2nd Global Conference: Teenagers and Contemporary Visual Culture

2nd Global Conference: Teenagers and Contemporary Visual Culture Saturday 10th May - Monday 12th May 2014 Lisbon, Portugal Call For Presentations: The practices, sensibilities, issues and events that define the teen experience may vary across time and place, but collectively they inspire the development of a visual culture whose richness and diversity speaks volumes about the relationship between teens and their world. The Teens and Contemporary Visual Culture Project aims to facilitate a better understanding of how visual culture functions as a means of creative expression for teens, a bell-weather for teen perspectives and tastes, an historical benchmark of teen experiences and a potent tool for teaching and learning (whether in the classroom or through the didacticism of storytelling). The project Steering Group invites proposals for presentations, performances, interactive workshops, readings, screenings, installations, reports on research, and pre-constituted, theme-driven panels. We are particularly interested in breaking the pattern of academic conferences by welcoming non-academic participants and by encouraging non-traditional approaches to presentations. The project will explore themes that include, but are not limited to: Representation: - Portrayals of teenage life and teen cultures (mainstream, sub-cultures, counter-cultures) - Identity issues concerning race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality - Impact of "big" events (death and mortality, pregnancy, addiction, marriage, mental illness, disability, etc.) on teens Storytelling and Aesthetics: - Studies of particular series, films, etc. - Historical perspectives on teen visual culture - Responding to/setting trends in teen fashion, music and pop culture - Narrative studies - Adapting stories between media and across cultures - Making and breaking generic conventions - Impact of star persona/celebrity - Factors in the phenomenon: why some teen programming goes viral and others fail - Assessments of the messages, meanings and cultural significance of specific texts, storylines and characters Production: - Teens as producers (e.g teens in writers' rooms and creative teams; teens as producers of fan fiction, videos and art; teens as campaigners/correspondents seeking to influence storylines, etc.) - Technologies of production, distribution and marketing (e.g. the impact of multiplatform experiences and social media) Reception: - Teen audiences and patterns of consumption - Cross-cultural reception studies - Fan communities - Teens and celebrities - Teens as celebrities - Controversies and moral panics - Regulation and censorship - The appeal of teen visual culture for adults, and its implications Uses and Implications: - Why teen visual cultures matter - Visual culture as a teaching tool - Research methods and strategies for studying teens and visual culture do Presentations will also be considered on any related theme. In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between two and possibly all three groups - and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Teenagers, visual culture, and/or urban popcultures, subcultures and/or storytelling. What to send: 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 8th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords. E-mails should be entitled: TCVC2 Abstract Submission. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend. Organising Chairs Ann-Marie Cook: annmariecook75@gmail.com Dr Rob Fisher: tcvc2@inter-disciplinary.net The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume. For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/skins/call-for-papers/