YOUNG RESEARCHERS CONFERENCE

CINEMA STUDIES

SCHOOL OF ARTS AND AESTHETICS

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY

The conference aims to foreground new ideas on contemporary cinema and media through the lens of objects, materials, and aesthetics. The production and circulation of objects create intersecting pathways where questions of labour, economy, and commodity cultures become the staging ground to discuss distinct media ecologies such as production cultures, technoscience, and cultural histories. The framework of objects helps bring the focus not just to the built nature of media objects (such as a projector, a TV antenna, a VHS tape or set props), but also underscores the material conditions that make these media worlds, either by accident or by design. While objects lead us to constructed environments, their functionality and relationality to other objects can be understood through their materiality. The infrastructural meshwork that supports the production, circulation, and exhibition of media can be articulated through the materials that (de)form them. Hence, the focus on materials creates a relational methodology to study different media forms and objects. This relational paradigm foregrounds sensory knowledge, further leading us to aesthetic concerns. As a plane of perception, aesthetics provides structures to the experiences and affective registers not always available to the material inquiries. It also links the questions of materiality with larger political and social contexts, warranting novel methodologies that investigate aspects of identity, memory, collectives, shared histories, and possible futures. These inquiries need to be positioned within larger media histories as continuities rather than ruptures.

This conference invites young researchers (M.A./PhD/Independent scholars) to come together to deliberate on new modes of research in this broad area of cinema and media studies. The conference will be held in a hybrid mode, so scholars can choose to present either online or offline. Presentations of up to 15 minutes are welcome in the form of papers.

Topics included but not limited to:

• Human – Nonhuman Interactions at Media Interface
• Converging and Diverging Histories of Cinema and Media Objects
• Media Objects as Repositories of Cultural Memory
• Analog and Digital Negotiations
• Sensory Media Ecology
• Speculative Media: Trends and Predictions
• Consumer Culture and Media Objects
• Spaces and Objects in Cinematic Environments
• Labour and Media/Mediated Labour
• Identity and Aesthetics
• Language, Region and Cinema
• Social Media and Virality
• Elements, Ecology and Anthropocene
• Production Cultures
• Forms, Genres and Platforms
• Sonic Cultures, Listening Practices and Materiality of Sounds
• Games and Cinema
• Media Infrastructures
• Media Ethnography

Deadline for Submission: Feb 12, 2025

Those selected for the conference will be notified by Feb 25, 2025.

An abstract of a maximum of 300 words along with five keywords and a list of bibliographic entries/references (up to five) should be sent to the email id: saacnsconference2025@gmail.com

The mail should also include a brief bio note with the details of your institutional affiliation on a separate file (maximum 50 words) and the chosen mode of presentation, offline or online.