Questions of Identity: Artists, Audiences, and Archives
November 18-19, 2011 - Presented by the Meadows School of the Arts and the Division of Film and Media Arts at SMU
In the last thirty years, questions of identity have been at the center of much productive change in film scholarship and media making practice. The Olympian perspective on human consciousness exemplified by much high structuralist and psychoanalytic theory has been modified and expanded by a range of investigations into race, gender, sexuality, social class, and industrial formations of a large, diverse and fractured range of media makers and audiences.
The 1980s saw the rise of reception studies and a cultural studies model of audiences and social contexts for the media text. In the 1990s, empirical studies of the media audience and industrial history added to an increasingly complex and nuanced understanding of questions of identity in media studies, and post-colonial, postmodern and queer theory continue to expand the range of scholarly and artistic intervention in terms of social identity. We welcome scholarly, artistic, and archival presentations on this expanding group of questions. Presentations may include, but are not limited to:
- specialized promotions for niche audiences
- reception studies
- the influence of racial, gender, and sexual identities on questions of aesthetics
- demographic changes in the audience
- independent and guerilla media making
- new media and questions of identity
Schedule
Friday, November 18
10:30 AM – 12:15 PM Second Floor Mezzanine, Greer Garson Theater
Registration and Opening Reception
12:30 – 2:15 PM 3531 Greer Garson
PANEL 1 “Who Am I?” Performers, Lovers, and Other Primates
Chair: Derek Kompare (Southern Methodist University)
Gerald Duchovnay (Texas A&M University-Commerce) “Researching Film Archives: Finding `Friends with Benefits’"
Mary Beltran (University of Texas – Austin) “A New, Racially Fluid Funny: Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen on SNL”
Anne Morey (Texas A&M University-College Station) “From Miller's White Cliffs to Brown's White Cliffs of Dover: Sentiment and Nation between Hollywood and the OWI”
Marilyn Lewis (Texas A&M University-Commerce) “`Some Apes, It Seems, Are More Equal Than Others’ – Land of the Free as Represented in Planet of the Apes”
2:30 – 4:15 PM 3531 Greer Garson
PANEL 2 Fantasies of National Identity
Chair: Jessica Pence (Southern Methodist University)
Jessica Pence (Southern Methodist University) "Passport to Pamlico: a Comedic Discourse on What it Meant to be a British Citizen after World War II"
Lauren N. Glenn (University of Florida) “`All I Did Was Try Not to Get Shot’: American Cinematic Identity Post 9/11”
Xiaoqian Li (University of Texas – Austin) “Hybridity in the Rush Hour series”
Justin Mack (Southern Methodist University) “Crippled Action: Jackie Chan and the Incongruity of Hollywood and Hong Kong”
Dinner Break
7:00 PM 3531 Greer Garson
FREE SCREENING: Jack Kemp’s Miracle in Harlem (1948) and short subjects. 35mm prints courtesy of the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection
Saturday, November 19
8:00 – 8:45 AM Second Floor Mezzanine, Greer Garson Theater
Coffee and Continental Breakfast
9:00 – 10:45 AM 3531 Greer Garson
PANEL 3 Global Media and Transnational Identities
Chair: Kevin Heffernan (Southern Methodist University)
Justin Banta (Refugee Writers) “Crisis/Post-Crisis: Imaging Refugee Identity in Dallas”
Dayna Oscherwitz (Southern Methodist University) “Toward an African Aesthetics: Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako and Neill Blomkamp's District 9”
Anne Major (University of Texas – Austin) “Hyphenated Identity: The films of Bahman Ghobadi”
Tony Tran (University of North Texas) “Pirate Cultures and Identities: The Reception of Transnational Media in Viet Nam”
11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
PANEL 4 Outside the Text: Identity and Distribution, Regulation, and Historiography
Chair: Rick Worland (Southern Methodist University)
Daniel Humphrey (Texas A&M University--College Station) “A `Thirst’ for `Strange Loves’"
Janet Staiger (University of Texas – Austin) “The Wertham Case: Evaluating Effects of Media Theories”
Kevin Heffernan (Southern Methodist University) “Just a Bunch of White Guys Sitting Around Talking? The Restoration and Presentation of the Tyler, Texas Black Film Collection”
12:30 – 1:15 PM Taubman Auditorium, Owen Arts Center
BOX LUNCH
1:30 – 3:00 PM 3531 Greer Garson
PANEL 5 Gender and Media(tion)
Chair: Sean Griffin (Southern Methodist University)
Keara Goin (University of Texas-Austin) “Communicating Identity: Gendered Representation and the Influence of the Megadiva”
Claire Cothren (Texas A&M University--College Station) “The Redefinition of Women’s `Natural’ Functions in Granik’s Winter’s Bone”
Adrienne L. McLean University of Texas at Dallas Scanning Perfection: Understanding Glamour with Photoshop
3:15 – 4:45 PM 3531 Greer Garson
PANEL 6 Dudes, Fans, and Cults
Chair: Kevin Heffernan (Southern Methodist University)
Kevin John Bozelka (Austin College) “Showgirls at The Alamo: Mass Camp and Audience Participation”
Kimberly Owczarski (Texas Christian University) “Courting the Fanboy Audience: Legendary Pictures and Private Equity Investment in Hollywood’s Tentpole Productions”
Charles Hamilton (Northeast Texas Community College/ Texas A & M - Commerce) Being `The Dude’ Within The Big Lebowski”