Department of Film & Media UC Berkeley

Film & Media Graduate Student Conference, University of California, Berkeley

Conference Date: September 23–24th 2016

Location: University of California, Berkeley

Paper proposals due June 30th, 2016.

With the publication of his classic collection of essays in 1958, André Bazin posed the deceptively simple question, “What is cinema?” A similar inquiry has begun to circle around the concept of “media” as film organizations, cinema departments, and conferences across the country have made efforts in the last decade to include the label “Media” in their titles. Often an add­on to cinema and television, media seems to be a catch­all for everything else. Is “& Media,” then, an afterthought—an effort to stay relevant as film becomes less dominant? Operating from the principle that the simplest questions are usually the most difficult to answer, this conference invites papers addressing the conceptualization of “media.” 

Increasingly, “& Media” is becoming the center of scholarly inquiry within cinema studies. This recentering of the discipline has opened up new interdisciplinary approaches from science and technology studies, mass communications, geography, and across the humanities and social sciences. While some scholars insist on a micro­level investment in media materiality, others favor an expansion to definitions as broad as nature itself. Such conceptual oppositions invite a broad range of questions about the object(s) at hand. Is the medium the message? Are media best understood as infrastructure? Are they mediating environments, or are they events, technologies, or universal storage carriers? What new insights emerge when we consider film as part of a media ecology? What does media look like when it is theorized from Lagos or La Paz? What benefits do we get from returning to a medium­specific methodology? What is included or excluded from the term “media”? In this expanding field, why does “film” persist? And how do we account for media that were once considered new, such as television and radio?

This conference will explore how we understand media/mediums and how that understanding shapes and is shaped by overlapping conceptual frameworks, including (but not limited to) history, memory, place, and politics. We encourage both theoretical and historical projects that deal with media and their (lack of) specificity, research that addresses media comparatively, as well as papers that theorize the concept of media/the medium from the global south.

Potential topics for papers might include:

­ Theories of mediums/media

­ Media theory from the global south

­ Questions around media specificity

­ Comparative media

­ Media temporalities

­ Media as infrastructure

­ Adaptations across media

­ Intermediality

­ Media as technology

­ Appropriated media

­ The materiality of media

­ Media and the environment

We welcome papers from all disciplinary backgrounds and encourage scholarship grounded in area studies. Although this is a graduate student conference, we invite lecturers, adjuncts, and other non­tenure­track faculty to apply. To submit, please send an abstract of 200–300 words along with a brief biographical statement to Jennifer Blaylock, Alex Bush, and Lisa Jacobson at andmedia.berkeleyconference@gmail.com​ by July 7th, 2016.​

Students! Looking to connect with the UC Berkeley Department of Film & Media over the summer? Check out these events!

Summer 2016 Classes – Avant-Garde, documentary, horror, Game of Thrones and more! 

BAMPFA Film Series – Visit their new location and boost your cinematic education!

Film & Media Facebook page – Stay up-to-date on events, reach out with your projects, and share your thoughts!

Film & Media Twitter page – 140 characters or less to communicate about the wonderful world of media.

Call for images – If you have original photos of student projects, classes, or department events, send them to us! You could be featured on the homepage. Email Emily Cardoza at emilygcardoza@berkeley.edu with photos, questions or comments. 

Friday, March 4, 2016

5:00 pm

142 Dwinelle Hall

In the wake of the #oscarssowhite movement, the panel will discuss the erasure of POC talent at the oscars as a symptom of the larger issue of lack of diversity in hollywood and the media, and the effects of misrepresentation on the public. The panel will also tackle questions of intersectionality regarding gender, sexuality and ability.

Panelists:
Ephraim Walker – Consultant Producer, Fruitvale Station
Cecil Brown – UC Berkeley African American Studies, Author
Kim Nunley – Screenwriter
Andrew Barlow – UC Berkeley Sociology
Da Carla – Director, Actor, Performance Artist
Kristine Stolakis – Documentary Filmmaker 

Interested in acting professionally? Don’t know where to begin? Come to Delta Kappa Alpha’s "Intro to the Acting Industry" workshop! We’ll be discussing everything related to the acting industry, from getting an agent to headshots and resumes to landing roles in big shows. Our hosts have been on major TV shows such as Scandal, Bones, Two and a Half Men, Jimmy Kimmel, Code Black and many more.

WHERE: VLSB Room 2060

WHEN: Wednesday, February 24th from 8:00pm to 9:00pm

This event is sponsored by Delta Kappa Alpha, UC Berkeley’s premiere cinematic fraternity. To learn more about who we are and what we do please visit our website and follow us on social media:
http://www.caldka.org/
Instagram: @dkaberkeley

This year’s commencement ceremony will be held on Wednesday, May 18th, 2016 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm at Zellerbach Hall, with a reception immediately following the event from 4:00 – 5:00 pm. 

Students do not need to purchase tickets for themselves, and each graduating student will be provided with three complimentary tickets. Extra tickets will cost $5 each. 

Students, make sure to register with Lisa Fox by March 11th, and be checking your email for updates. 

We hope to see you there!

M 2-5 262 Dwinelle – CCN: 17359 – Miryam Sas

How do media shape the way we see, hear, feel, read, and think about ourselves and the world? How do works of art teach us how to think about media? Does the “media turn” in the humanities cause us to rethink our methods of study? Drawing examples primarily from modern and contemporary East Asia, we will open new frames of reference for understanding literature, film, visual art, and digital media. How does the “media lens” give us a new window on works that we may have studied for other reasons, or on questions that have been important—such as gender, nation and transnational relations, urban space and environment, race and ethnicity?

The Grizzly Bay Film and Arts Festival, an upcoming event run by UC Berkeley students at the Eta chapter of Delta Kappa Alpha, a national cinema fraternity, and with sponsorship in part by another Cal club, GiANT Filmmakers,

is aiming to showcase the works of Cal student filmmakers and artists. They are accepting submissions for both film and art, and awards and prizes will be handed out after a judging process from an esteemed panel!

Date of festival: 12/11/15
Deadline for entries: 11/22/15
Website: facebook.com/grizzlybayfaf
Email: gbfilmfest@gmail.com

 Congratulations to Patrick Ellis and Chris Goetz, honorees of the 2014-15 Outstanding GSI Award!

The Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (OGSI) Award honors over 200 UC Berkeley GSIs each year for their outstanding work in the teaching of undergraduates. These OGSI recipients are nominated from within their teaching department. The GSI Teaching & Resource Center gives the award recipients certificates of distinction and a celebratory ceremony in the spring. To find out more about this award, go to gsi.berkeley.edu. 

Summer 2015 Courses taught by our honorees: 

Film 25B: History of Sound Film with Patrick Ellis – required for the major!

New Media R1B: Nostalgia and the Future of New Media with Chris Goetz

Presented by the Department of Film & Media, University of California, Berkeley

FEBRUARY 26-28, 2015
Berkeley Alumni House and Nestrick Room, Dwinelle Hall

Organized by:
Alex Bush, Co-Organizer
Renée Pastel, Co-Organizer
Linda Williams

Information: http://berkeleyfilmconference.com

Tickets: Eventbrite

Facebook: Berkeley Film Conference

The 3rd International Berkeley Conference on Film and Media: Serialities 1915/2015 will build on the success of the two previous silent-film conferences held at Berkeley in 2011 and 2013. This year, the Department of Film & Media has decided to widen the scope of our biennial conference to include comparative historical inquiry.

How do we explain the emergence of film serials in silent cinema and their revival in very different forms at present? The conference will provide opportunities to reflect on the emergence of serial cultures from various angles: then and now, nationally and transnationally, across old and new media platforms. We understand seriality as any kind of repetition in difference, as when a plot continues for a much longer time than Aristotle would have permitted. Why does it flourish at particular moments? What does seriality afford? What are its causes and consequences? What are its economic foundations and stylistic forms? Are serial plots automatically also melodramas? What does serial structure do to our understanding of the totality of a work?

Keynote Speakers

Sean O’Sullivan is Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University, where he is also Director of Project Narrative and a member of the Film Studies Program. His talk is titled, "The Sonnet-Season and American Television: 1915 / 1999 / 2014."

Matthew Buckley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. His talk is titled, "The Angel’s Wings: Melo-Seriality, Temporality, and the History of Form."

Mark Sandberg is Professor in the Department of Film and Media and the Department of Scandinavian at UC Berkeley. His talk is titled, "Spoiled! Trauma Time and Serial Knowledge."

On February 26-28, the Department of Film & Media at the University of California Berkeley will host the Third International Berkeley Conference on Film and Media: Serialities 1915/2015.

Building on the success of the two previous silent-film conferences held at Berkeley in 2011 and 2013, the Department of Film & Media has decided to widen the scope of our biennial conference to include comparative historical inquiry.

The conference will reflect on the emergence of serial cultures from various angles: then and now, nationally and transnationally, across old and new media platforms. Why does seriality flourish at particular moments? What are its causes and consequences, economic foundations and stylistic forms? What does it afford? The dates, 1915 and 2015, are not meant as strict boundaries, but simply to signal two important “moments” when multiple forms of seriality have seemed to mark an era–one before film lengths were standardized, the other after television serials have challenged that very standard. We welcome papers that compare these eras or that explore serial production and consumption in its broadest sense in any applicable time period. Types of seriality could be non-narrative, as in the case of panoramas and serial motion studies, or narrative as in the case of the industrialization of literature in the roman-feuilletons, the adaptation of these feuilletons into film serials of the teens and twenties, radio serials, television serials, and new streaming platforms, videogames and online media. We encourage participation from a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, music, architecture, literature, art history, theater, dance and performance studies, as well as perspectives that are international and comparative.

Proposals should include a title, an abstract of no more than 300 words, a short 100 word bio and any A/V needs submitted no later than October 31, 2014. Notification will follow within a month. Send to theconference@berkeley.edu.