[ecrea] UEA FTM Study Day: ‘Imagining a Community’: Media and National Identity

The study day below is open to all who wish to attend, and we 
particularly encourage those who are thinking about applying to our MA 
and PhD programmes. If you would like to attend, please contact Melanie 
Williams at the address below.

UEA Film, Television and Media Studies Postgraduate Study Day

‘Imagining a Community’: Media and National Identity

Thursday 20th February 2014, Thomas Paine Study Centre 1.5

Organisers: Llewella Burton, Carolyn Ellam, Mark Fryers, Sarah Hill, 
Melanie Williams



With a parachuting Queen, James Bond, Mr Bean and dancing NHS nurses, 
the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony masterminded by Danny Boyle presented 
an eclectic and often playful celebration of Britain and British-ness to 
a global audience. That same year, a troupe of Russian grandmothers 
dressed in folk costume took second place in the Eurovision Song 
Contest, standing out from their fellow competitors through their 
deliberate invocation of national tradition. As shown by these two 
recent examples, media representations of national identity are 
inevitably complicated by how, where and when they are situated, as well 
as the motivations of their creators and the responses they elicit from 
their (international) audiences.

The key question for this study day is: what is the place of national 
identity in a contemporary media landscape dominated by globalisation 
and transnationalism? If we consider the argument that our recognition 
and understanding of national identity is ‘both given and constantly 
reconstituted’ (Parekh, 2000), what role does the media perform in 
constructing, sustaining, or even destabilising, such concepts? Papers 
and presentations will explore the place of national ‘imagined 
communities’ (Anderson, 1983) across a global range of film, television 
and media texts and address the following questions:

-          How do we theorize the construction of national identity 
through media and culture and how has this changed in recent years?

-          How are national histories portrayed in the media?

-          How do national identities intersect with representations of 
gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, and class?

-          How do genres and formats vary according to national contexts?

-          What is the relationship between the national and the local 
or regional in media?

-          Exporting the national: how are media texts deriving from 
particular national contexts adapted, remade, marketed, distributed and 
exhibited for international audiences (and vice versa)? And how are they 
received by critics and audiences in both domestic and international 
settings?

-          How might the global flow of media employment and creative 
labour affect notions of national identity?

-          What is the role of media institutions, such as state 
broadcasters or the national press, in fostering a sense of national 
identity?

-          ‘National treasures’: what are the connections between 
celebrity culture and national identity?



For further information about attending the study day, please e-mail 
(Melanie.williams /at/ uea.ac.uk)



Professor Mark Jancovich
Associate Dean for Research, HUM
Film, Television and Media Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
Tel: 01603 592787
blog: http://fantasticfilmtv.com/

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