The Flow 2018 organizers are proud to present our preliminary conference schedule featuring 31 roundtable panels. Check back later for more details about our receptions and other events.

This year’s conference roundtables will take place at the Texas Union (UNB) and the Belo Media Center (BMC) on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Walk-up registration and check-in will be in the following locations:

• Thursday (12-5:30 p.m.) / Friday (8:30-5:30 p.m.): Texas Union, Sinclair Suite, 1st Floor
• Saturday (8:30-3:00 p.m.): Belo Media Center, 4th Floor Lobby

Please see our conference location page for more information about these buildings.

Click on any of the roundtable titles below to view the organizing question and the names of panelists.

2018 Conference Schedule

Thursday, September 27, 2018

1:45 – 3:00 p.m. – Session 1

‪1A: Precarious Pedagogies: Responding to Current Events in Media Studies Classrooms

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture room

While university classrooms have a history of engaging with difficult and timely topics, current political and institutional climates have seen increased scrutiny of instructors for what they teach and how they teach it, often with very real consequences. With events at the national level (2016 election, police violence, #MeToo campaign) and on campuses (Richard Spencer, racist flyers), faculty and students must navigate situations that are complex, personal, and fraught. Some disciplines may seem insulated from these topics but the humanities in general, and media studies in particular, directly engage with these issues as part of our course content.

Although research suggests students appreciate when faculty address traumatic events (Huston and DiPietro; Kardia et al), many instructors are hesitant to do so for a variety of reasons (identities, confidence, job security, campus climate). Since the last Flow conference, however, a reality TV personality has become president, any media content can be labelled “fake news,” and the Weinstein scandal emerged in a global media capital. All this in addition to the central role that identity, representation, and power play in media studies syllabi.

Therefore, what considerations should be made in addressing specific incidents? How can media texts be leveraged to unpack these topics? What strategies or best practices can be brought to bear in these situations? What is the role and function of tenure within institutions to protect those in more precarious positions (graduate students and adjunct instructors)? How does this pedagogy play out differently across diverse student populations and institutional settings?

Moderator: Jim Buhler

Panelists:
Eva Hageman, University of Maryland, College Park
David Gurney, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi
Maria Suzanne Boyd, Delaware County Community College
*Nicole Hentrich, University of Michigan
Rachael Liberman, University of Denver

1B: Remakes and Reboots: The Value of Mining Television’s Past

Location: Texas Union – Texas Governor’s Room

The surge of remakes and reboots is perhaps one of the most apparent trends on television today. The industry is mining shows across genres from the 1960s (Hawaii Five-0; The Twilight Zone); 1970s (One Day at a Time; S.W.A.T.); 1980s (Dallas, Roseanne); 1990s (The X-Files, Twin Peaks); and 2000s (Roswell; American Idol) to serve as catalysts for new content. The simple explanation for revisiting older content is that it’s less risky to rely on existing and presold intellectual property. Furthermore, these shows have the potential to draw in both older audiences of the original shows inspired by nostalgia and younger audiences who see the shows as original. While the industrial reasoning behind this trend may appear commonsensical, the implications of these many remakes and reboots is perhaps a bit more layered. This roundtable will address both the industrial and cultural implications that emerge from the proliferation of remakes/reboots. Potential questions include: How are remakes/ reboots a reaction to the changing television ecosystem? What are the industrial ramifications of the growing reliance on nostalgia for television content? How is the value of the older, “original” texts affected by remakes and reboots? Why are younger audiences drawn to revisit original versions of some shows and not others? Do remakes and reboots successfully encourage co-viewing by multigenerational audience members? By exploring these questions surrounding remakes and reboots, we can move beyond a basic understanding of their industrial function to consider their more nuanced role in shaping both the television industry and television culture.

Moderator: Ashlynn D’Harcourt

Panelists:
*Barbara Selznick, University of Arizona
Laura Schumacher, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Kayti Lausch, University of Michigan
Nick Marx, Colorado State University
Sara Bakerman, University of Southern California

1C: Instability/Stability: Catalogue Titles, Streaming Services, and Physical Media

Location: Texas Union – Eastwoods Room

A 2017 article in Paste makes the case that physical audio-visual media is more important than ever in the “ephemeral world of streaming.” The argument is that as streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime increase original productions and emphasize exclusive rights to high-profile properties over a deep catalogue, there has been a resurgent interest in physical media. This is especially true in the U.S. and the U.K., where small specialty labels have targeted niche audiences by releasing limited and special editions of hard-to-find films and TV shows that the major studios see no financial advantage in making available to relatively small audiences and are willing to license out for cheap.

In addition to raising significant questions about the home video market as we move further away from the heyday of VHS and DVD sales, the instability of streaming services’ catalogues prompts us to consider its impact on archival practices and, in turn, viewership practices in significant ways. What metrics are used to determine whether or not a film, TV show, or album is “worth” releasing by a major studio? What care is put into restoration or preservation efforts as a consequence? What are the potential consequences – good or bad – of leaving such work to third-party companies and public archives? What properties are audiences aware of in this environment and how does that impact assumptions about canonical importance? This panel invites discussion of these issues and more, including their relation to other media industries, including record and video game companies.

Moderator: Eric Forthun

Panelists:
Thomas Johnson, University of Florida
*Matt Boyd Smith, Georgia State University
Lisa Patti, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Derek Kompare, Southern Methodist University

3:15 – 4:30 p.m. – Session 2

2A: Media(ted) Archives: The Politics of Saving & Making Media Histories

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture Room

Few people would reject the premise that digitally archiving the mass media—film, television, radio, video games, and the like—is important cultural and scholarly work. Though it it can require tremendous human and computational effort, such labor facilitates the study of fragile, rare, or inaccessible materials, as well as enables the “distant reading” (i.e., data mining) of these materials en masse. The democratization of media past, present, and future—thanks especially to digital archives—would thus seem to be an unassailable pursuit, no matter if done in special collections, an academic unit, a community center, a not-for-profit organization, or even a transnational conglomerate. But it is not—a legion of obstacles stand in the way of making media archives fully fulgent. From the legal mechanisms of intellectual property protection, to the limited resources available to archivists to do their work, to the nomenclatural policing of designations such as “archive” and “archivist,” to the paucity of international standards by which materials might be expeditiously processed and located, the politics and practices of media archive creation, management, and sustainability are often confusing, discouraging, and infuriating. What is it about the mass media that complicates arguments promoting their historical value? What ideological motives might connect the policing of archive development with other questions circulating in media studies such as those concerned with monoculturalism, casuistry, and the dangers of presentism? Finally, how can we as a practical and pedagogical matter support existing and emerging archives that will aid future generations in the making of media histories?

Moderator: Caroline Frick

Panelists:
Lamiyah Bahrainwala, Southwestern University
Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
*Matt Payne/Ken McAllister/Judd Ethan Ruggill, University of Notre Dame and University of Arizona

2B: In Data We Trust: The Limits of Algorithmic Culture

Location: Texas Union – Texas Governor’s Room

As platforms like Netflix, Twitter, and WeChat become increasingly imbricated with and valuable to the traditional media industries, the extent to which media production, distribution, and reception are shaped and articulated by (often opaque) algorithms becomes apparent. Similarly, the data collected, coded, and commodified by those same platforms and algorithms create a feedback loop that impacts all dynamics in the current media ecology, from surveillance and recommendations to audience targeting and project greenlighting. How do algorithms and data shape media and media studies? How have industrial practices, processes, and cultures changed in response to the influx of data? How and where is that data being stored, curated, preserved? By whom and to what ends? In what ways and to what extent do data and algorithms increase the precarity of audiences, fans, promoters, intermediaries, below-the-line workers, etc.? Are the effects felt proportionately across all actors and populations? How do age, race, gender, sexuality, and/or industry compound that precarity? How must we adjust our methods and frameworks to account for these shifts and to track these developing trends?

Moderator: Wenhong Chen

Panelists:
Cecilia Pardo, Boston University
Natalie Jonckheere, University of Southern California
A. G. Hughes, Chadron State College
Anne Gilbert, University of Georgia

2C: Media Discourses: The Cultural Forum of School Shootings

Location: Texas Union – Eastwoods Room

Following the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this year, Donald Trump claimed that violent video games, movies, and the perpetrator’s mental health were to blame for the massacre. Even though scholars and researchers have debunked the hypodermic model of media effects that sutures violent entertainment and violent youth (see Jenkins), the perpetuation of these causal connections stalls any progress to prevent future school shootings. Trump’s statement about gun violence mimicked those surrounding the causes behind the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, precariously leaving the public debate in the same place that it was nearly two decades ago.

This roundtable endeavors to discuss the media’s role in framing the narratives behind the causes of school shootings, and how those narratives may affect public debates and political legislation about this issue (see Birkland and Lawrence). In their theorization of television as a “cultural forum,” Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch suggest that television programs can highlight and comment on ideological issues. How does the media frame the issues surrounding mass shootings? Is there a distinction between the topics that fictional representations and news coverage of mass shootings represent? For instance, do fictional representations concentrate on mental health issues rather than explicitly arguing for gun control legislation? How has the cultural forum changed with new media technology? The breadth of the internet has led to the dissemination of far-right conspiracy theories surrounding “crisis actors” to mainstream media outlets. For instance, a conspiracy theory video concerning David Hogg – a survivor of the Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – was the top trending YouTube video on February 21, 2018 before its removal and Hogg denied these false accusations during a CNN interview. How has user-driven content like these videos shaped (or been shaped by) the current public sphere surrounding school shootings? Finally, how has the increase of niche partisan television networks and online communities affected the cultural forum? Is media increasingly becoming an “echo chamber” (see DiFonzo), thereby preventing any meaningful progress in this debate?

Moderator: Maria Skouras

Panelists:
Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, University of North Texas
Ivy Ashe, University of Texas at Austin
*Michael Rennett, University of Texas at Austin
Julia G. Raz, Santa Monica College
Phil Scepanski, Marist College

5:00 – 6:15 p.m. – Session 3

3A: Preserving Pornographic Media

Location: Texas Union – Eastwoods Room

Much has been said of the need for archival preservation of pornographic media texts which, because of their specific cultural function and means of circulation, tend toward ephemerality. However, as Frances Ferguson and David Squires have argued, the very process of archivization, in its sequestration of sexual materials from the world of erotic life, may render these materials un-pornographic. Yet, as scholars such as David Church and Whitney Strub have argued, the archive itself is not an erotically neutral space, as both historiography and preservation efforts are motivated by a passionate attachment to and investment in pornography’s ephemerality. These issues are compounded when one considers pornography’s move online and the proliferation of new media technologies, which, as Tim Dean notes, seem to produce “more porn archives than we know what to do with.” How ought the field balance the ongoing need for pornographic film and video preservation while also attending to the shifting media landscape and to the need for new tools to study it? What strategies are needed to archive, organize, and preserve new media pornography? Are there specific kinds of pornographic media texts (for example, public access cable shows) that are currently being overlooked by archival efforts? What theoretical frameworks are needed to facilitate work on pornography that is missing from the archive and is potentially lost? Is there a way to either avoid or account for the effects that institutional legitimation has on erotic texts? Would this require new archival practices?

Moderator: Britta Hanson

Panelists:
Devin McGeehan Muchmore, Harvard University
*Desirae Embree, Texas A&M University
John Paul Stadler, Duke University
Peter Alilunas, University of Oregon
Joe Rubin, Film archivist/independent scholar

3B: Digital Production Cultures

Location: Texas Union – Texas Governor’s Room

The boundaries of media production, distribution, and reception grow increasingly muddled in the post-network era, as do the kinds of media applicable to production studies models. From reality television to app-based content, the production ecology (above and below the line) includes new or altered roles. Audiences, or users, can occupy a precarious status in this ecology as well, as negotiated participants or exploited practitioners. How can television and media industries scholars investigate the similarities and differences in all manner of screen content through production cultures? How can the study of digital production cultures influence audience studies, particularly for user-generated content? This roundtable seeks to discuss these questions and to explore the intricacies of digital production cultures in televisual and non-televisual media spaces.

Moderator: Lesley Willard

Panelists:
Alexander Champlain, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jacquelyn Arcy, University of Wisconsin- Parkside
Darcey Morris, Goucher College
Suzanne Scott, The University of Texas at Austin

3C: Theorizing TV Sound: Listening to TV Now and Later

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture Room

Largely ignored in the kerfuffle over whether Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) is best labeled television, film, or the catch-all term “streaming content,” were the sounds of the text. Praised throughout his career for his attention to music, sound effects, and the myriad sonic textures created by performers’ bodies, David Lynch’s sound creation and control for the series was as innovative as ever. But are these the sounds of television or film? What is streaming content sound, anyway? Arguably, the sounds of television, like the images of television, begin as performances. Could the “liveness” of television be theorized alongside the history of popular music and the audio technologies created to turn ephemeral music into durable commodity? Television sound itself has always been a combination of performed sound and recorded sound (from sound effects to music); TV sound is heterogeneous before audiences can make use of it as a performance or convert it into a recording. This roundtable invites discussion of TV and new media sound, the technologies of preservation and the technologies of audio (re)play. To what extent do TV and new media share characteristics with popular music and film sound? How do we listen to television and new media? In what ways can we theorize the sounds and technologies of TV sound? What is the history of listening to television and new media in the absence of a screen? How can we further historicize TV sound and the technologies of TV sound?

Moderator: Eric Dienstfrey

Panelists:
Rose Bridges, University of Texas at Austin
Patrick Sullivan, University of Rochester
*Paul Reinsch, Texas Tech University

7:00 – 10:00 p.m. – Opening Reception (BMC 2.106)

Friday, September 28, 2018

9:30 – 10:45 a.m. – Session 4

‪4A: Flowing Forms, Pt. 1: Real Bodies

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture Room

Media presuppose bodies. In their role as moderators, media act “in-between” for bodies: translating signals, distributing content, connecting people. Media are thus responsive to bodies, and likewise bodies are responsive to media, with both transforming through their interactions, bridging the physiological, the technical, and the cultural. Bodies are therefore more than just receptors for media content but constitutive to media forms and necessary for media praxis, arguably performing like another platform for media convergence. However, bodies remain undertheorized in media studies outside of representation.

As such, this query seeks responses to illuminate how media and bodies affect each other, especially through moments of significant cultural, industrial, and technological change. Specifically, how do changes in media and bodies correspond? How do they shape each other? How do these connections and their attendant transformations relate to hegemonic systems, whether legitimating operations in media or identity hierarchies in bodies? What exchanges between bodies and media are critical to consider in contemporary culture, and what must be further examined from the past? Why do these interactions matter, and how might they affect experiences of both media and embodiment in the future?

Moderator: Kathy Cacace

Panelists:
*Jennifer Lynn Jones, Indiana University
Maya Iverson, University of California, Santa Cruz
Nicole Strobel, University of California, Santa Barbara
Hyo Jung Kim, Stony Brook University

4B: Rethinking Labor Histories and Production Cultures in #MeToo and #TimesUp Hollywood

Location: Texas Union – Lone Star Room

Over the past several years, aided by ample data showing disparities in wages and employment, an EEOC investigation, and women and men sharing their stories of discrimination, harassment, and sexual assault, Hollywood leaders are taking a hard look their cultural norms and business practices. As the allegations have poured out through traditional journalistic sources and social media, it has become clear that Hollywood’s problems cannot be dismissed as the result of isolated men in power, but that Hollywood institutions are structured to enable and protect their abuses. The fact that much of this reckoning has played out through social media is telling: absent institutional protections, venues for voicing complaints, or the power to individually effect change, many of the precarious workers in Hollywood have taken to Twitter to share stories, affirm community, and discuss strategies. As Hollywood looks inward to examine and transform its own labor culture, how can media scholars reorient their own approaches toward labor histories and production cultures to understand the practices, structures, and policies that have enabled discrimination, harassment, and assault? This roundtable asks in broad terms: How can historical and contemporary studies of labor and production cultures engage with and inform strategies to help change Hollywood as an industry? What have we as scholars overlooked in our studies of industry and labor? How have Hollywood institutions addressed wage disparities, biased hiring practices, and discrimination in the past, and why have they been unsuccessful? How does the precarious nature of creative labor influence the ability to effect change in the industry?

Moderator: Madhavi Mallapragada

Panelists:
Stephanie Brown, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Mary Celeste Kearney, University of Notre Dame
*Kate Fortmueller, University of Georgia
Elizabeth Affuso, Pitzer College
Michele Schreiber, Emory University

4C: The Growing Intersection of the Indie Film Business, Streaming Services, and Television

Location: Texas Union – Asian Culture Room

In the past few years, streaming services have increasingly become involved in the acquisition and distribution of independently financed and produced films. One Vulture headline, for example, proclaimed Sundance 2017 as the “Year Netflix Tried to Swallow Sundance.” The recent presence of Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services at festivals has become so prominent that the major companies’ lack of acquisitions at Sundance 2018 resulted in a whole other set of headlines that seemed to equate the streaming services growing disinterest with a lack of quality festival programming.

At the same time that independent producers have looked to streaming services for financing and distribution, the indie business more generally increasingly has turned its attention to television. Cable networks and streaming services are hiring former indie filmmakers to helm their TV series, indie distributors such as Annapurna and A24 are moving into TV production and distribution, talent agencies are financing and packaging TV seasons as they previously packaged films, and festivals like Sundance, Toronto, and SXSW are featuring “episodic” tracks on their schedules.

This panel seeks to explore the growing intersections between the indie film business, streaming services, and the television industry. Response papers might consider questions such as: What new issues are arising as a result of this evolving indie film business/streaming services/television industry relationship? What are the implications of this cross-fertilization of indie talent (directors, screenwriters, producers, actors etc.) with television? In what ways has the attribution of indie with “quality” or “niche” evolved as a result of this convergence? What are the implications for film festivals as sites of exhibition, distribution, and deal-making? How might these new relationships continue to blur the lines between film, television, and technology companies?

Moderator: Alisa Perren

Panelists:
Ryan G. Stoldt, University of Iowa
Kimberly Owczarski, Texas Christian University
Graig Uhlin, Oklahoma State University
Katherine Marpe, University of California at Los Angeles

11:00 – 12:15 p.m. – Featured Roundtable: Praxis in Practice (BMC 2.106)

12:15 – 1:45 p.m. – Lunch Break

1:45 – 3:00 p.m. – Session 5

‪5A: But What About Flow?, Pt. 1: Digital Flows

Location: Texas Union – Lone Star Room

At the time of Television: Technology and Cultural Form in 1974, Williams claimed flow to be “the defining characteristic of broadcasting” (86). Even though television has become a more nebulous technological and industrial medium, flow is still, arguably, an underlying principle in programming and platform design rationales. Williams’ original conceptions dealt with the transformation of discrete programs into a total schedule (from segment-to-segment, to total program, to the night’s programming), but also in the connection between content and advertisements as a singular storytelling product. This panel seeks responses discussing the continued relevance of Williams’ model of flow under new media iterations of television. Or, on how flow is being utilized in contemporary broadcast television scheduling strategies. Possible questions to be explored in this panel: How does the narrative design and reception style of premium cable programs adapt flow? How do Netflix’s and Hulu’s autoplay algorithms replicate the experience of watching live television, and to what purpose? Is flow a useful model to apply to embedded video content in social media feeds? Is flow still a “defining characteristic” of television in the post-network era?

Moderator: Rusty Hatchell

Panelists:
Felicitas Baruch, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Gry Cecilie Rustad, The University of Oslo
Deborah Jaramillo, Boston University
Hemrani Vyas, Turner Classic Movies – Programming

5B: Transnationalization of Quality Programming

Location: Texas Union – Asian Culture Room

The much disputed definition of quality programming is further complicated by the increase in transnational flows of formats and programs during the last decade. Streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have become new venues of access to foreign content alongside the existing cable channels in the United States. The international popularity of shows like Forbrydelsen, Borgen, Bron/Broen, Luther, Les Revenants and Broadchurch also paved the way for a new wave of American remakes. Mostly oscillating between streaming platforms and cable channels, which are associated with quality programming, these programs and their format adaptations raise important questions about what “quality programming” means. This roundtable seeks to understand how the current context of transnational television flows influences the definition of quality programming in light of the following questions: Is it possible to talk about an on-going transnationalization of that definition? What is the role of digital technologies in this transformation? What does the co-existence of originals and their remake reveal in terms of hierarchical implications present in the notion of quality programming?

Moderator: Shanti Kumar

Panelists:
Joseph Straubhaar, University of Texas at Austin
Christine Becker, University of Notre Dame
Gaëlle Bouaziz, Boston University
*Şebnem Baran, Smith College

5C: Here Today, Forgotten Tomorrow: Preserving Television & New Media

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture Room

Cave paintings disappear from erosion, books crumble or get eaten by bugs, and films decompose into dust. Preservation seeks to save what can be saved, but our records of the past cannot ever be absolutely complete. Television and new media are among the newest entries into the field of human expression, but their inherent seriality and ephemerality result in a set of heretofore unseen preservation challenges.
We know that only small portion of television programming makes it onto commercially-available DVDs, the technology still regarded as the most permanent, shareable, and convenient method of long-term access for libraries and scholars. Soap operas, sporting events, “niche” shows, locally-produced programs and more are unlikely ever to be released on DVD, effectively erasing these objects from the view of future scholars.

But is the outlook brighter for content that does make it onto DVD? The Library of Congress is still evaluating the technology’s long-term stability. Will DVDs endure? Or will the technology prove to be unstable over time, leading to a mass extinction that would further shrink the pool of objects available to study?

An even more challenging picture of the future comes into focus when we shift our attention to born-digital content such as email, websites, web series, social media, and original content from streaming platforms. It is ridiculous to think that Internet providers and media companies will provide access to everything in perpetuity, but how much can be saved? What should be saved? Who decides?

Moderator: Lauren Wilks

Panelists:
Kelsey Cameron, University of Pittsburgh
Kim Bjarkman, Independent scholar
JSA Lowe, University of Houston
*Nedda Ahmed, Georgia State University

3:15 – 4:30 p.m. – Session 6

6A: Latinx Representation in Hollywood

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture Room

The 2017 Emmys were lauded as the most diverse ever, with key wins for Black actors Donald Glover and Sterling K. Brown, Black screenwriter Lena Waithe, South Asian American actor and screenwriter Aziz Ansari, and British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed. This vision of diversity again left out Latinxs, however, with only a nomination in the guest actor category for Nuyorican playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda and a win for half Argentinian-American Alexis Bledel, also in a guest actor category. Part of the problem is Latinxs are still relegated to bit parts on television, with few opportunities to land lead roles. Save for the critically lauded Jane the Virgin (2014-present), Netflix hits Narcos (2015-present) and One Day at a Time (2016-present), and a small handful of other shows on cable networks, Latinx protagonists and storylines continue to be rare. This is despite the fact that there are over 55 million Latinos in the U.S. with a purchasing power of $1.5 trillion, according to the National Hispanic Media Coalition. Moreover, the problem is not limited to television. After not one Latinx actor was nominated in an acting category for the fifth straight year at the 2018 Oscars, the NHMC and its allies promised to protest the six major studios for their marginalization of Latinxs in the industry and in film narratives.

This panel will seek to discuss the current status of Latinxs in Hollywood. While some interesting strides have been made in the last year, such as Latinos Édgar Ramírez and Ricky Martin co-starring as Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace and his Italian partner Antonio D’Amico in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018), and continued success for established stars like Gina Rodriguez, Pedro Pascal, and Oscar Isaac on the big screen, there seems to be an enduring resistance to green-lighting series and films revolving around Latinx characters or communities. In other words, “Peak-TV” is not making room for Latinxs, and increased diversity at awards shows post-#OscarsSoWhite has not impacted Latinx representation. Why does visible progress for Latinxs in TV and film continue to lag behind that of other minority groups on both the industry level and on camera? How can Hollywood push past seeing diversity as a White/Black binary?

Moderator: Mary Beltran

Panelists:
Crystal Camargo, Northwestern University
Diana Leon-Boys, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Arcelia Gutierrez, University of Michigan
Angharad Valdivia, University of Illinois

6B: Research Practices: Praxis and Precarity

Location: Texas Union – Asian Culture Room

This panel will examine the changing landscape of media research, from our methods to ourselves as researchers. How can we reframe the debate around fast-changing areas of media practice, such as television writers and their process? How can we redirect focus to understudied topics, such as the media output of the global south, or the intersection of journalism and media technology? This panel will also address the precarity of researchers themselves. How we can advocate for better access to institutional sources, and to locations outside of North America and Europe? In short, this panel will look at what questions are being asked, by whom, and to what effect, in contemporary media research.

Moderator: Karin Wilkins

Panelists:
Lydia Yeoman, Royal Holloway, University of London
Laura Fish, University of Texas at Austin
Ryan Wallace, University of Texas at Austin
Katherine Quanz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

6C: The Precarity, Preservation, and Praxis of Sports Media Labor

Location: Texas Union – Lone Star Room

Sports media labor transpires on the field of play, in the production booths that broadcast the game, in the virtual world of fans on social media, and in numerous other spaces. This labor is beholden to sports media conventions that produce questions about precarious working conditions, the preservation of laboring sporting bodies, and a praxis of resistance within the sports/media complex. What are some of the ways that sports media conventions mirror other industry labor practices that produce precarity? How do sports teams or sports networks leverage contracted work without the traditional benefits associated with full-time employment? How does the term “amateur” in college athletics and the Olympics reflect other classifications of labor that withhold revenue or benefits from workers? How does sports media promote a discourse of care for laboring bodies while discarding those same bodies when they no longer perform as expected or retire? How do the allegories of slavery and indentured servitude maintain their currency for describing racialized sporting labor beyond basketball and football? How do discourses of gender, race, class, and/or ability inform sports fan labor or activist praxis? What other forms of work do athletes, coaches, teams, and sports media makers perform such as affective or political labor? This roundtable invites a variety of responses addressing the precarity, preservation, and/or praxis of sports media labor—broadly defined—in the contemporary moment.

Moderator: Jennifer McClearen

Panelists:
Andrea Ruehlicke, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Charlotte Howell, Boston University
Kate Ranachan, University of Minnesota
Kristen Fuhs, Woodbury University

5:00 – 6:15 p.m. – Session 7

7A: Flowing Forms, Pt. 2: Virtual Bodies

Location: Texas Union – Chicano Culture Room

Media presuppose bodies. In their role as moderators, media act “in-between” for bodies: translating signals, distributing content, connecting people. Media are thus responsive to bodies, and likewise bodies are responsive to media, with both transforming through their interactions, bridging the physiological, the technical, and the cultural. Bodies are therefore more than just receptors for media content but constitutive to media forms and necessary for media praxis, arguably performing like another platform for media convergence. However, bodies remain undertheorized in media studies outside of representation.

As such, this query seeks responses to illuminate how media and bodies affect each other, especially through moments of significant cultural, industrial, and technological change. Specifically, how do changes in media and bodies correspond? How do they shape each other? How do these connections and their attendant transformations relate to hegemonic systems, whether legitimating operations in media or identity hierarchies in bodies? What exchanges between bodies and media are critical to consider in contemporary culture, and what must be further examined from the past? Why do these interactions matter, and how might they affect experiences of both media and embodiment in the future?

Moderator: Briana Barner

Panelists:
Rachael Ball, University of California, Santa Barbara
Melissa Avdeeff, University of Victoria
Daniel Reynolds, Emory University
Adam Resnick, Purchase College at SUNY

7B: What Would a Television Preservation Task Force Look Like?

Location: Texas Union – Lone Star Room

Scholars of radio history have been engaged for the past several years in participating in a nation-wide program called “The Radio Preservation Task Force” which has sought to locate and identify archival holdings of significant radio recordings, scripts and other historical documents in archives large and small across the US. The RPTF’s focus has been on the non-commercial network aspects of radio, so it has been searching for local and regional collections, especially those involving public service, experimentation, and those representing previously marginalized voices. Can television history scholars create a parallel movement? What kinds of materials would we look for, and where might we find them? Video tapes, scripts, local station management documents, materials from producers, performers, writers and staff camera people, are all possible materials, as are educational programs, local public broadcasting materials, regional sports or advertising materials, and script archives. Finding and possibly guiding the donation of such materials to archives might be the first step in creating a richer and more complex narrative of broadcasting history. This panel welcomes respondents share sources they have located and invites representatives or scholars close to archives (like the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Northeast Historic Film, and the UT Briscoe Center) to speak on collections they have encountered. As an alternative to traditional Flow position papers at this proposed roundtable, we also encourage media historians to informally present on their found archival materials as a means of idea generation on extraneous archival finds.

Moderator: Kathy Fuller-Seeley

Panelists:
Josh Shepperd, The Catholic University of America/Library of Congress
R. Colin Tait, Texas Christian University
Lauren Bratslavsky, Illinois State University

Saturday, September 29, 2018

9:30 – 10:45 a.m. – Session 8

‪8A: Media Law and Policy in the Trump Era

Location: BMC 4.206

Since the new administration took over in January 2017, there have been many significant changes and challenges to U.S. media law and policy. This roundtable will focus on the important questions of how media law and policy in the Trump era could affect the future of the media and culture in the U.S. and around the world. Some topics may include: What do the responses from the DOJ, FCC, and Trump to the proposed mergers and acquisitions of AT&T/Time Warner and Disney/Fox tell us about the current state of antitrust law and media consolidation? How should content on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter be regulated to avoid “fake news” and interference from foreign agents like Russia? What does the FCC’s revision of ownership cap rules mean for the future of local broadcast media? How does the new tax law and proposed deregulation of the financial industry affect Hollywood studios, independent productions, and the financing of media projects? Will the recent attempt by lawmakers in the wake of another horrific school shooting to shift the blame for such tragedies to violence in movies and video games result in any changes to content regulation? How could the #metoo and #timesup movements alter everything from employment contracts to diversity and inclusion in Hollywood?

Moderator: Sharon Strover

Panelists:
Lisa Lynch, Drew University
*Jennifer Porst, University of North Texas
Shawna Kidman, University of California, San Diego
Daniel Grinberg, University of Pennsylvania

8B: Syndication, Box Sets, & Streaming: Forming the Television Canon

Location: BMC 4.212

In the 1980s and 1990s, cable channels such as TVLand and time blocks such as Nick at Nite served as outlets for television programming from previous decades. This format has been repeated by digital cable channels such as Antenna TV and the Retro Television Network. These channels introduced and reintroduced shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and I Love Lucy to viewers in the 1990s and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Golden Girls to viewers in the 2000s. Acknowledging the vagaries of licensing agreements that led to some shows being syndicated while others were not, these channels helped to create a television “canon” with shows recognized by multiple generations of viewers. DVD boxsets continued this trend, by allowing dedicated fans to own, watch, and rewatch favorites. Now in the post-network era of fractured and niche audiences, when educators cannot assume shared cultural reference points among students, how are the streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu) filling the same programming gap by making shows from previous eras available to current audiences? But at the same time, how do these services shape the “canon” due to availability, especially as rights shift from one service to another or to no service at all?

Moderator: Cameron Lindsey

Panelists:
Mike Van Esler, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Megan Reilly, University of Southern California
Philip Sewell, Bucknell University
*Emily Saidel, University of Michigan

8C: Television Literacy in the Classroom and Beyond

Location: BMC 3.206

In liberal circles, we often hear commentators bemoaning Trump’s claims of fake news and citing “media literacy” as the self-evident solution. But what does “literacy” entail? How does one teach it, in practical terms? This panel seeks to explore the distinctive characteristics and formats of TV-based news sources (broadly defined) and invites a broad range of expertise in TV studies. The panel’s central focus is less news than it is our field’s understanding of the ways television, as a distinct visual medium, communicates through form, genre, character, and institutions as crucial to teaching television literacy. The panel therefore will seek to formulate the multiple strategies TV and new media scholarship offer to develop a literacy curriculum, applicable within our classrooms but also through public intellectual work as well.
Among the questions this panel may pursue:

• How do the business models of television news influence the production and marketing of content?
• Is objectivity possible, or even desirable, in a media format built upon visual communication, editing techniques, and other production techniques?
• How do frameworks of celebrity shape the production and reception of TV journalists and commentators?
• How might theories of race, gender, orientation, and class provide new forms of critique to evaluate the credibility of television news programming?
• How do we de-mystify the various ideological meanings of the aesthetics undergirding the production of television news?
• What are the goals of viewers of television news? What benefits or limits accrue around terms such as accuracy, credibility, entertainment, truth, and facts?

Moderator: Tim Piper

Panelists:
Kathryn Frank and Samuel N. Pham, Young Harris College
Wendy Sung, University of Texas at Dallas
Elizabeth Nathanson, Muhlenberg College
*Karen Petruska, Gonzaga University

11:00 – 12:15 p.m. – Session 9

9A: The Sports Television Personality

Location: BMC 4.206

As the study of celebrity has increased in recent years, sport studies has seen a corresponding rise in scholarship focusing on sport stardom. With few exceptions, though, this emerging line of sport scholarship has focused on star athletes who have found their way to prominence by way of their athletic triumphs. Excluded from the academic discourse, then, have been the many celebrities who have obtained their fame either partially or fully by way of the many other component parts of the sports media landscape that extend beyond the playing surface. Dominating this group has been the sports television personality – a diverse category that includes figures ranging from studio hosts like Jemele Hill, Rachel Nichols, and Katie Nolan to announcers like Joe Buck and Jim Nantz to reporters like Erin Andrews, Jeremy Schaap, and Adrian Wojnarowski. How might we understand these liminal figures who emerge in media environments that surround athletic competition? How might we use their celebrity to interrogate the complex relationship between sport and media? How, too, can we understand these figures in the context of television fame and the presentation of the self? Furthermore, given the recent cries for many of these personalities to “stick to sports,” how can we make sense of sports television personalities’ role within culture and society, including their ability – or lack thereof – to engage with policy and politics? How, for example, might we understand how their political engagement is shaped by a precarious positioning between employers, fans, rights partners, and sponsors?

Moderator: Brett Siegel

Panelists:
Adrianne Grubic, University of Texas at Austin
Marisela Chavez, Northwestern University
Adam Rugg, Fairfield University
Robert Cavanagh, Emerson College – Los Angeles
*Branden Buehler, Seton Hall University

9B: Save Points: Video Games and the Preservation of Play

Location: BMC 4.212

Video game scholars must continually debate and delimit their object of study. Is a “video game” a subjective instantiation of gameplay? A cumulative collection of these experiences? How do various forms of video game preservation shape video game research methods and scholarship? This panel will attempt to grapple with the various levels of ephemerality, materiality, and interactivity at play within video games and their preservation as media objects. Is it sufficient to preserve gaming hardware and software, without related promotional materials or “feelies,” player-generated mods and skins, etc.? As an interactive medium, preservation is incomplete without play. Beyond discrete objects (digital and material), how do we preserve the experience of play? Is it sufficient to preserve playthroughs, speedruns, and tournament proceedings? If we do preserve them, are contemporary platforms like YouYube and Twitch sufficient? Who might control these potential archives—industry, platforms, academia, libraries, museums, fans, etc.—and to what ends? How will they be cataloged and maintained?

Moderator: Nick Bestor

Panelists:
Christopher Goetz, The University of Iowa
Caren Pagel, Georgia State University
Rainforest Scully-Blaker, University of California, Irvine
Sam Schelfhout, University of Texas at Austin

9C: Aesthetics & Anxieties: Contemporary Dystopian Television

Location: BMC 3.206

It can be argued that during specific historical moments, American television has reflected an overwhelming sense of precarity, anxiety, and fear that was also pulsing through American society. Much has been made of programs like The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-present) being one of the first examples of Trump era art. The truth is The Handmaid’s Tale was in production before Trump won the election and it follows a pattern of dystopian TV that dates back to shows like The Walking Dead (2010-present), Fringe (2008-2013), Jericho (2006-2008), Mr. Robot (2015-), and Into the Badlands (2015-), among others. In what ways does this pattern of post-apocalyptic TV, which is arguably a post-911 phenomenon, provide a pattern of cultural clues to our current societal moment? These programs (and others) reflect specific anxieties about the world and about the United States, but how founded are the fears? Should we collectively be more or less afraid of the established structures that have girded whatever America it is that we have imagined? And if society collapses, should we fear what may grow out of the ash heap?

Moderator: Selena Dickey

Panelists:
Delia Poey, Florida State University
Mychal Shanks, San Francisco State University
*Dan Van Jelgerhuis, Georgia State University

12:15 – 1:45 p.m. – Lunch Break

1:45 – 3:00 p.m. – Session 10

10A: The Political Economy of Digital Platforms

Location: BMC 3.206

In a time of platform-plenty, researchers still tend to separate and silo discussions of e-commerce (Etsy, Patreon), social networking (Twitter, Tumblr), and streaming platforms (Netflix, Hulu) by field and specialty. However, as these platforms proliferate and evolve, as these elements merge and mesh with platforms like Twitch and YouTube, it is clear that platforms of all kinds are increasingly important—for audiences, researchers, and corporations alike. In recent years, legacy media, tech, and start-up companies alike have begun to capitalize on platforms, from Hulu’s joint-network ownership, to Disney and WB’s proprietary platforms, to new start-ups like NewTV and OTV. With these developments, it is clear that platforms—in all their varied and hybrid forms—are central to media studies, both in terms of facilitating and affecting participatory cultures and shaping macro-level issues of production, distribution, and exhibition. This roundtable delves into the political economy and participatory cultures of digital platforms, considering growing concerns such as labor and compensation, celebrity and authenticity, governance and ownership, surveillance and opacity, curation and recommendation algorithms, preservation and access.

Moderator: Steve Malcic

Panelists:
William Moner, Elon University
Samantha Close, DePaul University
Myles McNutt, Old Dominion University
Benjamin Burroughs, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern University

10B: The Past, Present, and Future of Television Commercials

Location: BMC 4.206

Despite the decline of linear television, advertisers are still intent on reaching audiences through television and are experimenting with strategies, including sponsorship, brand integrations, product placements, and cast commercials, designed to reduce audience alienation. What could we glean about future television advertising strategies from past and present practices?

• How are advertisers’ current strategies for reaching audiences through branded content similar to or different from historic strategies?
• As television advertising changes, how are production companies and ad agencies retooling themselves as producers of new forms of commercials?
• What are some of the changing dynamics, shifting leverage points, and emerging financial incentives among linear networks and advertisers as they negotiate how to deliver commercials to increasingly resistant audiences?
• If major advertisers withdraw from network television, as they once withdrew from network radio, which media platforms and content genres may benefit the most?
• Is the 30-second commercial a dying format?
• In what ways is YouTube shaping the new nonlinear television industry to serve advertisers? Are YouTube “pre-roll” commercials different from conventional commercials or not? Are new commercial aesthetics emerging on YouTube?

Moderator: Kathy Fuller-Seeley

Panelists:
Alyxandra Vesey, University of Alabama
Outi Hakola, University of Helsinki
Erin Copple Smith, Austin College
Peter Kovacs, University of Texas at Austin
*Cynthia B. Meyers, College of Mount Saint Vincent

10C: Queer Forms

Location: BMC 4.212

The amount and quality of LGBTQIA+ representation in media has advanced rapidly in the past two decades. On American television, and especially its online platforms, there is not only more gender and sexual diversity, but also a more intersectional depiction of racial and class-based diversity within the queer community, among other identity markers. At the same time, queer representations in other national and regional contexts are also being contested and transformed through the globalization and digitization of television and new media. The emergence of an androgynous contestant Li Yuchun on Super Girl (2005) in China, the popularity of the UK’s non-binary dating reality show Love Island, the “Flozimin” ship on Argentinian telenovela Las Estrellas, and the critically acclaimed comedy Please Like Me in Australia are some important examples of queer representations on television across the globe. Yet this global diversity of queer experiences is hardly visible in US television. With only a few exceptions—such as Adena on The Bold Type—American shows only represent the domestic queer experience. How much, and in what ways, do American shows cling to a locally-defined notion of queerness, and why? What roles do various media formats and delivery platforms play in maintaining or breaking that limitation? How does American televisual queerness fit within the global landscape of queer television, and how can these different perspectives be put into conversation? Furthermore, we welcome responses related to queer representation in television outside the United States. How is the queer experience presented in other televisual contexts, and what is its significance?

Moderator: Curran Nault

Panelists:
Jake Pitre, Carleton University
Finley Freibert, University of California – Irvine
Julia Heim, Baruch College
Q. Elyse Huang, University of Texas at Austin

3:15 – 4:30 p.m. – Session 11

11A: But What About Flow?, Pt. 2: Analog Flows

Location: BMC 4.206

At the time of Television: Technology and Cultural Form in 1974, Williams claimed flow to be “the defining characteristic of broadcasting” (86). Even though television has become a more nebulous technological and industrial medium, flow is still, arguably, an underlying principle in programming and platform design rationales. Williams’ original conceptions dealt with the transformation of discrete programs into a total schedule (from segment-to-segment, to total program, to the night’s programming), but also in the connection between content and advertisements as a singular storytelling product. This panel seeks responses discussing the continued relevance of Williams’ model of flow under new media iterations of television. Or, on how flow is being utilized in contemporary broadcast television scheduling strategies. Possible questions to be explored in this panel: How does the narrative design and reception style of premium cable programs adapt flow? How do Netflix’s and Hulu’s autoplay algorithms replicate the experience of watching live television, and to what purpose? Is flow a useful model to apply to embedded video content in social media feeds? Is flow still a “defining characteristic” of television in the post-network era?

Moderator: Maggie Steinhauer

Panelists:
Cory Barker, Indiana University
Raffi Sarkissian, Christopher Newport University
Eleanor Patterson, Auburn University
JJ Perkins, University of North Texas
Steve Voorhees, Rutgers University

11B: Considering Contemporary Television’s Ideological Power

Location: BMC 3.206

As we consider the changing landscape of television and new media, TV Studies itself seems precarious. The constant stream of technological development, increasing fragmentation of audiences, and expansion of programming and distribution outlets has called into question the utility of foundational TV Studies concepts like networks, flow, and especially the cultural forum (Newcomb and Hirsch 1983). The sheer quantity of TV production and the variety of ways to consume TV can make it feel impossible to find shared reference points. Older formulations of television as a cultural forum, a place where large national audiences share cultural experiences and hash out complex or taboo ideological changes or differences, have thus fallen out of favor. If television’s representational power is no longer consolidated in or monopolized by a narrow range of dominant institutional voices, television arguably seems more diverse and its power more diffuse and dispersed. Yet, in the contemporary political climate, in which consciously sowing openly affective and ideological division is an effective path to power, it seems that denying the continued cultural power of television is an effective way to dismiss a powerful mass cultural forum still in operation. As Stuart Hall taught us, television representation has real power to create cultural reality, not simply to reflect it. This question asks us to consider, then, how TV scholars can grapple with these new technologies, expanding content offerings, and fragmented audience configurations while still acknowledging a broad or comprehensive sense of the ideological power and influence of TV on audiences?

Moderator: Nathan Rossi

Panelists:
Laura Brunner, Metropolitan State University of Denver
Isabel Molina-Guzmán, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Justin Owen Rawlins, University of Tulsa
James M. Elrod, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
*Taylor Nygaard, University of Denver

5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. – Closing Reception (CMB 4.126)