[EDLING:448] Fwd: UPDATE: Rethinking Reception (grad) (1/1/05; 4/1/05-4/2/05)

[Tamara Warhol]

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University will host the conference:

RETHINKING RECEPTION
Duke University, Durham, NC  				April 1 & 2, 2005

http://www.duke.edu/literature/Reception/conference.html

This conference both proposes, and interrogates the utility of the concept of
reception for understanding audience interaction with texts in all their
various forms—be it readers and novels, readers and critical theory, viewers
and films, viewers and television, web-users and the internet, listeners and
radio, consumers and products, and nations and the trans-national flow of
cultural objects. Thus the conference proposes to bring together work on
readership, spectatorship, and consumption under the broader analytic of
reception, and to initiate a dialogue between work in film studies, literary
studies, cultural studies, critical theory, philosophy, and cognitive
psychology. The conference aspires to shed light on different aspects of
reception and to develop and to refine trans-disciplinary avenues of approach
to questions of audience interaction with texts.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
We are pleased to announce that the keynote speaker for our conference is
Professor Purnima Mankekar of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford
University, whose interests include television serials, nationalism, and
viewing practices. She is the author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics
(Duke UP, 1999) and is currently working on issues related to South Asian
American popular culture.

Potential panels or areas of specification within the broader theme of
reception could include the following:

ONTOLOGY, AFFECT AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SUBJECT
What is the agency of receivers in relation to objects? To what extent are
subjects determined or even constituted in different ways by the objects with
which they interact?

PERCEPTION, RECEPTION AND TECHNOLOGIES
How do different technologies—media, transportation, medical, architectural
etc.—create different frames for reception, or  practices of reception--if
these can still be thought of as discrete areas at all?

RECEPTION AND THE POLITICAL
How is the concept of reception useful for theorizing the constitution of
political discourses and hierarchies of power in a public sphere dominated by
the media--videos and photographs of violence committed in wartime, beheadings
broadcast on the internet, endless TV and internet replays of spectacular
events?

RECEPTION, THE NATION AND SOVEREIGNTY
What does reception as an analytic reveal about the concepts of the nation,
sovereignty, regionalism and trans-nationalism? What do reflections on
reception at a trans-national level reveal about the ontogenesis of forms of
political sovereignty in the 20th century?


Papers of 20 minutes might address any aspect of reception and proposals for
panels not listed above are also welcome. Submissions should ideally address
the specificities of the receivers in question, or the specific circumstances
or practices of reception, or, alternatively, justify why such attention is
not relevant in the case(s) considered.  The organizers also hope to initiate
a fruitful dialogue among conference participants through workshops for
discussion of texts related to reception.  Conference participants are
encouraged to propose specific articles, books, studies or even works in
progress that could be discussed.


The deadline for submission of 250-500 word paper abstracts is January 1,
2005. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and
phone number. Email abstracts to rethinkingreception at yahoo.com. Please see
http://www.duke.edu/literature/Reception/conference.html
for a more detailed call for papers and additional information. For general
questions about the conference, contact rethinkingreception at yahoo.com.

Arnal Dayaratna
Graduate Program in Literature
Duke University

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--
Tamara Warhol
PhD Student
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
warholt at dolphin.upenn.edu