Cosmopolitan Screens
University of Glasgow, 28-30 June, 2013
Registration has now closed.
The 23rd International Screen Studies Conference is organised by the journal Screen and will be programmed by Screen editors Tim Bergfelder, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Alastair Phillips and Jackie Stacey.
Theme and plenary speakers
Gina Marchetti (University of Hong Kong)
Laura Rascaroli (University College Cork)
Philip Schlesinger (University of Glasgow)
Debates about the national, the transnational, the global and the multi-cultural have permeated screen studies for decades. The main theme of this year’s Screen conference will consider how such debates might be reframed through a serious engagement with theories of cosmopolitanism. How might discussions about cosmopolitanism, currently animating subjects across the humanities and social sciences, speak to scholarship in film and television studies and vice versa?
Literally suggesting a combination of worldliness (cosmos) and place (city, city-state, citizenship – polis), the concept of cosmopolitanism has inspired new political visions post 9/11 and its aftermath. Recently taken up as a lens through which to discuss the ethics of encountering strangers, the politics of offering hospitality to foreigners and the problem of challenging aversion to otherness, cosmopolitanism has also come under attack for its perceived complicity with global hegemonies.
If screen studies have been slow to take up the cosmopolitan question directly, it is perhaps because audiovisual media have been so deeply embedded within transnational and globalising cultures from their earliest beginnings. But is there something particular to film, television and new media cultures that might speak directly to the problems at the heart of the current cosmopolitan project? How might we understand the changing significance of film and television through a cosmopolitan lens? The editors invited proposals for papers/panels on any of these questions and on the following topics of the main conference theme:
- Conceptual and methodological interrogations of cosmopolitanism from perspectives within screen studies, most especially connecting to ethics, politics, philosophy and the law;
- Explorations of screen cultures through debates about the relationship between cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, globalisation, multiculturalism and 'world cinema';
- Cosmopolitan spaces of circulation (exhibition, distribution, new platforms of delivery);
- Cosmopolitan aesthetics and spectatorship (how might this be understood and theorised?);
- Cosmopolitan positions – how are film and television makers and audiences positioned in relation to the production and circulation of their work?
Schedule
The conference will take place at the St Andrews Building in Eldon Street - E14 on the campus map (see right). Registration opens at 2pm on Friday, with the opening plenary at 4pm, followed by a reception. Panels run all day on Saturday and until lunchtime on Sunday. The conference will finish around 4pm Sunday.
Registration
A draft list of papers and panels and the schedule can be downloaded at right.
If you have queries about your registration or accommodation, please contact the University’s Conference office which handles online bookings and payments on 0141 330 5385, or registration@glasgow.ac.uk. All other queries can be directed to screen@arts.gla.ac.uk. A detailed programme including orientation information will be circulated to delegates in June ; general information about travelling to Glasgow can be found at http://www.gla.ac.uk/about/maps/
Online registration closed on Friday 14 June. No refunds will now be issued. These are standard conditions applied by the University rather than Screen, and will be applied in all cases – please ensure you have adequate insurance in place.