Spanish Screen Media and Culture: Cinema, Television, Internet

Description

Spanish Screen Media: Cinema, Television, Internet

1 December 2006
CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1RX

Coinciding with the launch in October 2006 of Screen Media and Cultures, a new Cambridge MPhil, this bilingual conference aims for the first time to address cinema, television, and internet in Spain, both separately and in their interconnection.

Recent years have seen rapid changes in the field of Spanish media studies. Following the relative decline of psychoanalytic or apparatus film theory, scholarship on Spanish media has become more evidence-based, with specialists exploring such social topics as the roles of ethnicity and cultural institutions in Spanish film of past and present, the relation between industry and aesthetics in television, and gendered identities and communities on the internet. In the media themselves, Spanish cinema has achieved a higher profile internationally, in part through the continuing strength of the social realist genre; television has produced a new explosion of quality drama and the internet, slow to achieve market penetration in Spain, has now become a major force in both journalism and the visual arts.

This one day conference features established scholars from Spain, the UK, and the US in all three media and seeks to explore potential themes such as: the tension between critical theory and social practice in Spanish media studies, the contribution of the 'historic nationalities' (especially the Basque Country and Catalonia) to Spanish 'national' media, and the emergence of a Spanish visual culture (or cultures) that embraces all three media.

The keynote speaker and MacColl Lecture will be Professor Manuel Palacio of the Carlos III University, Madrid. Professor Palacio is the author of numerous studies on Spanish media, most especially unprecedented book length studies of Spanish television (both content and scheduling), which for the first time advance the field beyond the political history of production or nostalgic reminiscence of consumption. This will be his first opportunity to present his work in the UK. He will speak on the process of canon formation in Spanish cinema and TV.

Speakers include:

• Manuel Palacio (Carlos III University, Madrid)
• Anny Brooksbank Jones (Sheffield University)
• Norberto Minguez Arranz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
• Hugh O'Donnell (Glasgow Caledonian University)
• Chris Perriam (Manchester University)
• Nuria Triana Toribio (Manchester University)
• Teresa Vilaros (University of Aberdeen)

Information on conference participants and abstracts is available to download here (RTF format, open in Word).

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Organizer

Paul Julian Smith (University of Cambridge)