Chasing Dragons

Call for Papers: Popular Culture and World Politics v. 6

Popular Culture and World Politics Conference v. 6

Pirating the Popular

Stockholm University, September 13-14, 2013

Call for Papers

Abstracts should be submitted to 

abstractspcwp@statsvet.su.se.

Please indicate in the subject box in your email message

 "Abstract for PWPC". 

This will ensure proper handling of your abstract.

Keynote speeches by

Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Family Professor 

University of Virginia

and

Elisa Kreisinger, well-known activist and artist 

Conference deadlines

• Suggestions for panels and performances – May 1, 2013
• Paper abstracts – June 1, 2013

Please note that there will be a modest conference fee. 

More information later.

The study of world politics and popular culture is now an 

established area of interest for many disciplines in the 

social sciences, humanities and the arts. Popular culture 

relates to contemporary politics in numerous ways: It can 

offer expression that soothes and humours the soul. It can 

satirize and play off cultural resonance to resist powerful or 

repressive forces. And it can stimulate political or 

community engagement, as demonstrated clearly in the role 

that music and performative satire played in the Arab 

Uprisings and  in the Occupy activities around the world.

This conference addresses the multiple ways in which popular 

culture engages with world affairs. It  takes as its starting 

point the observation that we live in an age of interregnum - 

a time where the old institutions and old rules no longer 

function sufficiently and new ones have not yet taken their 

place. 

Ours is an age where processes of globalisation are 

contributing to the ‘divorce’ of politics from power, 

resulting in what  Zygmunt Bauman identifies as a 

‘liquid modernity’ of endemic uncertainty.’ This 

uncertainty about authority and interpretation - 

compounded by ubiquitous connectivity and audio-visual media - 

gives rise to power struggles, problematizes the ability to 

judge relationships between cause and effect, provides new 

opportunities for political engagement and changes the 

foundations on which authority rests.

Hosting this conference in Stockholm seems particularly 

timely given Sweden’s various, if not contradictory, 

interventions in the ambiguous world of popular culture: 

from the foundation of The Pirate Bay to the Wikileaks case, 

from a culture of  ‘free viewing’ to Spotify’s corporate  

entrepreneurialism, from strongholds in Marxist media theory 

to Facebook’s Swedish server farms, and many more.

The general theme Pirating the Popular covers a broad range 

of practices concerning the complex, dubious and dynamic 

nature of popular culture in world politics. We welcome

 proposals for papers, panels, performances and screenings 

addressing the many different aspects of world politics and 

popular culture that are evoked by the metaphor of piracy.

Themes for papers and panels could include:

• The politics of consumerism and commercial exploitation
• Labour policies and regulation in popular culture industries
• The role of popular culture in protest movements and ‘non-movements’
• The militarization of popular culture (militainment)
• The role of popular culture in nation-branding
• Surveillance and the securitization of the digital landscape
• Popular culture and the politics of citizenship
• The role of popular culture in the MENA region before, during and after the Arab spring
• Cultural globalisation: mediated control and resistance
• Illegal trafficking or migrating media?
• Transnational media witnessing
• Transnational news and popular culture
• The politics of local and regional popular cultures
• Music and politics
• Visual culture and globalisation
• Methodological approaches to popular culture and world politics
• Popular culture and political scandals

Conference conveners:
Michele Micheletti (Lars Hierta Chair of Political Science) 

michele.micheletti@statsvet.su.se

Kristina Riegert (Professor of Media and Communication 

Studies), kristina.maj.riegert@ims.su.se

The official conference website can be found here

Photo credit: Adobe of Chaos

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 186

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Political Graffiti: A Brief History in Images' by Erin Barnett at fansinaflashbulb

• 'When the Drug Policies Work' by Richard Seymour at leninology.com

• 'Model Warfare' by Geoff Manaugh at bldgblog

• 'Politics, the Economy, and Film: An Interview with Ken Loach' by Federico Grandesso at neurope.eu

• 'More Issues in Open Access (#OA)' by Martin Coward at martincoward.net

Hope you have a great weekend.

Photo credit: Jenny Downing

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Call for Papers: Power, Popular Culture and World Politics

Call for Papers

1st European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS)

5-8 June, 2013, Tartu

Power, Popular Culture, and World Politics (Workshop #10)

Deadline for Proposals: 15 December, 2012

I am convening a four day workshop on popular culture and world politics (PCWP) as part of the European International Studies Association's 1st European Workshops in International Studies. The workshop will be held in Tartu, Estonia from 5-8 June 2013.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers in order to explore the state of the art in aesthetic, phenomenological, and representational explorations of contemporary relations of power as well as best practices in teaching these approaches to PCWP.

The workshop particularly seeks papers that:

• critically engage with the questions of whether popular culture matters in world politics, how it might matter, to whom it might matter, and how its myriad influences might be assessed or perceived?
• explore methodological issues in PCWP--including aesthetic and phenomenological approaches to the analysis of artifacts and power dynamics. 
• focus on the political impacts of embodiment, affect, the material design of devices, and the modes through which contemporary media are experienced.
• analyse cultural forms as a way of problematising world politics and its supporting structures.
• share best pedagogical practice in terms of deploying popular culture in the seminar room and/or in teaching appropriate research methods for the field. 

To all of these ends, work from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences is warmly welcome.

The central organisers have stated that a workshop may accept up to 20 participants. With the four day length, this upper limit allows for extended paper presentations beyond conference norms and ensures that a significant amount of time can be dedicated to discussing each paper. From talking with colleagues who have previously attended ECPR workshops that are run along similar lines, the format is said to be very conducive to developing works-in-progress and exploring themes of common research interest.

If you are interested, you can submit a paper proposal here. Please indicate that you are applying for workshop #10 in the drop-down menu on the form.

More information on the EWIS can be found here

The registration fee is €50 (full)/€30(research students).

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me via email

Popular Culture and World Politics v. 5.0

Popular Culture and World Politics v. 5.0

9-11 November, 2012

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Geneva, New York, 14456, USA

What do zombies have to do with world politics? How might the Twilight sagas inform and illuminate our way of understanding world politics and changes in the global political economy? In what ways do videogames, the sales of which now exceed those of music CDs and DVDS combined, shape the identities and political understandings of frequent players? Is visual media destined to replace print as the primary source of news and entertainment in advanced industrial societies and how might this affect the construction of meaning of world affairs? As a means of communication readily available to an ever-expanding number of individuals and groups, how might the internet offer paths of resistance to corporate and Western news and entertainment hegemony? How can tango dancing make the world a more peaceful place?

This conference explores the multiple ways of investigating the intersections of world politics and the production, circulation, content, and consumption of various popular cultural forms. Engaging a range of disciplines and practices in the social sciences, humanities and the arts, the conference encourages participants to question what terms such as ‘global,’ ‘popular,’ and ‘culture’ mean both in isolation and when used in conjunction. It asks in what ways and with what effects popular culture has become a series of sites at which political meaning is made, where political contestation takes place, and where political orthodoxy is reproduced and challenged. The conference provides a highly-focused and interdisciplinary environment in which the increasing numbers of scholars that are engaging in culture-related research can present their work and participate in the kind of extended discussion that larger conferences do not permit. The conference aims to provide an intimate forum at which debates about interdisciplinary methods and theoretical approaches can be developed to facilitate debate across disciplines that share interests in world politics and culture. We welcome proposals for performances, screenings, panels, or individual papers, on any aspect of world politics and popular culture.

Building on the preceding four PCWP conferences, version 5.0 will be held on the campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a small liberal arts institution located in the beautiful Finger Lakes (wine-making) region of western New York state.

Inquiries should be sent to PCWP@hws.edu
The deadline for proposals is 15 July 2012

Many thanks to Kevin Dunn who has graciously agreed to host and organize this year's event!

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 113

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Real Urban Problem: Graffiti' by Robert Hariman at nocaptionneeded.com

• 'Still Blaming Muslims' by Richard Seymour at leninstomb

• 'Arresting Portraits of a Bygone Era' by Pete Brook at prisonphotography

• 'The Terrorist Threat We're Ignoring' by David Sirota at inthesetimes.com

Please stay safe.

Photo credit: lisa cee

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 106

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Libyan Artists Driving Gaddafi to the Wall' by Rory Mulholland at guardian.co.uk

• 'Why We have College' by Louis Menad at newyorker.com

• 'Cricket: A Vehicle for Post-Colonial Pride' by Matt Owen at leftfootforward.org

• 'Civic War and the Normalization of Violence' by Robert Hariman at nocaptionneeded.com

• 'United Nations Report: File-Sharing Disconnections Violate Human Rights' at gamepolitics.com

• 'Conspiracy Theories Abound in American Politics' by Mark Barabak at latimes.com

Enjoy the weekend!

Photo credit: Dan Zen

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 78

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Becoming the Alien: Apartheid, Racism, and District 9' by Andries du Toit at asubtleknife

• 'Return of Undeground Rave Culture is Fuelled by Recession and Facebook' by Mark Townsend at guardian.co.uk

• 'Shut Up, Spock! How Battlestar Galactica Beat Trek Babble' by Gavin Clarke theregister.com (thanks to Martin Coward for the link!)

• 'Street Art Way Below the Street' by Jasper Rees at nytimes.com

• 'Social Media Teaches Grand Ole Party New Tricks' by Sonia Verma at globeandmail.com

• 'An App for Tracking Political Promises' at gamepolitics.com

I just want to quickly thank everyone involved in the organization of the 3rd Annual Popular Culture and World Politics Conference that took place this week at York University in Toronto. It was a truly fantastic event with the right mix of intellectual vibrancy and good old fashioned hospitality.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Photo credit: webtreats

Newcastle University Launches World Politics and Popular Culture MA Degree

I am pleased to announce that Politics at Newcastle University will be launching a new MA degree in World Politics and Popular Culture for the 2010-11 academic year. Here is the course description:

• World Politics and Popular Culture is a distinctive interdisciplinary degree programme that examines the changing dynamics of contemporary international relations in the context of the politics of the various forces shaping and shaped by popular culture. The programme focuses on key theories, policies, and events in world politics in relation to both traditional and new media. You will learn not only how to think critically about how world politics is reflected or reproduced in popular culture, but also how the politics of popular culture shape the dynamics of world politics...

The programme entails three core modules in Politics (World Politics and Popular Culture, Theories and Approaches to the Study of Politics, and a Dissertation in World Politics and Popular Culture) with 4 optional modules that can be taken from politics, cultural studies, media studies, and film.

Admission requirements are an undergraduate degree from an accredited university with at least a 2.i result--the rough equivalent in North American systems would be a B average.

Please note that 'other qualifications or relevant professional experience may also satisfy the entrance requirements. Applicants whose first language is not English require IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 575 (paper-based) or 233 (computer-based), or equivalent.'

Information on how to apply can be found here. There is no formal deadline--apart from the start of classes at the end of September--but if you are applying from overseas, securing a student visa can take several weeks depending on your circumstances.

If you'd like to talk to someone to find out more about the World Politics and Popular Culture MA, you can contact  Matt Davies, whose tremendous efforts and vision saw this through from design to implementation.

I'm also happy to field any inquiries that you may have about the programme or pursuing a MA in politics in the UK.

Disclaimer: If there are any differences between information provided here and that contained on official Newcastle University web-pages, the latter should be viewed as the authoritative source.

Collage and photo credit: DerrickT (work displayed under a Creative Commons attribution license)

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 37

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Dudeism, the faith that abides in the Big Lebowski' by Ben Walters via guardian.co.uk

• 'Taki183 Interview' by Roger Gastman at ilovegraffiti.de (Taki183 was one of the progenitors of the emerging graffiti scene in New York during the early 1970s).

• Excellent discussions of media representations of the Haitian disaster, the role of photojournalism, and the political implications of both from bagnewsnotes, (notes on) politics, theory & photography, and duckrabbit.info

• 'Cricket Team Snub Reeks of Politics to Pakistanis' by Lydia Polgreen and Hari Kumar via nytimes.com

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: Adam_Baker

Bristol Residents to Vote on Street Art

Bristol City Council wants residents to vote on whether public murals painted on buildings and walls should be considered 'art' or graffiti. Those images voted to the status of art will be left while those deemed by public opinion to be graffiti will be removed by the council's clean street team. You can find out more about the policy, its potential upsides, its potential downsides, and the whole Bristol scene at bristolgraffiti.

If 'artistic merit', popularity, and decency are the pillars for decision-making and Bristol City Council's decision represents the leading edge in local governance, why is it only street art that is open for discussion?  Why not hold a vote to keep public spaces clear of advertising? For example, Sao Paulo turned into an advert free zone couple of year's back in order to cut back on 'visual pollution'. 

Many might welcome that kind of serenity, particularly those of us who now mark the decline of civilization with the appearance of Iggy Pop--the very epitome of recklessness--on billboards for car insurance that have popped up across the UK.

Funny how what counts as art is always up for discussion but the intrusion of capitalism into every aspect of our daily existence is not.

Photo credits: AussieDingo, tirafotos, and jcrakow