[Commlist] Northwestern University Graduate Student Conference

Backward Glances 2019: REBOOT

The Screen Cultures Graduate Student Conference

Department of Radio/Television/Film, Northwestern University

September 27 & 28, 2019

Submission Deadline: June 15, 2019


Fuller House, Twin Peaks, Spiderman, Roseanne, The Twilight Zone, Tomb 
Raider.Our popular film and television landscape is inundated with those 
media properties now popularly known as reboots. Whether the 
proliferation of reboots constitutes a true revival,giving new life to 
old texts, or an aesthetic emergency signaling the end of originality, 
it prompts us to ask what the notion of the reboot has to offer in 
considering the relationship between present and past. Backward Glances, 
Northwestern’s biennial graduate student media and historiography 
conference, invites submissions addressing the theme of “reboot” in all 
its many valences.


A reboot may mean a restart or a reinvention. It can involve 
rearticulating a previously existing topic, recreating a pre-existing 
work, or revisiting a long-forgotten idea. It may be a reimagining of 
something we think we understand, or a re-dissemination of a message 
that older generations have heard and that newer ones have yet to 
receive. A reboot may be a renewal, but in the age of endless remakes, 
the utility and cultural work of the reboot must be called into 
question. What does the rebooted text reveal about its past and present 
context? Does our theory need a reboot as much as our childhood favorites?


Like so many neologisms, “reboot” comes to us from the world of 
computing. An electronic system is “booted up” when the hardware is 
switched on and ready for use, and we reboot our tech when our protocols 
glitch, when we update our operating system, or we want a clean 
technological slate to get our programs running smoothly. Media 
theorists have often revisited technology as model and metaphor for 
gender, race, ability, and mechanisms of power. How might the concept of 
the “reboot” help us understand not only aesthetic and industrial 
cycles, but larger shifts in culture, politics, and power?


Further topics may include, but are not limited to:

  *

    Remakes vs. Sequels vs. Reboots

  *

    Casting and labor

  *

    Memory and nostalgia

  *

    Cross- and transcultural remakes

  *

    The social, political, and cultural implications of reinvention

  *

    The history of reboots

  *

    Authorship and fandom

  *

    Zombie media and hacking

  *

    Reimagining genres and aesthetics

  *

    Cultural and political cycles

  *

    Intertextuality/paratextuality/multiplatform storytelling

  *

    Franchises

  *

    Racial difference, racialized identity, and racism in remakes

  *

    Multigenerational viewing

  *

    Remixing and reappropriation



We invite scholarship from across disciplines and methodologies, 
backward-, forward-, and present-facing. Please send an abstract of up 
to 300 words and a bio of up to 100 words to 
(backwardglancesconference /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(backwardglancesconference /at/ gmail.com)>by June 15, 2019. 
Participants will be notified by mid-July. More information about the 
conference can be found at www.backwardglancesconference.wordpress.com 
<http://www.backwardglancesconference.wordpress.com/>

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