[ecrea] The State of our Disciplines Symposium, May 19th - A Symposium with Natalie fenton and Gavan Titley.

*The State of our Discipline: Media and Cultural Studies in Neo-Liberal 
Times –
A Symposium with Natalie Fenton and Gavan Titley
May 19th, 10-5pm, University of Brighton, Edward Street – 103*

*
*[Rationale and/ or Symposium Essay available upon request]


This symposium is dedicated to opening up a critical space in which to 
discuss the challenges facing Media and Cultural Studies in our present 
moment.  In their timely and challenging recent article   ‘Mourning and 
Longing: Media Studies Learning to let go of Liberal Democracy’ (2015), 
Natalie Fenton and Gavan Titley  have started a conversation that 
provides a rich opportunity to push our disciplines into a confrontation 
with what they have become and with what they will need to become.

   We hope this symposium will expand the ground on which Fenton and 
Titley’s argument has purchase to include Cultural Studies and the 
Humanities more widely, and we will aim to retain the focus of the 
conversations by keeping attention locked onto the conceptual categories 
of the public sphere, democracy, and representation.

This one-day symposium will be split into two sections. The first will 
be led by Gavan Titley and Natalie Fenton. The article will be 
pre-circulated for all delegates. We will discuss their argument that it 
is time for scholars (researchers and teachers) to query the usefulness 
of the ideals which have become normative in media and cultural studies. 
The second part of the day will move to a discussion of how it will be 
possible to concretise the implications of the morning’s debate in our 
academic practice. We are thinking here particularly about our work 
within our disciplines as teachers, and how we might withstand the 
threat posed by the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).

The symposium will be of use to anyone who wishes to continue the 
traditions of critical thinking as they have inhered in and shaped the 
past of our disciplines but to do so by rethinking them for our very 
different times.

·         How have the pressures of current HE funding models affected 
our engagement with contemporary technological and political shifts in 
the fields of media and popular culture?
·         How did the tripling of tuition fees, the push for an 
‘employability’ agenda, the lifting of the cap on student numbers, the 
development of a mode of address which interpellates students as 
‘consumers’, impact on how we conceptualise what we do in teaching?
·         How has it impacted the case studies we work with, the 
readings we set, the theoretical traditions we use?
·         If the proposed TEF is implemented, how will its agenda alter 
the way our curricula position students, learning, and achievement?

If we are to move on from the work of mourning we are going to have to 
work to build a collective self-image of those disciplines which can act 
as a counter-weight and challenge to the marketised image our 
institutions currently strive for.

For more information please e-mail Patricia McManus 
((P.McManus /at/ Brighton.ac.uk)) or Theodore Koulouris 
((T.Koulouris /at/ brighton.ac.uk)).

Symposium fee - £10 (£5 student concessions): please book in advance:
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/study/media-studies/events/media-research-seminars/the-state-of-our-disciplines-learning-to-let-go-of-liberal-democracy-in-media-and-cultural-studies

https://www.facebook.com/events/1569052123424875/


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