[csaa-forum] Masterclass with Charlotte Brunsdon - Feb 2008

[John Gunders]

Television in Transition: Crime and Cookery

 

a Masterclass with Professor Charlotte Brunsdon

Department of Film and Television Studies 

University of Warwick, United Kingdom

 

When and where:

Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 

18 & 19 February 2008

 

The ARC Cultural Research Network is seeking applications from postgraduates and early career researchers who wish to take part in one of a Masterclass with Professor Charlotte Brunsdon. The class will be limited to 18 participants who are engaged in research relating to the broad theme of the Masterclass. Participants will be chosen based on a competitive application process. The Masterclass will include a discussion of the work of Professor Brunsdon and short presentations from participants. 

 

Theme: This masterclass will take as its topic the critical analysis of a medium in transition.  There will be three main areas of emphasis for the class:  television 'in general', crime and police series on television, and cookery and lifestyle programming.  The course is designed to move between more general analytic questions, meta-historical approaches to television, and the detailed analysis of particular programmes within particular historical contexts.  The examples provided will in general be drawn from British television of the last two decades, but participants will be expected to provide examples and case studies from the Australian context. Running across the class and through the case studies there are a set of concerns about key issues in television studies such as: the relationship between programmes, institutions and cultures of production; use of the archive, irony and the viewing of 'old television'; questions of memory and metaphor; quality, audiences and aesthetics; and, finally, periodization and genre, as television as we have known it moves into the 21st century. 

 

The two case studies areas are chosen to contrast different types of television programming which have been paid different types of analytic attention.  They also tend to circulate internationally in different ways, with some crime drama widely exported as originally broadcast (and some judged unexportable), while much lifestyle and factual entertainment is traded as formats which are reinterpreted internationally.  Serial drama about law enforcement and criminality is one of the persistent and ubiquitous of television genres.  It is also the key fictional genre (after soap opera in the 1970/80s) which is referred to by non-television scholars who wish to make arguments about the relationship between television and society.  This is because the genre must, implicitly or explicitly, dramatise what it is to be a law-abiding citizen, a criminal, an investigator, a law enforcer, the community and the state, although the generic conventions can range from the fantastic to the realist.  The case studies in this part of the course will run from Prime Suspect to some of the different types of 'nice crime' originating on British television including the heritage crime of Agatha Christie adaptations. The second case study uses 'cookery' as a shorthand for the enormous growth in lifestyle programming on television, and will explore the constitution of the consuming, home-improving publics featured on these programmes in the context of discussions of  television studies in general, cultural and aesthetic taste, citizenship, ordinariness and the remit of public service broadcasting.  

 

The structure of the class will permit us to return to more general questions about the study of television after the case studies.




Details

Cost:  The Masterclass is free of charge to successful applicants, and include lunch and morning/afternoon teas. Participants travelling from outside Brisbane will be eligible for travel and accommodation subsidies.

 

Applications are due by Monday 10th December, 2007.  Applications, to be completed on the application form below, must include a 250-word summary of your research topic, highlighting links to the Masterclass theme, and a one-page curriculum vitae. Further information is available from John Gunders at j.gunders at uq.edu.au

 

 

Charlotte Brunsdon

Charlotte Brunsdon is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick.  She has been interested in the critical analysis of popular television since first undertaking post-graduate research at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s, and her publications include Everyday Television: Nationwide (co-author, with David Morley) London, BFI, 1978,  Screen Tastes: Soap Opera to Satellite Dishes (Routledge, 1997), Feminist Television Criticism  (co-editor, with Julie D'Acci and Lynn Spigel) (Oxford 1997) and The Feminist, the Housewife and the Soap Opera  (Oxford, 2000).  Her most recent book is London in the Cinema (forthcoming 2007). She has recently written about lifestyle television and is currently researching television crime series.

 

  

MASTERCLASS APPLICATION FORM

 

Television in Transition: Crime and Cookery

Professor Charlotte Brunsdon

 

 

Where: Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, St Lucia campus

When: 18 & 19 February, 2008 

 

NB Please be aware that this is a competitive application and the total number of students will be a maximum of 18.

 

Title:

 

Family name:

 

First name:

 

Address:

 

Suburb/Town:

 

State:

 

Postcode:

 

Phone:

 

Email:

 

Supervisor:

 

Institution:

 

Status (PG/ECR/Post-PhD*):

 

																	

* Post-PhD denotes those not yet employed in an academic position.

 

Do you need a subsidy to fund travel and/or accommodation subsidy?  

Travel: yes/no                Accommodation: yes/no           

 

Please attach a brief statement of your research(250 words) that highlights links to the Masterclass theme, and a short curriculum vitae (no more than a page) listing relevant experience, research and publications

 

 

ELECTRONIC APPLICATIONS (MARKED 'CHARLOTTE BRUNSDON MASTERCLASS') SHOULD BE RETURNED BY Monday 10 December, 2007. 

 

Send the application to:

John Gunders, Cultural Research Network        

j.gunders at uq.edu.au <mailto:j.gunders at uq.edu.au> 

 

Successful applicants will be notified by 20 December 2007.  

 

 

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