The Minghella Building, University of Reading, the space of our next television conference.
The culminating conference arising from the AHRC-funded ‘Spaces of Television’ project will be held at the University of Reading from Wednesday 18th to Friday 20th September, 2013. Proposals are invited for papers and/or panels on the theme of ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’. The project focuses on television fiction produced in the UK from 1955-94, and analyses how the material spaces of production (in TV studios and on location) conditioned the aesthetic forms of programmes. Its primary interest is how fictional spaces represented on the screen across a range of drama during this period negotiated the opportunities and constraints of studio and exterior space, film and video technologies, and live-ness and recording.
While we particularly welcome papers that specifically address British drama during this period, we will also consider comparative perspectives concerning dramas from other television industries, import/export, transnational exchange, co-productions and spatially-themed studies of earlier or later dramas.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- The institutional and aesthetic relationships between the spaces of television production (studio, location) and dramas’ social, political and cultural meanings.
- Histories and historiographies of television drama, particularly relating to production strategies and institutional contexts.
- The social and cultural meanings of the spaces depicted in television drama: e.g. heritage spaces, the urban and the rural, regional, national and foreign spaces, fantasy spaces.
- Case studies of television dramatists, actors, directors, producers, designers, or other production staff and their contributions to the construction of mise-en-scene and issues of space.
- The relationship between television dramatic space and performance, and the social and cultural meanings of performance in different spatial and aesthetic contexts.
- Analysis of the dramatic conventions of television genres and their realisation through the use of space and mise-en-scene.
- The spatial significance of particular production techniques and/or special effects in television drama.
Proposals for 20 minute papers in the form of a 250 word abstract (or outline of a three person panel) should be submitted to Dr Billy Smart (w.r.smart@rdg.ac.uk) by Friday 25 January 2013.
We welcome proposals from both established scholars and early career researchers including postgraduate students.