We are looking for participants to help us constitute a panel, described below,
which will be proposed for the 5th annual Console-ing Passions (Television,
Video and Feminism) Conference which will be held April 25-28, 1996 in Madison,
Wisconsin. This conference has become a leading venue for cultural studies
approaches to media, particularly those which foreground questions of sexual and
other cultural differences. This year's conference theme is "Fighting
backlashes: global and local perspectives."
Proposed panel: "TELEVISION AND THE RADICAL OTHER, 1965-1975."
Co-chairs: Pam Wilson (Carlow College) and Aniko Bodroghozhy (University of
Wisconsin)
Radical movements for social change during the 1960s and early 1970s
frequently adopted an ambivalent relationship towards the popular
media--suspicious and antagonistic about the hegemonic processes of
incorporation and obliteration typically seen as inherent in strategies of mass
mediation. On the other hand, radical movements also tried to harness the power
and reach of the popular media to disseminate their perspectives and further
their political work.
Our panel is looking for fresh critical perspectives on the
representations of radicals and their movements in popular television, including
representations in both the journalistic and entertainment modes of the medium.
We are also interested in papers which situate such representations historically
in terms of the tactics deployed by the radical "Other" to actively intervene
in--and to some degree control--their mediated-ness. Such analyses of the
interface between radical practices and those of the mainstream media can
challenge the more widespread top-down arguments that movements and radical
activists are largely helpless and passive in their abilities to influence the
ways in which their discourses are taken up. In contrast to these positions, we
see the relationship between media institutions, popular media texts and
"mediated" radical activists and movements as dialogic and always in struggle
and negotiation over the meanings of popularly disseminated representations of
radical activity.
Papers on the panel might examine aspects of the relationship between the
media and the second-wave feminist movement, Black Power militants,
Chicano/Latino activists, gay and lesbian activists, Native American activists,
student anti-war demonstrators and others.
Proposals should be 250 words or less, and include name, institution, address,
email, and phone. Please reply to Pam Wilson, [log in to unmask] by
October 31. (Our deadline for panel submission is November 3.)
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