Annotation
Media Politics ‒ Political Media
The NECS 2013 Conference
Prague, Czech Republic, June 20-22, 2013
Hosted by Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague
Confirmed keynote speakers: Georgina Born (University of Oxford), Gertrud Koch (Freie Universität Berlin), and Jonathan Beller (Pratt Institute, New York).
Film, Media and Cultural Studies have been struggling to respond to the increasing politicization of audiovisual media prompted by recent developments in globalization, conglomeration, digitization, copyright law, censorship, corruption, activism, and ecology. It is perhaps fitting then that the next NECS conference - focusing on "Media Politics ‒ Political Media" - takes place in the Czech capital of Prague, a city lying at the heart of a region characterized by countless regime changes and oft-redrawn borders.
In light of significant changes to the media landscape, it is imperative that, as media scholars and practitioners, we ask how we might best understand the full range of ways in which media operates politically, and how we may respond to what Toby Miller described as "the irrelevance of screen studies to both popular and policy-driven discussion of films". The goals of the NECS Conference of 2013 are threefold: to re-evaluate the political character of media histories, texts, experiences, communities, and institutions; to illuminate the political underpinnings of media theories; and to shed light on the ways in which media might function as a political tool for hegemonistic, oppressive, illegal or unethical activities and critical or counter-cultural responses to them. www.necs.org