Journeys Across Media
Memory and Imagination
25th April 2014
2014 will mark the 12th anniversary of the annual Journeys Across Media (JAM) conference for postgraduate researchers, organised by postgraduates working in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading.
JAM 2014 seeks to foster emerging scholarship that investigates interactions and relationships between memory and media.
In her posthumously published book The Life of the Mind (1978), German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote:
‘Mnemosyne, Memory, is the mother of the Muses, and remembrance, the most frequent and also the most basic thinking experience, has to do with things that are absent, that have disappeared from my senses. Yet the absent that is summoned up and made present to my mind – a person, an event, a monument – cannot appear in the way it appeared to my senses, as though remembrance were a kind of witchcraft. In order to appear to my mind only, it must first be de-sensed, and the capacity to transform sense-objects into images is called “imagination.” ’
With this year’s conference, we would like to open a dialogue about the relationship between memory and imagination, particularly as expressed within contemporary scholarship and practices. Our initial questions include: how has an inner psychological process been positioned empirically and ideologically – both in mainstream iterations, social media contexts and in performance contexts? How does the relation between memory and imagination connect and diverge in interdisciplinary approaches? How have different forms of media affected the ways in which we understand memory as personal, cultural, traumatic and constructed?
Topics may include, but are not restricted to:
Archive and Imprint
The technique of flashback
Locational memory: Abandoned spaces and remembered places
The evolution of attitudes and technical approaches to representation of personal and social memory in film, theatre and television
Post-colonial memory in the contemporary moment
Recollective memory and war
Memory and suffering: the ethics of representing trauma
Remembrance and cultural identity
Remembering lines: memory and the performer
Lost and found: ‘re’-remembered texts and practices (for example the BBC lost archives)
Memory and data: the impact of digital media
Memory loss and dementia: Therapeutic practices in film, theatre and television
We warmly invite submissions from PhD and MA/MPhil scholars conducting research in these areas and seek to provide a broad, cross-medial discussion forum. Previous delegates have welcomed the opportunity to gain experience of presenting and developing their work, and to establish contacts with fellow postgraduate researchers and academic staff.
Please submit a 250-word abstract for a fifteen-minute paperand a 50-word biographical note by email to the JAM 2014 team (Niamh Bowe, Sonya Chenery, Tamara Courage and Dominic Lees) at jam@pgr.reading.ac.uk.
We welcome proposals for practice-as-research presentations/performances/screenings; these must conform to the 15-minute format, and should be suitable for viewing by a seated audience, within the panel format. Please include details of technical requirements. As above, please send a 50-word biographical note with your proposal.
Deadline for abstracts: 17th February 2014
Presenters who are not able to deliver their papers live are offered the option of presenting digitally, either via Skype or digitally recorded presentation. Non-presenting delegates are also strongly encouraged to attend.
JAM has an on-going collaboration with the Journal of Media Practice. Participants of both JAM 2012 and JAM 2013 have had their papers published by the journal. Please see Journal of Media Practice 13:3, the most recent publication incorporating postgraduate papers originally delivered at JAM.
In order to cover the cost of holding the conference, it will necessary for us to charge a fee of £25 per delegate (including presenting delegates). A limited number of bursaries to cover this cost may be available.
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