(please note extended deadline)

Cultural Borrowings: A Study Day on Appropriation, Reworking and 
Transformation
 
Supported by the AHRC Collaborative Research Training Scheme and the 
MeCCSA Postgraduate Network

University of Nottingham, UK 
Wednesday March 19th, 2008

Plenary Speakers will include Professor Christine Geraghty (University of 
Glasgow) and Professor David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds). 

Throughout history, artists have appropriated, sampled or borrowed elements 
from pre-existing work for use in new cultural texts. When hip-hop artist 
Dangermouse mixed samples from The Beatles White Album with Jay-Z’s Black 
Album to produce The Grey Album; or when Todd Haynes paid homage to the 
works of Douglas Sirk in the film Far From Heaven (2002); or when Jean Rhys 
reworked Jane Eyre to tell the story of the creole Antoinette in Wide Sargasso 
Sea, they were all appropriating elements from prior cultural texts for use in 
the creation of new works. 

This one day conference seeks to interrogate the nature of such cultural 
borrowings, looking at how we can draw together insights from across the 
disciplines in order to further develop academic models of appropriation, 
reworking and transformation. 

Submissions are welcomed from postgraduate students* and early career 
researchers working in the fields of film and television studies, cultural studies, 
literature, media anthropology, history, music, new media and sociology. 

Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

- Remakes and Reworkings 
- New media/Convergence culture 
- Globalisation and cultural/regional crossings
- Rethinking postmodernism/postcolonialism
- Fandom (fan films/slash fiction)
- Borrowings between high and low culture
- Sampling and remixing in music
- Appropriation in the visual arts
- The Politics of Pastiche/Parody/Camp/Kitsch
- Culture Jamming/Adbusters
- Fair Use and intellectual property

Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words along with a short biographical 
note to:
Iain Robert Smith: [log in to unmask]

Iain Robert Smith, Cultural Borrowings Conference
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
  
EXTENDED Deadline for abstracts is 17 December 2007


* Travel bursaries of £50 will be available to help with postgraduate students’ 
travel expenses. Please indicate if you would like to be considered for these 
bursaries. 

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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu