[ecrea] Race and the Cultural Industries - CfP DEADLINE APPROACHING

**Race and the Cultural Industries* *

*A one-day conference organised by the Media Industries Research Centre 
(MIRC), University of Leeds, in conjunction with the MeCCSA Race Network *

*Wednesday 14th Sept 2011 *

*Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds*

/*Call for Papers */

This conference will explore issues of race in contemporary cultural 
industries (film, television, music, theatre, publishing, radio etc.). 
Following Greg Dyke’s famous comment that the BBC is ‘hideously white’ 
there has been an increasing recognition of how non-whites are 
marginalised in the media – both in terms of participation and 
portrayal. Indeed, in recent years there has been numerous initiatives 
launched across the cultural sector that have made efforts to increase 
and encourage participation from ‘BME’ groups. While some important 
inroads have been made in terms of improving access to the cultural 
industries, there remain a number of tensions regarding more complex 
social and cultural barriers to entry as well as critical issues to do 
with the representation of Blacks and Asians in the media.

The aim of the conference is to go beyond policy debates and think more 
critically about the cultural industries, and the post-colonial 
formations and cultural politics of race in the West. *Race and the 
Cultural Industries* is an interdisciplinary conference and welcomes 
papers based on research on all sectors of the media, from news to 
entertainment, taken from the UK or more international contexts. It 
seeks to encourage participation from cultural practitioners as well as 
scholars in order to create a dialogue between research, policy and 
practice.

We welcome papers in anything related to the topic of race and the 
cultural industries, amongst which might be the following:

• Race and the politics of representation

• The media, multiculturalism and citizenship

• Cultural policy and subsidising culturally diverse arts

• The production of Black and Asian popular culture

• Institutional racism in the cultural industries

• Audience development and issues of marketing and distributing 
culturally diverse arts

• Islamaphobia and the reporting/representation of the ‘War on Terror’

• Diasporic media practice

• ‘Glass ceilings’ and the politics of quotas and diversity initiatives

• New media, race and identity

Keynote speakers are:

Tanika Gupta, MBE – Playwright and screenwriter

Mykaell Riley – Director of Centre for Black Music Research, Ex-Steel 
Pulse member and black music historian

Dr Anamik Saha
ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow
Institute of Communications Studies
Rm 2.24 Clothworkers' North Building
University of Leeds
011334 35807/07870 587 103
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/details.cfm?id=195&susername=A.SAHA 
<http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/details.cfm?id=195&susername=A.SAHA>

*To submit an abstract (300 words) please email (a.saha /at/ leeds.ac.uk). 
(Deadline for abstracts is 1st June 2011)*