[ecrea] Transmediality in Modern Popular Culture – Call for Submissions

Transmediality in Modern Popular Culture – Call for Submissions



Sent on behalf of Lukasz Biskupski, Miroslaw Filiciak and Michal 
Pabis-Orzeszyna



The 9th Annual Conference of NECS – European Network of Cinema and Media 
Studies (www.necs.org) will take place in Lódz (Poland) on 18-20 June 
2015. In reference to one of the conference’s sub-themes "The archive of 
popular culture" a workshop on the history of transmediality in modern 
popular culture will be held. It will focus on the exploration of 
cross-media business synergies in the entertainment industry and on the 
history of media convergence in the 19th and the first half of the 20th 
century popular culture.

The workshop will consist of two parts:



·         17 June: a preconference with a keynote lecture (Dr. Matthew 
Freeman, Birmingham City University) and a seminar

·         18-20 June: a set of dedicated panels during the NECS conference



SCOPE
Media convergence is one of the widely debated concepts in contemporary 
media research. As conceptualised by Henry Jenkins, convergence 
manifests itself i.e. in transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, 2006: 334). 
The investigation of transmediality, however, most often concentrates on 
contemporary networked digital media. As concerns the historical 
research of popular culture, transmediality is limitedly explored 
(however not entirely unexamined). Yet that kind of cross-textual 
practices can be traced as early as the modern culture industry came 
into existence. For example, according to Matthew Freeman, at the 
beginning of the 20th century in the USA we can find examples of 
"cross-textual self-promotion and cross-media branding (...), grounded 
in such cultural factors as turn-of-the-century immigration, new forms 
of mass media – such as, most notably, newspapers, comic strips, and 
magazines – and consumerism and other related textual activities" (2014: 2).

Therefore, we would like to explore the transmedial dimension of pop 
culture in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. How did 
motives, characters, narratives circulate between various media 
platforms and cultural circuits? What was the transmedial dimension of 
the emerging global culture industry? How did mediatization processes 
impact on local practices (especially in the peripheral media environments)?



POSSIBLE TOPICS
Going beyond traditional notions of adaptation, remediation and 
intermediality, we would like to reconsider dominant history of media in 
modernity and to examine the constitution of the transmedia dimension of 
culture industry and entertainment. We are interested in transmedia 
flows, business synergies and connections between different media and 
cultural spheres:



·         literature

·         radio

·         cinema

·         music

·         stage (cabaret, revue, vaudeville, variété)

·         popular press

·         comic strips

·         graphic design and advertisement

·         modern art



Submission may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:



·         circulation of texts, motives, etc. in the 19th and early 20th 
century (i.e. vaudeville and radio relations)

·         business synergies between film, radio, press, phonographic 
industry, etc.

·         local histories of the proliferation of the technical media 
(especially in the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries)

·         relations between "transmedia" and theories of 
intertextuality, adaptation, etc.

·         vernacular practices of media producers and audiences

·         vernacular reception and grassroot practices of fans



Theoretical and historical contributions concerning all geographical 
areas before 1939 are welcomed.



SUBMISSIONS & DETAILS
Please address abstracts (max. 200 words) along with institutional 
affiliation and a short bio (max. 150 words) to: 
(lukasz.biskupski /at/ swps.edu.pl)



Deadline for submission: 31.01.2015. Confirmation will follow shortly 
thereafter.
The workshop language is English.
Workshop attendance is free, but valid NECS-membership is required to 
participate, see: http://necs.org/user/register.



Organizers: Lukasz Biskupski (University of Social Sciences and 
Humanities SWPS in Warsaw), Miroslaw Filiciak (University of Social 
Sciences and Humanities SWPS in Warsaw) and Michal Pabis-Orzeszyna 
(University of Lódz).



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The organization of the workshop is supported by the Polish National 
Center for Science under Grant DEC-2012/07/E/HS2/03878.


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