[ecrea] CFP, Conference Transnational Mediascapes: Sound and Vision in Europe

CALL FOR PAPERS

Transnational Mediascapes: Sound and Vision in Europe



Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, May 14th-15th, 2013

Deadline for applications: February 28 th, 2013



The conference will take place at the Department of Media and Performing 
Arts, Catholic University of Milan, in association with Ce.R.T.A. – 
Centro di Ricerca sulla Televisione e gli Audiovisivi and ALMED – Alta 
Scuola in Media, Comunicazione e Spettacolo.



Media studies have been forced by convergence, digitization and 
globalization to look beyond the traditional structure of national media 
systems, histories and habits, and to begin to analyse their phenomena 
according to a wider, and more complex, point of view. On one side, they 
have started to reconstruct the global flows of information and 
entertainment, the basis of a “mainstream culture” that unifies – at 
least partially – different geographical, political, social and cultural 
areas. On the other, they have begun to follow media products and trends 
in their complex paths across various countries and macro-regions, 
underlining both the differences and the deep similarities in shapes and 
meanings, in production processes as well as in consumption practices. 
Especially in the field of television and sound studies, in recent 
years, some progresses have been made towards a transnational point of 
view on historical processes and on contemporary developments, both 
finding shared theories, methodologies, and analytical tools, and 
identifying useful case studies and histories.



The conference will address two main topics in two different daily sessions:

Day 1: Transnational Television: Towards a Comparative TV History

Day 2: Transnational Soundscapes: Sound and the Media in Europe

See details below.



Best regards,

Massimo Locatelli and Massimo Scaglioni (Università Cattolica di Milano)





Day 1

Transnational Television: Towards a Comparative TV History

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, May 14th, 2013



Following the comparative approach to European television established by 
recent works as Jonathan Bignell and Andreas Fickers’ A European 
Television History (2008) and Jérôme Bourdon’s Du service public à la 
télé-réalité. Une histoire culturelle des télévisions européennes 
(2011), the focus on trans-nationality in television is one of the most 
compelling and current challenges for TV studies. If the medium is still 
deeply national in many aspects, in fact, digitization and globalization 
include TV into wider multi-national exchanges of ideas, formats, 
programmes, genres, trends, and also viewing practices.



Confirmed keynote speakers: Jérôme Bourdon (Tel Aviv University), John 
Ellis (Royal Holloway, London), Peppino Ortoleva (University of Turin). 
There will be also the presentation of the latest issues of View. 
Journal of European Television History and Culture and Comunicazioni 
sociali.



Abstracts are invited for contributions to the conference that will seek 
to compare television histories, genres, trends, production, and 
distribution practices across different countries and regions, in Europe 
as well as in the rest of the world, offering a wide approach on 
methods, theories and case histories.



The topics can include:

- The (im)possibility of a transnational history of television;

- Definitions and methods for the comparative approach;

- Public Service Broadcasting, Commercial TV and Pay TV across different 
countries;

- Logics of broadcasting in different countries;

- Production practices in different countries;

- Scheduling practices in different countries;

- TV brands in different countries;

- Genre definitions and redefinition in different countries;

- Textual evolutions in different countries;

- Consumption practices in different countries;

- Transnational circulation of TV products;

- Production and consumption macro-areas (i.e. European Community, 
English-speaking countries);

- Original research findings on single case histories across two or more 
nations.



Scholars from all areas of TV and media studies are invited to submit 
proposals for contributions.

Each speaker will have about 20 minutes of speaking time.

Proposals (250 words, written in English, French or Italian), along with 
short biographical notes and key bibliographical references, are due by 
February 28 th. Submissions should be sent to Attilia Rebosio, 
(dip.scienzecom /at/ unicatt.it)

Notifications of acceptance will be sent no later than March 10 th.



Day 2

Transnational Soundscapes: Sound and the Media in Europe

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, May 15th, 2013



In post-WWII Europe, popular culture began to relate to a wide range of 
mediatized practices, at the centre of which the growing music industry 
essentially revolutionized the media- and soundscapes we live in. This 
already convergent network expressed a wider social change towards 
modernity, mobility, new gender relations, that could also be felt as a 
generational shift. For us today it seems likely to have been the place 
for the building of individual and collective life histories, allowing 
an interpretation in terms of personal and collective memories and 
cultural heritage.



In order to begin a reconceptualization of such cultural practices, we 
are in need of more information concerning the historical background, 
the modes of production and the industrial strategies, the textual and 
paratextual output and the patterns and ways of consumption that 
characterized the crucial encounter between audio-visual media and 
popular music, gathering different methodological perspectives as much 
as comparing different national or transnational trajectories.

As a consequence, the aim of this symposium is to explore from a 
comparative perspective, European popular culture in its crucial journey 
towards mediatization from 1945 to the Seventies, as an exemplary 
trajectory for its seemingly excessive foregrounding of music and sounds 
within the national film, radio and television cultures and the 
transnational mediascape. Topics of papers may include:

-         popular music and media industry

-         european Media industry vs American media industry

-         amplification and high fidelity;

-         audiovisual performance and the canonization of popular forms;

-         national/transnational pop music and culture;

-         popular music in film, radio and television;

-         cross-media singers and performers

-         stardom and fandom.



Confirmed keynote speakers are:

Franco Fabbri (University of Turin), Andreas Fickers (Maastricht 
University), Wolfgang Mühl-Benninhaus (Humboldt Universität Berlin)



Scholars from all areas of media and popular music studies are invited 
to submit proposals for contributions.

Each speaker will have about 20 minutes of speaking time.

Proposals (max. 250 words, written in English, French or Italian), along 
with short biographical notes and key bibliographical references, are 
due by February 28 th. Submissions should be sent to Attilia Rebosio, 
(dip.scienzecom /at/ unicatt.it)

Notifications of acceptance will be sent no later than March 10 th.




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