CSTonline

We are happy to invite you to participate in the ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School 2020 that will take place at the University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia, from 12-21 July, 2020 (full-day program from 13 to 20 July;

CfA: ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School 2020. July 12-21, 2020 @ University of Tartu (EE). Deadline: March 09, 2020.

Editors: Karrȧ Shimabukuro and Wickham Clayton

On first consideration it may not seem like “nostalgia” and horror and slasher films have any clear connections. Usually nostalgia is applied to events and experiences that have a pleasant connotation, even if these pleasant feelings are a result of a rose-tinted view of the past.

CfP: edited volume “(Don’t) Look Back: Our Nostalgia for Horror and Slasher Films”. Deadline: March 31, 2020.

Obioma Nnaemeka, “Nego-feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning Africa’s Way”,

 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

, 29.2 (2003), p.364   Inspired by the RhodesMustFall movement at the University of Cape Town in May 2015, certain higher education institutions, individuals and collectives across the world have engaged in renewed, contemporary work to try to decolonise academia over the past four years.

CfP: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies. A Screen Worlds Open Access edited volume. Deadline: April 30, 2020.

Booking is now open for the Screen Two at 40 symposium at BFI Southbank, London, on the 12th November 2025.

Booking is now open for the

 Screen Two at 40

symposium at BFI Southbank, London, on the 12th November 2025.

Screen Two at 40 Symposium – BFI Southbank

ECREA’S 8th European Communication Conference


 The European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) in partnership with the University of Minho call for papers to be presented at the 8th European Communication Conference, to be held in Braga, Portugal, from 2 October to 5 October 2020.

ECREA and the Communication and Society Research Centre of University of Minho are delighted to host the 8th

CfP: ECREA2020 “Communication and trust: building safe, sustainable and promising futures”. Oct 02-05, 2020 @ University of Minho (POR) Deadline: Jan 15, 2020.

The BBC television programme

 Eat Well for Less

, now entering its sixth round of production, first aired in the United Kingdom in January 2015.

GENDER, CLASS, AND FAMILY TRANSFORMATION IN BBC ONE’S ‘EAT WELL FOR LESS’

The Labour of Media (Studies): Activism, Education, and Industry

CfP: conference “The Labour of Media (Studies):  Activism, Education, and Industry”. Nov 16-17, 2018 @ Concordia University, Montréal (CAN). Deadline: June 30, 2018.

I have spent much of the last two years in the company of a long dead British actor.

MAPPING TELEVISION LANDSCAPES

Call for Papers: ‘When the Shadow Flickers: The Moving Image in Contemporary Chinese Art’  Volume 12, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art  A Special Issue co-edited by Yang Panpan and Jiang Jiehong  At a time when the moving image has become a ubiquitous presence in museums and galleries in China and the Sinophone world, the studies of the moving image in the sphere of contemporary Chinese art remain surprisingly scarce.

CfP: JCCA special issue “When the Shadow Flickers: The Moving Image in Contemporary Chinese Art”. Deadline: March 1, 2024

When he saw this Tom was so full of himself that he had to share the pleasure with somebody, so he turned to a woman sitting across the aisle.

“There it is, missus.”

 Surprised, the woman looked across him at him.

“You what, love?”

 Tom nodded towards the panorama through the front window.

“The North.”

 The woman looked, saw nothing, then observing that they were alone thought it best to humour him.

“Yes,

CfP: conference “Representing Gender in the North: 1945 to the present day” May 23, 2018 @ University of Sheffield (UK). Deadline: April 3, 2018.

It is perhaps a little cheeky to borrow a blog title from Robert Graves’ autobiography, but after all the complimentary things I’ve said about *I, Claudius *over the years, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. This will be a relatively short piece, as I am currently mired in essay marking, while also preparing a lecture for next week.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

Warning: This article is divided into two parts but both have detailed descriptions of sexual violence in the book and TV series, Rivals. In episode one of the 2024 television period drama Rivals, middle-aged Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson) tells her new 20-year-old neighbor, Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean), “It’s 1986.

Warning

: This article is divided into two parts but both have detailed descriptions of sexual violence in the book and TV series,

 Rivals

. In episode one of the 2024 television period drama

 Rivals

, middle-aged Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson) tells her new 20-year-old neighbor, Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean), “It’s 1986.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN RIVALS: UPDATING THE BONKBUSTER FOR A POST-#METOO TELEVISION AUDIENCE: PART ONE

Music 625: The Performance of Music on Television, c.1955-’85  Call for papers  A Conference at the School of Music, University of Leeds  8-9 June 2018  With the support of the Sadler Seminar fund at the University of Leeds  Convenors for the University of Leeds: Tim Boon, Marian Jago, James Mooney, Simon Popple and Edward Venn  ‘Music 625’ refers to the television era ushered-in by the higher definition output of BBC2 in 1964.

CfP: conference “Music 625: The Performance of Music on Television, c.1955-’85”. June 8-9, 2018 @ School of Music, University of Leeds (UK). Deadline: Feb 28, 2018.

This workshop call for papers invites presentation proposals pertaining to any aspect(s) of queerness in contemporary television during the period from 2000 to the present. Topics pertaining to cultural and/or television studies at the intersection of gender/sexuality studies and/or queer theory are invited from scholars, educators, and students of various levels and disciplines.

CfP: workshop “Queerness and Television in the 21st Century”. Nov 22-24, 2018 @ Turku (FIN) Deadline: Aug 31, 2018.

Because of the ambiguities inherent in the job, spy dramas tend to have morally grey characters, mutable moralities and can, though do not have to, engage in subversive critique of geopolitics and governments (cf Oldham 2017).

WHEREFORE ART THOU? THE ROMEO SECTION

The edited collection,

 Familial Influences on Superheroes

, will examine the role that the family plays on the development of the superhero as portrayed in radio, comics, graphic novels, television series, and feature films.  Many superheroes have experienced the trauma of losing (a) parent(s), which sets them apart from others.

CfP: edited collection “Familial Influences on Superheroes”. Deadline: April 30, 2019

‘Islamophobia’ and ‘race’ are contested terms in contemporary political and media discourse around the world(Hajjat &amp; Mohammed, 2013; Massoumi et al., 2017; Sayyid &amp; Vakil, 2009). In the case of heated debates in France, for example, academic and/or antiracist arguments – themselves far from homogenous – struggle to be heard, and these terms are often censored more or less explicitly.

CfP: conference “Media Representations of Islam and Muslims”. June 19-20, 2018 @ Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (FR). Deadline: Feb 16, 2018.

In August 2022, I secured a slot at the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham to look at the archives for Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan (BBC1, 1968-1982). This was a groundbreaking programme produced for the British Asian diaspora.

In August 2022, I secured a slot at the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham to look at the archives for

 Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan

(BBC1, 1968-1982). This was a groundbreaking programme produced for the British Asian diaspora. On Sunday mornings, families congregated in front of the television and watched the news bulletins, political discussions and community reports, patiently waiting for the closing section.

DEFENDING THE WAC: EXPLORING INDIAN CINEMA BROADCAST ON BRITISH ANALOGUE TELEVISION AT THE BBC WRITTEN ARCHIVES CENTRE

‘Of course we don’t pay a licence fee’ says Barbara vehemently as we sit round the table for Jennifer’s graduation celebration dinner. My friend Barbara is doctor and her eldest daughter has just graduated in creative art.  Everyone is there – aunts, uncles, cousins, Jenny’s brother and sister.  Her Nana is especially proud as Jenny is the first grandchild to graduate.

HOW NOT TO PAY YOUR LICENCE FEE… OR: SHOULD THE BBC BE FUNDED BY SUBSCRIPTION?

The Melodrama Research Group presents:


 At home with horror? Terror on the small screen

27

 th

-28

 th

October 2017, University of Kent

 Keynote speaker: Dr Helen Wheatley (University of Warwick)

CfP: “At home with horror? Terror on the small screen” Oct 27-28, 2017 @ University of Kent. Deadline: June 30, 2017

Putting aside watching or re-watching TV shows via box sets, the shows I watch as they are broadcast fall into two tiers. The first is made up of series that are, to use a cliché, appointment to view.

ELEMENTARY?

Christa van Raalte and Christopher Pullen (both of Bournemouth University) are seeking contributors for a new edited book collection, examining ageing on screen in British film and TV drama since 2000, with a particular focus on representational issues, industry/production contexts and audience interactions.

CfP: edited collection “Ageing on Screen in British Film and TV Drama: Representation, Industry and Audience”. Deadline: April 30, 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS: What’s (the) News? Values, Viruses and Vectors of Newsworthiness  13-14 December 2018    Third biennial conference of the Brussels Institute for Journalism Studies (BIJU)  Department of Applied Linguistics / Faculty of Arts and Philosophy  Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium    Deadline for proposals: 30 JUNE 2018  Contact: whatnews@vub.be

CfP: conference “What’s (the) News? Values, Viruses and Vectors of Newsworthiness”. Dec 13-14, 2018 @ Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium. Deadline: June 30, 2018.

The NECS 2017 Conference SENSIBILITY AND THE SENSES Media, Bodies, Practices Paris, France 29 June to 01 July 2017 Hosted by the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 Pre-Conference 27 and 28 June 2017 Hosted by the Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7 Keynote presentations Centre Pompidou Grand Amphithéâtre de la Sorbonne

 Deadline for submissions: 31 January 2017

Please note that the membership fee must be paid

CFP: The NECS 2017 Conference – SENSIBILITY AND THE SENSES -Media, Bodies, Practices

There’s nothing as loyal as a prisoner fan

(Val Lehman, 2019) On June 25 a capacity crowd met at the St Kilda Town Hall in Melbourne – the city that is the home of iconic Australian television series

 Prisoner

(1979-1986) – to celebrate 40 years since the show made its debut on Australia’s Network 10. *Prisoner’*s extraordinary 692-episode run is made more remarkable by the fact that it was commissioned as a 16-part standalone

ON THE INSIDE: 40 YEARS OF PRISONER (CELL BLOCK H) AT THE 2019 ST KILDA FILM FESTIVAL, MELBOURNE

After many happy years basking in its warm, electronic glow, my once-reliable television set recently emitted its final diodes of light. An ominous dark patch in the upper left corner of the screen had been growing larger over the past year or so, like some slow but inevitable illness. It seemed to vary in its severity but on particularly bad days it had become difficult if not impossible to decipher what was happening in that area of the image.

FROM CHANGING CHANNELS TO LAUNCHING APPS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE SMART TV MARKET

The Popular Culture Research Group at Liverpool Hope University is delighted to announce its eighth annual international conference, ‘Theorising the Popular’. Building on the success of previous years, the 2018 conference aims to highlight the intellectual originality, depth and breadth of ‘popular’ disciplines, as well as their academic relationship with and within ‘traditional’ subjects.

CfP: Theorising the Popular Conference 2018. July 11-12, 2018 @ Liverpool Hope University (UK). Deadline: March 23, 2018.

RTÉ recognises that it is in the privileged position of reflecting and shaping our understanding of our society and culture. Few organisations are as influential in Ireland or require greater trust than RTÉ.“ (RTÉ spokesperson, 2017)  In 2018 the Irish state broadcaster issued its 2018-2020 diversity and inclusion strategy.

BETWEEN PROGRAMME POLICY AND PRACTICE: GENDER, DIVERSITY AND THE CASE OF RTÉ’S CHILDREN’S CHRISTMAS SHOW, THE LATE LATE TOY SHOW

XXVII IAMHIST Conference


 POWER AND THE MEDIA (Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, 16-19 July 2019)

Confirmed keynote speakers include: James Curran (Goldsmiths, University of London) Jennifer Smyth (University of Warwick) Papers and panels are invited for the 2019 conference of the International Association for Media and History. The conference theme this year is POWER AND THE MEDIA.

CfP: 27th IAMHIST conference on “Power and the Media”. July 16-19, 2019 @ Northumbria University (UK). Deadline: Jan 14, 2019.

Department of Communication and Media | March 14th 2019 | Organisers: Annette Hill and Magnus Johansson  Mixed modes of storytelling abound in the contemporary media landscape. There are mixed genres, such as political comedy or docudrama, that mine the generic elements of information and entertainment to create storytelling based on real events.

CfP: International Symposium “Media Mixing”. Mar 14, 2019 @ Lund University (SWE). Deadline: Dec 11, 2018.

In December 2016, in an international conference entitled “50 years of Greek Television” that took place in Thessaloniki, organized by the Laboratory of Cultural and Visual Studies of the Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communication, both well-established and emerging scholars came together to discuss the past, present, and future of (the academic study of) Greek television.

CfA: Filmicon special issue “Introduction to Greek Television Studies: (Re)Reading Greek Television Fiction since 1989”. Deadline: Jan 20, 2019.

Call for Submissions: At the Edge


 Media Fields Journal

University of California, Santa Barbara Submission Deadline: September 28, 2018

CfP: Media Fields Journal #14: At the Edges. Deadline: Sept 28, 2018.

MEDIA HISTORY FROM THE MARGINS CSF Summer Seminar at Monte Verità, Switzerland August 19-24, 2018 Co-organized by the Universities of Lausanne and Luxembourg, and USI Università della Svizzera Italiana Keynote Speakers Weihong Bao, University of Berkeley Jérôme Bourdon, University of Tel Aviv Lisa Parks, MIT Trevor Pinch, Cornell University  The summer seminar aims to rethink media history from the margins and to place at the center of our

CfP: Summer Seminar “Media History from the Margins” Aug 29-24, 2018 @ Monte Verità, Switzerland. Deadline: Jan 31, 2018.

Whatever happened to consensus? In the wake of World War II, the United States came to occupy what many proponents of American exceptionalism have long asserted to be a unique place in modern world history. Official and quotidian versions of postwar American self-understanding became dominated by narratives of a nation dedicated to such liberal values as “freedom” and “justice,” both at home and abroad.

CfP: GSNAS Graduate Conference “American Ambiguities: Is now the era of our disconsent?” May 22–24, 2019 @ Freie Universität Berlin (GER) Deadline: Jan 31, 2019.

In her most recent blog, Elke Weissmann pointed out a peculiar characteristic of her own television viewing experiences – one that is presumably shared by a wide range of audiences.

WHAT DOES TELEVISION WANT? ON AFFECT AND PARTICIPATION

Back to the Future: Telling and Taming Anticipatory Media Visions and Technologies


 Special Issue of “Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies”

Guest-editors: Christian Pentzold (University of Bremen, Germany), Anne Kaun (Södertörn University, Sweden), and Christine Lohmeier (University of Bremen, Germany) Digital media, networked services, and aggregate data are beacons

CfP: Convergence special issue “Back to the Future: Telling and Taming Anticipatory Media Visions and Technologies”. Deadline: Dec 1, 2018.

4th INTH Network Conference


 Call for papers

The International Network for Theory of History (INTH) is pleased to announce that its fourth network conference will take place in Puebla, Mexico on 6, 7 and 8 May, 2020 at Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities ‘Alfonso Vélez Pliego’, Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP). Histories are not what they used to be. Once primarily associated with dusty books

CfP: conference “Media, Mediations and Mediators: (Re) Mediating History in the 21st Century” May 6-8, 2020 @ Autonomous University of Puebla (MEX) Deadline: July 15, 2019.

While generally marketed as the further adventures of a popular character, spin-offs generally have the industrial function of creating more saleable content for a given studio and/or network.

ONE STEP BEYOND (AND TWO STEPS BACK?): BEYOND PARADISE

Postgraduate Conference


 Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester.


 Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Dr Laura Mee and Dr Johnny Walker

The Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre, De Montfort University, invites postgraduates and early career researchers to its seventh annual postgraduate conference.

CfP: conference “‘It Is True, We Shall Be Monsters’: New Perspectives on Horror, Science Fiction and the Monstrous Onscreen”. June 13, 2018 @ De Montfort University, Leicester (UK). Deadline: April 13, 2018.

Trump is back in office, letting Elon Musk loose and apparently giving in to Russia’s demands as far as Ukraine is concerned, all the while looking to see if he can get access to Ukraine’s minerals. Climate mitigating legislation has been and will be slashed further, while Ulrich Merz, newly elected Chancellor of Germany, is calling for greater European defence spending: these are troubling times.

IN CONVERSATION: TELEVISION AND GOVERNANCE

FLEABAG, FEMINISM AND PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE

The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA) and the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design at George Enescu National University of Arts (UNAGE) are pleased to invite submissions of articles for publication in the

 Beyond Biopolitics: Visual Digital Culture and the 21st Century Disruptive Events

volume.

Call for chapters: edited volume “Beyond Biopolitics: Visual Digital Culture and the 21st Century Disruptive Events”. Deadline: Nov 30, 2023.

A while ago, Martin Barker invited scholars to discuss the potential for the re-incorporation of Marxist ideas into audience studies. For a short time, a group of us discussed via email how Marxism might be re-introduced to the study of audiences. But very quickly, the group fell silent, largely, I assume as a result of our workloads that kept us from fully engaging in the discussion.

THE RETURN OF MARX? ARE WE REALLY THERE YET?

Roughly a decade ago, Netflix’s then–Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos made a pessimistic remark about the future of reality TV on the platform at an investors’ conference, calling the genre “disposable,” and something that Netflix is not really invested in making.

(Main)Streaming Ethics: Netflix and the Ghost of Reality TV Past by Georgia Aitaki

A one-day symposium organised by The Centre for Applied History and the Department of English, Macquarie University, Sydney on Friday, 7 September 2018 “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” This famous opening sentence from L.P. Hartley’s

 The Go-Between

(1953) provokes questions of how the “pastness” of the past is remembered, recuperated and represented, especially in this postmodern age where the

CfP: symposium “Different pasts, foreign countries: Remembering and recreating lost worlds in fiction, media and history” Sept 7, 2018 @ Macquarie University, Sydney (AU). Deadline: May 4, 2018.

Margery Wace in 1935. With kind permission of Cecilia Johnson. My first visit to the BBC’s Written Archives Centre was in 2002. I was working as a producer on

 Woman’s Hour

and had applied for a three-month attachment to what was then the Diversity Centre, to research and write a history of women at the BBC.

DEFENDING THE WAC: RECOVERING THE INVISIBLE WOMEN OF THE BBC

Those of you that have been reading CSTonline for a while will know that I have been in the USA for the past 6 years.  I was employed (as an American TV scholar) to write a Master’s Programme in TV Studies.

Those of you that have been reading CSTonline for a while will know that I have been in the USA for the past 6 years.  I was employed (as an American TV scholar) to write a Master’s Programme in TV Studies.  In the first 6 months of being there the pandemic hit and I was stuck in the USA for 2 years without a break.  Sigh.  One thing this period taught me was how to (not) watch American television.

TV WITH AN INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCE

Around the world, sports journalism is dominated by men. In 2018, Sky Sports in Britain recognized that: ‘At recent press conferences for the leading football clubs in the Premier League, Championship and Scottish Premiership we counted 310 reporters covering 25 clubs. Nearly 300 were men;

MARION REIMERS, TV SPORTS STAR REPORTER

In a book chapter I recently had published (Beattie 2025) I discuss how seminal British sitcom Desmond’s (1989-1994, Channel 4) illustrates how barbershops function as both community anchors and as sites of cultural education for Black communities.

In a book chapter I recently had published (Beattie 2025) I discuss how seminal British sitcom

 Desmond’s

(1989-1994, Channel 4) illustrates how barbershops function as both community anchors and as sites of cultural education for Black communities.  In particular, I focused upon how the series engages with both issues relating to migrant communities and the wider Black community.

‘DON’T SCRATCH MY SOCA’: DESMOND’S AND MUSIC

When the creation of the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham was agreed, at a meeting of the Board of Management on 17 November 1969, it was done so with a view to history.

When the creation of the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham was agreed, at a meeting of the Board of Management on 17 November 1969, it was done so with a view to history. Kenneth Lamb, then Director of Public Affairs, argued that the paper archives of the Corporation  were of great value and interest to the public and the nation.

DEFENDING THE WAC: IS THE BBC A FIT AND PROPER KEEPER OF ITS OWN PAPER ARCHIVE? Ian Greaves on Defending the Written Archives Centre (Part 1)

How might we illustrate, explore, and begin to define the ‘state of the nation’ film and television text? This edited collection, in collaboration with Intellect, invites consideration of these questions.

CfP: Edited Collection “State of the Nation Film and TV in Britain: Representations of the Social, Political, and Cultural Landscape”. Deadline: Aug 29, 2025

After

 Invincible

’s fifteen-year run as a comics series (Image Comics/Skybound, 2003-18), creator Robert Kirkman and TV writer Simon Racioppa pitched an adaptation to Amazon Prime Video. Their ongoing animated superhero drama series, which has run for three seasons so far (2021, 2023-25), is an undeniable success. Rotten Tomatoes rates the seasons at or near 100% approval.

CfP: Edited collection: “Thinking about the Invincible Transmedia Franchise: Critical Essays”. Deadline: Aug 1, 2025

The AHRC

 What’s On?

Project Team: Beth Johnson, Dave O’Brien, Laura Minor, Anna Viola Sborgi

 What’s Class Got to Do With It? Rethinking TV from the Inside Out

School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds 19th September 2025

 Keynote

: Philip Ralph, award-winning writer of screenplays for television and film and plays for stage and radio

 Closing plenary panel


 A One-Day

CfP: Symposium “What’s class got to do with it? Rethinking TV from the inside out”. Sept 19, 2025 @ The University of Leeds (UK). Deadline: July 4, 2025.

Watching the recent

 Severance

season 2 finale “Cold Harbour,” I became increasingly intrigued with the show’s explorations of selfhood and autonomy, whereby the ‘innies’ are disposable tools – they are seen no longer as souls but are a distillation of Byung-Chul Han’s notion in

 Psychopolitics

that “

 persons

are being positivized into

 things

, which can be quantified, measured and steered” (2017, 12). The show

‘SOCIALLY CONSTITUTED BODIES’: QUESTIONS OF SELFHOOD AND PAIN IN APPLE TV’S SEVERANCE

A world in crisis: wildfires as examples of the climate crisis in the BBC News documentary looking at

 Heatwaves: The New Normal?

In this second podcast, David and Elke are looking at Governance in Crisis – as governance that is troubled but also governance in a period of crisis.

GOVERNANCE IN CRISIS: GOVERNANCE PODCAST PART 2

For Mel

*This is our ‘experiment’ together – watching an entire season of The Vikings in two dreamy sittings – the late eve of a romantic Saturday and the full span of an Autumn Sunday.

JUST ONE MORE:ROMANCING THE VIKINGS

‘Do you come from the land Down Under? Where women glow and men plunder?’ ‘Down Under,’ Men at Work I feel like I have talked about this before (Beattie 2022;

‘Do you come from the land Down Under?


 Where women glow and men plunder?’

‘Down Under,’ Men at Work I feel like I have talked about this before (Beattie 2022; Beattie 2023) but the latest iteration of Robert Thorogood’s …

 Paradise

franchise,

 Return to Paradise

(ABC/BBC, 2024-present, hereafter

 RtP

) seems very familiar in its tropes, characterisation and problematic elements.

BACK TO (BBC) ONE: RETURN TO PARADISE AND REPRESENTATION

The CHANSE ERA-NET project DIGISCREENS: “

 Identities and democratic values on European digital screens: Distribution, reception, and representation

” is coming to an end in December 2025, and we would like to invite you to attend our final conference in

 Vilnius, Lithuania, on the 23rd and 24th of October

. Confirmed keynotes: Cathrin Bengesser (Aarhus University) Ramon Lobato (Swinburne University of

CFP: Digiscreens conference 23 and 24 October 2025

NB: This is part of research that will be published in a special issue of Popular Culture Studies Journal focusing upon Star Trek: Enterprise which I am guest-editing (CFP open until 15 June).

As a lifelong fan of the

 Star Trek

franchise and a lifelong queer person (even if it took me a few decades to figure it out),[i] it is hard to overstate the joy I felt upon learning that

 Star Trek: Lower Decks

(Paramount+

SHOW, [DON’T ASK] DON’T TELL: QUEER REPRESENTATION IN STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE

Last week, Kim Akass blogged about how the US press response to

 Adolescence

(Netflix, 2025) made visible certain blind spots in a culture seemingly unable to identify that a particular kind of masculinity might be a problem. Akass read this very much through a prism of Trump, and I here want to continue this focus in order to add further consideration to the question of why a convicted felon was elected president by the American people.

THESE ANXIOUS TIMES: WHY WATCHING CHINESE PERIOD DRAMA MIGHT (NOT) BE GOOD FOR YOU (AT THE MOMENT)

It has been 20 years since the conference that inaugurated

 Critical Studies in Television.

The twentieth anniversary gives us an opportunity to pause and consider where our subject is and might go. We will host a range of international scholars who will discuss television studies as a discipline.

Registrations now open! Critical Studies in Television Conference 2025

First of all, a happy New Year – we at CSTonline hope you have all had a good winter break. And while we certainly agree with more pessimistic assessments that see 2025 as not looking to be off to a promising start – with everything happening in the world right now – we are of the conviction that we can’t just throw our hands in the air and give in to resignation.

MOVING WITH THE TIMES: AN UPDATE FROM CSTONLINE

This talk explores the articulation of food and television through an analysis of the soap opera genre and their transmedia cookbooks. Whilst debates on food &amp; literature and food &amp; film have been researched extensively, the relationship of food &amp; television remains relatively underexplored (Murray, 2012; Oren, 2003). This limited work has tended to focus on the cookery programme genre (Strange, 1998;

A Taste for Soap Opera: Food, Television and the Transmedia Cookbooks of 7de Laan and Coronation Street, a Webinar with Sarah Gibson

Cathrin Bengesser (Aarhus University) in conversation with Francesco Casetti (Yale University) 					This interview accompanies the translation of “From Paleo- to Neo-Television: A Semio-Pragmatic Approach” by Francesco Casetti and Roger Odin, which was originally published in French in 1990.

IN TRANSLATION: A CONVERSATION WITH FRANCESCO CASETTI ON NEO-TELEVISION, ROGER ODIN’S LEGACY AND CONTEMPORARY MEDIATION

Original call here.

Exploitation. Lowbrow. Cult. Underground. Trash. Poverty Row. Programmers. Pulp. Popular. Mass. … These descriptors of the “B” movie apply just as well to what we term “B-TV,” as they describe an aesthetics derived from the industrial realities that produced them.

Call for proposals: B-TV: Television Under the Critical Radar

I have something of an ambivalent relationship with travel documentaries.  While I often enjoy them, as someone who partially specialises in media representation and has lived, worked and travelled outside my country of origin for the majority of my adult life, I frequently find myself critiquing the various portrayals.

AN OTHER[ED] PLACE: NHK’S SOMEWHERE STREET

Santa has been very kind to me again this year.

SUB-CULTURE CLUB

Google, that old faithful of lazy scholars undertaking armchair proxy research, tells us that about 280,000 sites offer “Television is Dead”. The expression even has its own site though the title is slightly misleading. “TV is Dead” has a million more


and Britain’s Channel 4 has a series.

TV IS DEAD

Two things have made me think about the role of television in the current wave of disaffection from politics.

ARE WE DISAFFECTED WITH POLITICS OR OBSESSED WITH POLITICS? IT DEPENDS WHERE YOU LOOK ON TV

I say this as an ardent, lifelong fan of American football, but at this point it seems impossible not to recognise that the NFL is a multibillion-dollar business with a somewhat suspect record on workers’ rights. This is particularly the case when it comes to health and safety (Fainaru-Wada and Fainaru 2013;

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FROSTBITE? THE NFL AND STREAMING-ONLY GAMES

I have been sitting here staring at a blank screen for nearly an hour.  That isn’t counting the 2 months that I have been postponing the writing of this blog.  If I don’t write it, it can’t be true.  And yet our lovely Philippa (‘Our Pip’, as me and Janet always called her) died peacefully at home on 15 October 2024. Somehow a light went out in the world.

PHILIPPA BREWSTER – 29 DECEMBER 1949 – 15 OCTOBER 2024

Fig. 1: Elder female couple gaze out in

 Thelma and Louise

(Ridley Scott, 1991, USA) This blog considers the psychological conundrum of ageing within the academic workplace, offering an autoethnographic approach, reflecting upon passing moments from film and TV, that are both treasured, and engrained in the author’s psyche. “Drive Louise! Drive!

‘KEEP ON DRIVING’ – ON BEING AN OLDER ACADEMIC IN TV (AND FILM) STUDIES

Editors: Dr. Liora Elias (University of Minnesota, USA); Dr. Raechel Tiffe (Independent Scholar) Info for abstracts: Deadline September 29th; 250 word abstract – include name, title and affiliation

 Project:

The last decade has brought changes for transgender people both on and off television.

Call for contributions “Transgender Representation on Television” (Edited Collection, working title). Deadline: Sept 29, 2017.

Organized by Luca Barra, Matteo Marinello, Emiliano Rossi (Università di Bologna), Susanne Eichner (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam) and Anne-Katrin Weber (Université de Lausanne)

CfP: Media Mutations 16 “Unlocking Television Archives in the Digital Era”. 26-27 May, 2025 @ Bologna (IT). Deadline: Feb 10, 2025.

‘The ghosts of the Confederacy will not die.’- Colonel Anderson (Kurt Smallwood); 1.1    One of the hallmarks of Western films—here meant in the sense of ‘Spaghetti’ rather than ‘the West’ —is the idea of the cowboy/gunslinger riding off into the sunset, either alone or possibly with one or more of his fellows.

‘THIS IS WHERE THE COWBOY RIDES AWAY’?: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN AND SETTLER COLONIALISM

Spanish television programming has undergone a major shift in recent months, with the access-to-prime-time slot becoming the new battlefield for viewership, attracting the attention of media and audiences alike.

TALK SHOWS LEAD THE SHIFT IN SPANISH PRIME-TIME TELEVISION

Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts


 Guest editors:

Simone Varriale (University of Warwick, UK), Noa Lavie (The Academic College of Tel-Aviv Yaffo, Israel)   Globalization’s cultural effects have gained significant attention in the sociology of culture.

CfP: Poetics: Special Issue on “Global Tastes: The Transnational Spread of non-Anglo-American Culture”. Deadline: Sept 15, 2017.

Dear colleagues,  We would like to draw your attention to a special issue of Television &amp; New Media on streaming production cultures. Over the past two decades, major tech companies like Netflix and Amazon have become central players in the screen industries. The special issue explores the practices and beliefs of above- and below-the-line workers who create audiovisual content for streamers and/or online platforms.

CfP: TNM special issue “Streaming Production Cultures”. Deadline: June 28, 2024

Production Managers (PMs) in television production are mainly female, and as in other industries this ‘feminised’ role is typically afforded lower status than those predominantly performed by men. In our recent study, we explored the experiences of PMs in the UK industry, a group of workers who are often rendered invisible, both within the industry and in television scholarship.

A WOMAN’S WORK: WHAT THE EXPERIENCES OF PRODUCTION MANAGERS TELL US ABOUT GENDERED INEQUALITY IN UK TELEVISION

This seminar aims to explore TV-series at their intersection with philosophy. As a newer sibling to the sub-discipline of film-philosophy, TV-philosophy neither reduces television series to illustrations of pre-existing ideas, nor does it simply offer a ‘philosophy

 of’

a given series by exploring it from a range of philosophical angles. It rather sees TV series as capable of expressing thought through their specific forms.

CfP: ACLA seminar “TV-Philosophy”. Deadline: Oct 14, 2024

Backstage and background

While attending the 2024 CST Conference: Sustainability and Television, which ran from 24

 th

June to the 4

 th

of July, the question of representation of British Asians in relation to equality and diversity arose. Equality and diversity are further elements of the UN’s sustainable development goals.

MEERA SYAL AND THE REPRESENTATION OF BRITISH ASIANS ON TELEVISION?

Disclaimer: This blog post is derived from the conference presentation titled “(A)Sexual or (De)Sexual (Re)presentations of Childhood: Tracing Split Attraction Model in

 Big Mouth

(2017-2024)”, at the Queer Children’s Film and Television Symposium 2024.

“IT’S NOT GOD, MISSY, IT’S ME”: REFLECTIONS ON ASEXUAL REPRESENTATION IN BIG MOUTH (2017-2024)

A stretch too far?

Discussing climate change alongside

 The


 Handmaid’s Tale

(Hulu 2017-) is unorthodox but offers an alternative and marginalised perspective. Typically, when thinking of climate change, David Attenborough, Britain’s national treasure, comes to mind.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE (2017-) AND CLIMATE CHANGE?

As a currently-peripatetic academic, I often live and travel in areas that are meteorologically interesting. Between growing up somewhere that can give residents all four seasons in a single day (not to mention metres of snow at a time)[1] and then living in a series of deserts, tropical savannahs, highlands and seasides, listening to or watching local weather forecasts has long been an integral part of my daily life.

FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS AND WEATHER AUTHORITIES: LOCAL BROADCAST METEOROLOGISTS IN SEVERE WEATHER EVENTS

Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak): ‘

 It might have been a he. They [his wives] weren’t all women

.’ Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén): ‘

 You could do that back then?

’ Nandor the Relentless: ‘

 Of course. Some of my wives were girl wives, some of them were guy wives.

‘IT’S NOT THAT DIFFERENT’: SPATIOTEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT AND QUEER IDENTITIES IN WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS

Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association Postgraduate Network Conference 2024 Edinburgh Napier University Merchiston Campus 30th August

We invite postgraduate researchers and practitioners working within media, communication and cultural studies to propose contributions for the 2024 MeCCSA PGN conference.

CfP: MECCSA Postgraduate Network Conference 2024 on “Identity”. August 30, 2024 @ Edinburg Napier University (SCOT). Deadline: June 14, 2024

Editors: Dr Pete Turner (Oxford Brookes University) and James Shelton (Buckinghamshire New University)  Contact Email: refocusguyritchie@gmail.com  The career of Guy Ritchie encompasses an eclectic selection of films across a number of genres.

Call for Chapters – ReFocus: The Films of Guy Ritchie. Deadline: Sept 30, 2024.

The

 Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

is an international and interdisciplinary journal concerned with the history of the audio-visual mass media from c.1900 to the present.

CfP: proposals for thematic issues of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. Deadline: Oct 1, 2024.

This post first appeared on the WFTHN blog on 24 May 2024.

NAI ZINDAGI NAYA JEEVAN (BBC1, 1968-82) AND NAZIA HASSAN

There are, I believe, in all countries myths that emphasise some places as outliers, as different from the norm. In France, this myth was humorously captured in the film

 Welcome to the Sticks

(Dany Boon, 2008)

 .

In Germany, it is noticeable in how people from the rest of the country talk about Bavaria or indeed people from Bavaria talk about the rest of the country.

IF ONLY WE WERE HUMAN: THE (USUAL) CONCEPTUALISATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE AS TECHNOLOGY

For understandable, if not necessarily justified, reasons, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is often suspected to be or accused of being involved in any and every political conspiracy which involves covert interference with a government (Becker, 2020 on the historical reality of CIA political involvement).[1] In terms of more direct law enforcement operations, the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) also tend to be referenced in

‘ARE WE THE BADDIES?’: CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE AND PERCEIVED-AMERICAN OVERREACH

Television careers offer many potential benefits: opportunities for creative expression, a sense of making a difference in the world, flexibility and autonomy – but often at a price.

WHY MANAGEMENT IS THE KEY TO CHANGING THE LABOUR EXPERIENCE

Title: Small Screen Food: American Identity Through a Culinary Televisual Lens Editors: Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis and Carrie Helms Tippen Proposals (500 words): March 15, 2024 Completed Chapters (7,000 words): August 15, 2024  Salman Rushdie characterized the serial television show “as the novelistic medium of the 21st century,” signifying its emerging importance and elevating its status to a realm traditionally occupied by novels.

CfP: edited collection “Small Screen Food: American Identity Through a Culinary Televisual Lens”. Deadline: March 15, 2024

Dementia Futures Call for Papers


 22-24 January 2025


 Martin Harris Centre, University of Manchester

Conference organisers: MaoHui Deng, Sarah Fox, Kate Maguire-Rosier, and Réka Polonyi Cultural narratives and research around dementia are not usually focused on ideas of a future with dementia.

CfP: conference “Dementia Futures”. Jan 22-24, 2025 @ University of Manchester (UK).

‘Mother, Mother Ocean/After all the years I’ve found My occupational hazard/Being my occupation’s just not around’                                     ‘A Pirate Looks at 40,’ Jimmy Buffet

A PIRATE LOOKS AT FORTY: OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH AND LIFE CRISES

Okay, so… this is a book review. Sounds a bit boring doesn’t it?  I mean – a book review.  I can’t remember the last time that I did a book review

 per se

because I think I got bored with them myself.  They’re everywhere, aren’t they?  Online. In magazines. In newsletters.  And part of me thinks – who needs ’em?  Why add to the mass of unread ones out there?

MUSIC FOR PRIME TIME

While improvised or unscripted television has been a feature of media industries for decades, most such series are either comedy or reality television.

 Suspects

(Channel 5, 2014-2016), on the other hand, was an unscripted crime drama featuring improvised dialogue. For those unfamiliar with the series,

 Suspects

follows a group of officers from an unspecified London CID.

CST Online

CST Online Relaunch