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

Fri May 06 20:21:56 GMT 2016






*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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