[Discussion] (Dis)junctures of Popular Culture and Media

[Gonul]

Ninth Nordic Conference for English Studies, University of Aarhus, 
Aarhus, Denmark, May 27-29, 2004.

Conference information: http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/naes2004/naes.html

"(Dis)junctures of Popular Culture and Media"

Organisers: Henrik B=F8dker (hebo@asb.dk) and Jody Pennington 
(engjp@hum.au.dk), =C5rhus School of Business and University of Aarhus

The study of the mass media and their cultural products has often 
revolved around the popularity of media artifacts in a variety of 
approaches sometimes grouped together and labeled populist. Yet within 
or in relation to such approaches there has been an ongoing engagement 
with dichotomies such as mass / cult, broad (appeal) / niche (market), 
underground / mainstream.

A related set of questions concerns how recent developments in media and 
communication technologies have (or haven't) democratized technology 
through the egalitarianism of access to media previously available in 
physically distinct spheres. What often seems to be at stake in much 
work on popular culture and the media is thus an interest in what we may 
understand by popular, and consequently how the popular is constituted. 
Is there a such thing as non-mass mediated popular culture? Is there a 
such thing as a non-popular mass mediated cultural artifact? Do the mass 
media need the popular? Does the popular need the mass media? What is 
the relationship between the form of popularity and specific media and 
the constitution of publics/markets in relation to the medium and/or the 
product/artifact?

Answers to these questions can be explored in various periods of popular 
culture. In this workshop, speakers are invited to investigate issues 
suggested by these questions, focusing on popular culture and media 
since the 1960s. 


Henrik B=F8dker (hebo@asb.dk) and Jody Pennington (engjp@hum.au.dk)

Deadline 1 December 2003