Prospective Conference Panel


Modernist Studies Association 14: Modernism & Spectacle, Las Vegas, NV


Deadline for submission: Fri., April 6, 2012


Some of the most historically and theoretically provocative areas of
modernist studies have recently occupied the interrelated areas of
modernism, celebrity, and publicity, challenging the divide between the
high culture of modernism (and the elite reputations of its figures) and
the publicly mediated culture of celebrity (and the consumerist economy
from which modernists claimed to rebel). Following the work of scholars
such as Aaron Jaffe in MODERNISM AND THE CULTURE OF CELEBRITY (2005),
Justus Nieland in FEELING MODERN (2008), and Jonathan Goldman in MODERNISM
IS THE LITERATURE OF CELEBRITY (2011), this interdisciplinary panel seeks
to explore further the idea of a “modernist reputation” in aspects of art
and literature, as well as media and popular culture.


Apropos of this year’s conference theme, it will also devote special
attention to the ways in which a quotidian or “vernacular” modernism
affectively enables such reputations. As Miriam Hansen argues, modernism
encompasses “*a whole range of cultural and artistic practices that
register, respond to, and reflect upon processes of modernization and the
experience of modernity, including the paradigmatic transformation of the
conditions under which art is produced, transmitted, and consumed.” What do
particular reputations signify in particular cultural moments and how do
they change over time? What does it mean from an ideological perspective to
have a reputation associated with modernist aesthetics? What are the
discursive and art-historical currents from which these reputations flow
through the modernist imaginary, particularly along a phenomenological
horizon where modernity is worked through at the level of the senses?*

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Possible topics may include, but are not limited to the following:


Renowned authors

-          Media stardom, celebrity, and visibility

-          Reputations across media forms

-          Popular images: production, consumption, and circulation

-          The machinery of reputation building: publicity, promotion, and
criticism/commentary

-          The role of the press

-          The relationships between and among new technologies, publics,
and reputations

-          Reception contexts: readers, audiences, and fans

-          Canonicity, taste cultures, and reading formations

-          The identity politics of reputations

-          Fame, glamour, and beauty

-          Success stories

-          Performance styles in music, theater, and/or cinema

- -       Art world reputations

-          Self-made reputations

-          Global reputations

-          Infamy and notoriety

-          Forgotten figures and the undoing of reputations

R   Send 300 word abstract with 5 item bibliography and full academic CV
(as separate e-mail attachments) to: *Will Scheibel ([log in to unmask])
*. Please visit the MSA website for more details about the 2012 conference:
http://msa.press.jhu.edu/.

-- 
Will Scheibel
Film & Media Studies
Department of Communication & Culture
800 East Third Street
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405

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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org