[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Entertainment (9/20/06; KSU CSC, 3/8/07-3/10/07)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Call For Papers:

16th annual Cultural Studies Conference at Kansas State University

TOPIC:  Entertainment
CONFERENCE DATES:  March 8-10, 2007
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Sept 20, 2006

Keynote Speaker: Judith Halberstam, author of _The Transgender Moment:
Gender Flexibility and the Postmodern Condition_, _The Drag King Book_,
_Female Masculinity_, _Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of
Monsters_, and _Posthuman Bodies_.

Live Performance by El Vez, "the Mexican Elvis"

Conference Description:

“Anyone who tries to tries to distinguish entertainment from education
doesn’t know the first thing about either”  –Marshall McLuhan

Entertainment and the entertainment world continue to vex academics,
even after the rise of Cultural Studies and its willingness to break
down cultural hierarchies. It is time to address this often marginalized
topic head on. Despite our disciplinary anxiety, there are increasing
attempts to theorize entertainment and “entertainment value,” as Richard
Dyer has done for the musical. What is it exactly that happens when we
say we are “entertained?” And what does this experience have to do with
all our usual categories and criterias” aesthetics, politics, culture,
identity, ethics, value? When video games are used to train troops,
journalism goes for ratings and pretty faces, and political parties and
corporations manufacture seductive and pleasurable images? Do we find
ourselves perforce choosing between a liberatory “fandom” and the
horrors of the seductive, distracting, capitalist ‘culture industry?”
Is there a progressive understanding or use of entertainment for
democracy and the public sphere? We welcome papers and panels on any
topics and modes of entertainment, from any culture, in any historical
period.

Some topics and questions for possible consideration, not intended to be
an exclusive list:

* “infotainment”
* entertainment in the high “arts” (theater, opera, classical music
and art)
* docudrama and “reality” entertainment
* education and entertainment, education vs. entertainment
* “children’s” vs. “adult’s” entertainment  (cartoons, animation, etc.)
* the “adult entertainment” industry
* elevating the stupid and shallow (Jackass, Paris Hilton)
* Hollywood and anti-Hollywood
* Bollywood
* Rupert Murdoch
* global television
* entertainment and propaganda
* Barthes, Debord, Baudrillard, Zizek
* early modern entertainment (jigs, bear-baiting, public execution,
Shakespeare)
* serious clowning: Michael Moore, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert
* jokes, racial and ethnic and misogynist
* “The Aristocrats”
* violence, cruelty, and sadism
* religious entertainment and ritual
* entertainment, fear, and national security
* entertainment with social messages
* the construction and use of boredom
* material entertainment: sugar, caffeine, drugs
* eco-tourism
* amateurism and the local
* transnational entertainment and cultural imperialism, from Disney
to Macdonalds
* spectators and participants, couch potatoes and athletes
* critics and reviewers
* horror, gothic, perversity
* parody

Standard conference format: panels of three papers; each paper a 15
minute oral reading/presentation. Alternate session formats may also
be proposed.

Please send a 1 pg proposal (or 1 pg per paper for a panel proposal) to
Michele Janette, Director, Program in Cultural Studies, English Dept,
Kansas State University, Manhattan KS  66502. Email submissions
strongly encouraged:  mjanette at ksu.edu. Please include return email
address for all submissions.

Proposal Deadline:  September 20, 2006



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