If we consider TV as one of the most influential agents of value construction, then TV shows can be considered a powerful tool to guide viewers through the moral climate of their time.

And if we consider television as a key cultural mediator, we have to understand it as a significant interlocutor in social change.

On June 11 – 12, 2020, in Liverpool (UK), the Gender and Transnational TV Conference will aim to forge interdisciplinary links between those working in Television and Media Studies, Modern Languages and Gender Studies.

Television and media research is changing, the rapid evolution of this medium has been theorised in terms of the technological advances that changing modes of distribution bring, its textual, narrative and aesthetic developments, and its role as a mediator of cultural identity.

Scholarship in this area has produced prolific studies of US and, to a lesser degree, UK television to exemplify the ways in which constructions of gender are mediated through different TV formats and genres.

This conference will refocus this research through analysis of television made beyond these English-speaking territories and consider the important work being done in Modern Languages to understand and analyse the ways in which transcultural and transnational mediations of gender are made visible, produced and understood through popular television.

As a response to a global political landscape, in which power and gender have been brought into sharp focus, the conference will examine the way in which these structures of power play out in these “other” television cultures.

Themes and research questions may include but should not be limited to:

• How is gender made visible on television?
• How are gendered subjectivities negotiated in different TV genres?
• How are gendered subjectivities framed by the format of the TV genre?
• To what extent is character engagement dependent on genre, hybridisation or actors?
• How do critics deal with gender on TV?
• What other extra textual discourses contribute to the production of meanings surrounding gender on television?
• To what extent is the continued application of Anglophone theory in a non-Anglophone context useful?
• Can the analysis of the geo-specific productions contribute to the theorisation of the media representation of gender?
• How does the reception of international productions compare to that of indigenous television?
• How has the transmedial configuration of television altered the ways in which configurations of gender and nationality are understood?
• How have streaming platforms changed the ways in which gender is mediated transnationally?

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Milly Buonanno, Professor of Media and Gender Studies at La Sapienza University, Rome (Italy)

Aniko Imre, Professor of Cinema & Media Studies, University of Southern California (USA)

Organisers:

Anja Louis, Reader in Cultural and Intercultural Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield (UK)

Abigail Loxham, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Film, University of Liverpool (UK)

Conference Formats:

Individual papers: Oral presentations on original research by one or more authors.

Full panels: Three thematically connected papers on original research by several authors.

All papers consist of a 20-minute presentation by the author(s), with an extra 10-minute slot allocated for discussion at the end. Proposals for papers should include an abstract under 350 words and a bio of no more than 100 words. Panel proposals for three or four paper panels should combine the abstracts and bios of speakers in one document, and should also include a short rationale and panel title. Poster proposals should include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a 100-words speaker bio.

All proposals should be submitted to the organisers: a.louis@shu.ac.uk and abigail.loxham@liverpool.ac.uk.

The deadline for proposals is: March 20, 2020 (new deadline). Accepted papers will be notified by March 20, 2020. Selected papers will be invited to submit for a peer-reviewed volume.

Registration fees: £ 100 (regular). Concessionary rate: £ 60 (postgraduates).