney Museum of Art), Douglas Crimp (Rochester), Jennifer Doyle (UC-Riverside), Tom Gunning (Chicago), Melissa Ragona (Carnegie-Mellon), and Ann Reynolds (UT-Austin), plus the playwright Robert Heide, filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and critic Amy Taubin.
The conference will consist of both public sessions and closed working sessions. Public sessions will feature public lectures, a panel of artists and critics reflecting on the underground scene they witnessed, two evenings of performances, film screenings, and panel discussions, and an exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library displaying the library’s considerable holdings of papers bearing on the conference theme.
The heart of the conference will consist of a series of closed working sessions at which a dozen or so participants discuss one another’s pre-circulated papers. Although presenters may show illustrative film clips and make introductory remarks, most time will be devoted to discussion—not a reading—of the papers. Our hope is that this format will produce a more focused, sustained, and productive conversation than public conferences often do.
This call solicits proposals for papers for the closed sessions. Proposals should consist of (1) a 750-word précis of the paper, which clearly indicates how it speaks to the conference theme, and (2) a 1-2 page c.v. Proposals should be submitted as e-mail attachments to Ron Gregg ronald.gregg@yale.edu by May 15, 2008. Please also direct any inquiries about the conference to him.Presenters are expected to submit the complete 20-25 (double-spaced) page paper by December 1, 2008. The conference will cover the travel, lodging, and meals of presenters. We intend to produce an edited collection based on revised versions of the papers.
The conference is being organized by George Chauncey (Yale), Ron Gregg (Yale), and Juan Suárez (Murcia) on behalf of the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities (YRIHS). It has received additional support from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Whitney Humanities Center, the Department of the History of Art, the World Performance Project, the Department of Theater Studies, and the Film Studies Program. Check the YRIHS’ web site for conference updates: http://www.yale.edu/yrihs/
On cultural translation ·45 days ago by Vasiliki Sirakouli
The transnational multi-year research project translate aims at exploring the political articulation of the notion of cultural translation in artistic practices as well as in political social movements through a number of arts and exhibition projects, discursive events and networking practices from 2005 to 2008.
translate starts from a thorough critique of the notion of translation. This has become the key metaphor of contemporary cultural discourse in a postdialectical era, regarded as having overcome binary divisions and metaphysical thinking, providing a model for a process of unceasing mediation beyond fixed identities and stable border lines. Derived from concrete literary and linguistic practice, the notion has taken on an overburdened role, seemingly resolving any problem from universality to transnational subjectivities, obsessively translating political and social processes into cultural ones.
The inflationary use of the concept has concealed the radical consequences that a practical implementation of cultural translation would have for the realm of national culture, which is based on constructing exclusive national canons, national systems of education, and thus national cultural elites, which are firmly entrenched in the stable material conditions that support them. Any real attempt to promote cultural translation would invariably change a system in which global culture is the result of the addition of national ones. The constituencies of cultural translation have been identified by Etienne Balibar as cosmopolitans and migrants or other groups, which are not supported by the traditional infrastructure of national culture or by the political structure of the nation state; but is there any concrete sphere of social or political articulation today for them? Where would that sphere be located? Along which positive categories would it have to be conceived of, and by what kind of practices would it have to be promoted? Is cultural translation a way of unfolding difference rather than managing it? What practical consequences does it have for working in a transnational framework?
The project follows these questions along four thematic strands: critique of culturalisation, processes of social recomposition, beyond postcolonialism: the production of the global common, practices of multilinguality vs. national language-policies
Hito Steyerl: translate. Beyond Culture: The Politics of Translation
http://translate.eipcp.net
Popular Music Studies conference ·46 days ago by Vasiliki Sirakouli
Call for Papers
Popular Music Studies: Problems, Disputes, Questions, University of Glasgow,
12-14 September 2008.
The biennial conference of the UK and Ireland branch of IASPM will be hosted
by the Department of Music at the University of Glasgow between 12 and 14
September 2008.
Conference Theme
The aim of this conference is to address the issues that have in recent
years excited most conversation and disagreement among IASPM members.
Papers are invited on three topics in particular.
Music and National Identity
[When, if ever, can music usefully be described in national terms? (English
or Scottish folk? Welsh or Irish rock?) What are the problems of national
music policies? Should popular music studies reject the concept of the
nation entirely? Are concepts of ‘ethnic’ or ‘hybrid’ music any more valid?
How is the nation gendered within popular music?]
Popular Music Theory
[Does popular music studies ‘lack theory’? What sort of theory do we need?
What are the most useful theoretical concepts in the field? Which the most
redundant? Has gender been under-theorised within Popular Music Studies?
What is or should be the relationship between academic/theoretical
approaches to popular music and vocational/practical approaches?]
The Musical Experience
[What is a musical experience? How are people’s responses to music
determined? How/why do they change over time? How does gender impact on
the musical experience? What can we learn about musical subjectivity and
response from psychologists of music? Is popular music necessarily a
source of pleasure?]
Proposals
Paper proposals are invited on these topics-and on any other issue of
popular music debate. Proposals will be welcomed from any perspective,
using any methodology and addressing any kind of music.
Papers should last for 20 minutes and the conference organisers will be
asking chairs to keep to this limit.
Guest Speakers
Guest speakers at the conference will include Professor Simon Frith
(University of Edinburgh) and Professor Allan Moore (University of Surrey)
in debate, and Bill Drummond (formerly of the KLF). In addition John
Williamson (manager of Belle and Sebastian) will present a discussion of the
Glasgow music scene with local musicians.
Social Events
The conference will feature a Civic Reception at Glasgow City Halls and a
Saturday evening social at a local venue.
Other Information
Glasgow has one of the most vibrant music scenes in the UK, having in the
past few years produced acts such as Snow Patrol, Franz Ferdinand and The
Fratellis. It has a great range of venues including The Barrowland Ballroom,
King Tuts Wah Wah Hut, the Academy, the ABC, Barfly, the Garage, the
(Renfrew) Ferry, the Royal Concert Hall and the SECC. It also boasts a
highly diverse music scene with significant dance, country and western and
folk scenes. For more information see:
www.seeglasgow.com/seeglasgow/photo-gallery/cityofmusic
The conference will be located at the University of Glasgow which is located
in the West End of the City. This location is host to a range of excellent
restaurants, bars, pubs and venues all of which are in walking distance of
the venue.
Organising Committee
A local Organising Committee has been established consisting of:
Martin Cloonan (University of Glasgow
Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh)
Raymond MacDonald (Glasgow Caledonian University) Mark Percival (Queen
Margaret University) John Williamson (University of Glasgow)
Submitting Proposals
Proposals should include the name and contact details (email) of the
proposer, the tile of the proposal and an abstract of no more than 150
words. Please send proposals to Martin Cloonan – M.Cloonan@music.gla.ac.uk.
The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2008.
Website
The conference website will be updated regularly. It can be found at:
www.music.gla.ac.uk/iaspm/
Popula Music Worlds, Popular Music Histories, Un. of Liverpool, UK ·46 days ago by Vasiliki Sirakouli
Call for Papers
Popular Music Worlds, Popular Music Histories
University of Liverpool, UK
July 13-17, 2009
For its 14th biennial conference, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) invites papers which explore the various connections and disconnections between popular musical worlds and popular music histories. Given Liverpool’s important place in relation to both areas, it will provide an ideal setting for papers submitted to the following streams:
Studying Popular Music: A Reassessment
Convenor: Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa
Since the first attempts in the late 1970s and 1980s much has been done in terms of adapting analytical tools from several disciplines to the study of popular music. This stream welcomes papers dealing with the analysis of specific aspects of popular music (timbre, texture, prosody, melody, rhythm, harmony, arranging, etc.) or case studies of particular songs or instrumental pieces from any theoretical perspective.
Popular Music and Technology in a Historical Context
Convenor: Carlo Nardi
Different intellectual technologies have contributed to the way people produce and listen to popular music, be it orality, printing, recording or even the Internet. This stream welcomes papers dealing with the technological impacts upon popular music practices, including questions from cultural, aesthetic, ideological, economic, sociological, historical, legal or musicological perspectives.
Music, History and Cultural Memory
Convenor: Shane Homan
This stream seeks contributions that investigate popular music histories and the methodological challenges in their researching and writing. What particular historical narratives and agendas emerge, and what are their effects? The stream includes work that examines the role of popular music history in wider national histories and their presence in both informal (e.g. fan club newsletters) and formal (e.g. museums) contexts. Papers are also welcome that explore the role of ‘unofficial’ / ‘shadow’ music histories that challenge or offer alternatives to grander narratives and industry mythologies, to comprehend a politics of cultural memory studies in terms of what is officially preserved from oblivion and what is socially excluded from remembrance.
Music, Mediation and Place
Convenor: Geoff Stahl
The intersection of place-making and music-making as a site of mediation is a complicated one. From the use of certain music scenes or moments which have been mobilized as heritage myths and tourist packages, to issues related to the use of micro and mass media to bind musicmakers together—locally, regionally, nationally, and globally—the intersection of time and place as a highly mediated process has proven a vexed and complex phenomenon. We welcome papers which explore the many issues relating to music histories, representations, discourses, spaces and places, as well as those that consider the various research methods which might be best be deployed to capture this phenomenon.
Musical Struggles
Convenor: Michael Drewett
Being a musician inevitably involves struggle: Musicians starting out struggle to make it, musicians ‘in the margins’ struggle towards mainstream coverage, some musicians involve themselves in political struggle to do with identity issues and/or social issues, while in contexts of censorship, repression and control some musicians struggle to be heard. Even commercially successful musicians can become embroiled in corporate struggle over contractual obligations. This stream seeks contributions which document and conceptualise such struggles within a socio-political framework.
Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words (one page) and should be sent in the following format:
Title
Presenter(s)
Institution
Email
Abstract
Keywords (five keywords that best describe your topic)
Abstracts should be sent to BOTH the conference address and the convenor of your stream. The conference address is:
Please label your abstract with your last name (i.e. smith.rtf, or smith.doc), not the title.
The deadline for abstracts is July 1, 2008.
Notification of participants no later than November 1st, 2008.
More information about IASPM can be found here: http://www.iaspm.net
Popular culture and world politics conference, Bristol, UK ·46 days ago by Vasiliki Sirakouli
Popular Culture and (World) Politics
Thursday 11 & Friday 12 September, 2008
University of Bristol, UK
What does Buffy the Vampire Slayer have to do with biological warfare? How do Bollywood films contribute to discourses of Indian nationalism? Why has the U.S. military designed an online computer game to increase recruitment? Can murals in Belfast give us insights into the Northern Ireland peace process? Does it matter that West Point graduates love 24, or that the neo-neo debate occurs in The West Wing? What roles does hip hop play in the construction of politicised identities in Sierra Leone?
The relevance of culture to the study of local, regional, comparative and world politics has been widely acknowledged. However, in the ‘inter-discipline’ of Politics and International Relations, this has frequently been explicitly or implicitly limited to a narrow understanding of culture as national, organisational or institutional culture(s). The aim of this two-day workshop is to explore the range of interconnections between (world) politics and popular culture (broadly conceived, including, but not limited to, news media, films, TV, ads, magazines, graphic novels, fashion, food, music, video games), bringing together scholars from diverse perspectives in politics and IR, as well as forging interdisciplinary links with scholars in other fields.
We welcome submissions on any aspect of the relationships between popular culture and politics, local or global, general or specific, as well as particularly encouraging papers that develop the following themes:
- the ‘visual turn’ in politics and IR
- the intertextuality of popular culture and academic/ policy/ activist discourses
- political economy and the production of popular culture
- popular culture as hegemony, resistance, complicity, co-optation
- the politics of identity and performativity
- methodological issues in popular cultural analysis
- theorising consumption/ analysing audience interpretations
- audience participation & interactivity: new media and ICTs
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Friday 4 April, 2008.
Proposals should include a title, an abstract of approximately 100-200 words, institutional affiliation/position, email and postal address.
We also welcome volunteers for the positions of chairs and discussants.
For further information or to submit an abstract, please email Christina Rowley (Christina.Rowley@bristol.ac.uk).
Research into Practice conference ·46 days ago by Vasiliki Sirakouli
The fifth biennial international Research into Practice conference will be
held on Friday 31 October 2008 at the Royal Society for the Arts, London.
It will explore the problem of interpretation in research in the visual and
performing arts.
Confirmed keynote speakers will be W.J.T. Mitchell (USA) and Griselda
Pollock (UK).
The CALL FOR ABSTRACTS is now open, and the closing date for receipt is 1
May 2008.
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/res2prac/confhome.html
Globalization and Popular Culture MPCA/MACA - Regional Conference ·67 days ago by Dustin Goltz
Globalization and Popular Culture
MPCA/MACA – Regional Conference
Oct. 3-5, 2008
Cincinnati, Ohio
Submission Deadline: April 30, 2008
The Globalization area of the Midwest Popular Culture Association invites papers/panels with theoretical, critical and empirical approaches to the global intersection of culture, international media studies, postcolonial studies, national cinema and any other topic related to popular culture on the global stage. The conference will be held at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio the weekend of October 3-5, 2008. For more information about the conference or how to submit to a different area, please visit the conference website at www.mpcaaca.org.
Your 250-word abstract or panel proposal must be received by April 30, 2008. Please include the title of your paper, your name (and the names of any co-presenters), school affiliation, mailing address and email address. Also, please indicate whether your presentation will require a DVD player (this is the only equipment that will be provided at the conference).
E-mail your submission to area chair Brian Ekdale, University of Wisconsin – Madison (brianekdale@gmail.com)