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August 2003, Week 1

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:
From:
Susan Holmes <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 1 Aug 2003 15:19:36 +0100
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Hi,

Please could I place the following call for papers to be distributed on the
Screen-L list.

Many thanks,

Su Holmes

                             Call for Papers:
                  British Soap Opera: Present and Future
                            edited by Su Holmes
                        (Southampton Institute, UK)

Proposals  are  sought  for  an edited collection examining the aesthetics,
forms,  representations  and  pleasures  of contemporary British television
soap  opera.  Scholarly work on soap opera has occupied a significant place
in  the  development  of  television/ cultural studies, whether in terms of
approaches  to  ?popular?  television  as  an  object  of  study,  feminist
television criticism, or the sheer volume of research produced. Yet we have
never  found  ourselves  inundated with work on British soap opera, and the
majority  of  the  most  significant  interventions were developed from the
early  1980s  to  the  early  1990s - begging the question as to shifts and
developments  since  this  time.  Equally,  it seems time to return to soap
operas  in  the contemporary moment - in the context of shifts in narrative
focus and address, the accelerated prevalence of celebrity culture, and the
rise of soap-influenced forms such as Reality TV.

In  1991,  Christine  Geraghty?s  Women and Soap Opera (Cambridge, Polity),
observed of prime-time British and American soaps that although they ?still
offer[ed]   traditional   soap  pleasures  to  women,  the  emphasis  ha[d]
significantly  altered  (p.167).  In examining what might be conceived as a
broader  ?mainstreaming?  of  the  genre, Geraghty discussed how soaps were
aiming  to  widen  their  appeal,  and  identified  shifts  in  storylines/
material,  characterisation  and  narrative  point  of  view  (which in the
British  context  was related to the use of the ?male? generic referents of
the  crime  series  and  move away from the traditional terrain of ?women?s
issues?,  and  a  greater  emphasis on both male and young characters). She
concluded  by  suggesting  that this ?defeminisation? of the genre may have
been at been at ?considerable cost? to the representation of women, and the
pleasures  offered  to the female viewer. Since this time, very little work
has  attempted  to  pursue  and  explore these shifts, nor make comparative
analyses  with  other  national  contexts.  While  soap  opera may give the
impression of being an exceptionally ?stable? generic form (surviving as it
has  considerable  shifts  in  the  television  landscape), as we develop a
longer  history  of approaches to television, it becomes important not just
to  generate  new  areas  of  research,  but to continually re-evaluate the
politics  of  existing arguments and paradigms. The collection thus aims to
consider  the  dynamics  of contemporary British soap opera from a range of
different  perspectives.  These  include (but are not limited to) the broad
categories of:

·     History of academic approaches to the genre
·     Comparisons between the past and present of soap opera
·     The political economy of soap opera
·     Marketing/ promotion
·     Soap opera and cultural value/ cultural status/ critical discourse
·     The global circulation of British soap opera/ reception in other
national contexts
·     Representations of community/ gender/ ethnicity/ sexuality/ ?class?/
age
·     Soap opera and audience/ audience address/ reception
·     Narrative form in soap opera
·     Shifts in narrative material/ character focus
·     The relationship between soap opera narrative and popular TV drama
series
·     The relationship between soap opera and television crime
·     Soap opera and celebrity culture
·     The relationship between soap opera and ?new? communication
technologies (e.g. the Internet)
·     The (narrative, formal, aesthetic) relationship between soap opera
and popular factual programming  - docusoap, Reality TV.
·     The intertextual construction of the genre - press, magazines,
Internet.


Please  send  proposals  (maximum  500 words) with a brief CV attached by 1
November, 2003 to [log in to unmask] (queries welcome) or to Faculty
of  Media  Arts  and  Society,  Southampton  Institute,  East Park Terrace,
Southampton, SO14 OYN, UK.

Dr.  Su  Holmes  is  Senior  Lecturer  in  Media  with  Cultural Studies at
Southampton  Institute  (UK).  She  has published on the history of British
cinema  and  television  in  journals such as Screen, Historical Journal of
Film,  Radio  and  Television,  Journal  of  Popular  British  Cinema,  and
Quarterly  Review of Film and Video. She is currently researching the topic
of  contemporary  quiz  shows  and  working on the book Coming to a TV Near
You!: British Television and Film Culture in the 1950s, and is co-editor of
the forthcoming Understanding Reality TV (Routledge, 2003).

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