World Politics & Popular Culture
The Grand Hotel
Tynemouth
19-20 November2009
Accommodation | Conference Flyer | Online Registration | Programme |Conference Dinner
What do the terms ‘popular,’ ‘culture,’ and ‘world politics’ mean both in isolation and when used in conjunction? In what ways and with what effects has popular culture become a series of sites at which political meaning is made, where political contestation takes place and where political orthodoxy is reproduced and challenged? Food, clothing, wine, cars, travel, clubbing, gambling, magazines and fanzines all now form part of lifestyle choice and are central to the politics of consumerism and fetish. More familiar media such as literature, radio, cinema and television have been expanded into new realms made possible by the advent of digital technologies: web communities, blogging, online gaming, video games. These global public spheres have undermined received conceptions of international politics
And have become important sites at which identity and community are made and contested, where issues of representation have taken on new impetus and where the orthodox politics of the real have unravelled.
This conference seeks to explore the limits of the popular and to interrogate the category of culture in its destabilizing of the international.
Keynote Speaker:: Professor Mike Shapiro
'Geophilosophy, Aesthetics, and the City'
Other confirmed speakers include, David Campbell, Debbie Lisle, Martin Coward, Anca
Pusca, Ritu Vij, Louise Amoore, Marianne Franklin, Mark Lacy.
The conference features panels on electronic gaming, Battlestar Galactica, Walter
Benjamin and aesthetics, superheroes, landscape and geographic imaginaries, news
media.
ONLINE REGISTRATION DETAILS
Costs:
Standard Registration: £80 for 2 days (registration completed after 4pm, 30th September 2009)
Standard Registration£50 for 1 day
Early Bird Registration: £70 for 2 days (registration before 4pm, 30th September 2009)
Student Registration: £60 for 2 days; £30 for 1 day