cfp.english.upenn.edu

Please circulate widely.

Women and Media: Representations Past and Present
An interdisciplinary postgraduate conference

9th-10th March 2012
Queen’s University Belfast

This two-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine the multi-faceted nature of women’s relationship with the media. Encompassing the press, art, advertising and literature alongside a progressive shift towards more modern
forms such as social networking and blogging, this conference will look at the media’s categorization and censorship of women through culture and the law, issues of prostitution, abortion, illegitimacy, rape and asylums as well as challenges to heteronormativity.

We seek to discuss the marginal experiences of women and highlight the silences in the news cycle, while acknowledging the ways in which women have sought redress for this
silence, clawing back a female space in the column inches.

We welcome (20 minute) papers that address,
but are not limited to, the following themes:

•Celebrity culture and the journalist’s cult of
personality
•Media treatment of rape and abortion
•Historical aspects of newspaper reporting
•Censorship, victimisation and exploitation
•Social networking and feminism in media
•Representations of female criminality
•Political control of the media
•Silence and absent voices
•Spectacle and hysteria

Proposals (max. 250 words) are invited from postgraduate students and early career researchers, and should be submitted by 10th February 2012 to the conference organisers at womenandmedia2012@gmail.com

For more information, please visit our website: http://womenandmedia2012.wordpress.com/