Category Archives: Events

African Women in the Media conference – 27 July

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Curzon Building, 10am-5pm

Register here for the conference.

The symposium aims to bring together African women working in the media, and academics in the field of media and communications concerned with media, diaspora, race, gender, representation, and African feminism. The objectives are to engage in debates on issues affecting African women in the media, provide an opportunity for the exchange of ideas between academia and industry, and opportunities for networking. With a focus on news media, the central questions the symposium will seek to answer are:
  • What challenges do African women working in the media face?
  • How are these challenges being addressed? How might they be?
  • How are African women represented in the media?
The long-term aim is to establish an action-orientated, supportive, and, empowering network that bridges academia and industry.

Black Education for Liberation – 2-4 November 2017

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In September 2017, Birmingham City University will launch the first Black Studies degree in Europe. But Black Studies has been thriving in the Britain for decades, based in grassroots organisations with activist, artists, teachers and parents developing and sharing Black Studies knowledge to help survive and resist racism. Black Studies has never been, and will never be confined to universities and we are keen to remember and explore how Black education has been, and can be used to further the cause of Black liberation.

Connecting the struggle across the African Diaspora changes the nature of politics protecting us from developing too narrow a focus concentrated solely on the successes of failures within the countries we find ourselves in. Therefore one of the aims of this event will be to make connections to Latin America, a part of the Diaspora that has been underserved in our discussion of Black Studies. The region enslaved millions of Africans, and economy and social system is just as dependent on racism as the Americas, Caribbean, Europe or Africa.

For more information, visit the website.

CEBE Upcoming Research Seminars

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Wednesday 14th June, 2pm

With Dr Mir Seyedebrahimi (Centre for Cloud Computing)

Radio Resource Management and Interference Control in Wireless Networks: Latest challenges, developments and future scopes

In spite of the enormous popularity of wireless-enabled devices in recent years, the utilization of their radio resources (e.g. RF spectrum, transmission power level etc.) has degraded due to the current dominancy of the decentralized radio resource management schemes. Few state of the art central control solutions are also applying the configurations in a way that the network-wide impacts of the involved parameters and their mutual relationships are ignored. In this seminar, we will talk about these challenges and the latest developments of the technology to tackle the problems (more specifically within the wireless networks and Wi-Fi). As an example, I’ll discuss my recent proposed analytical model and algorithm for jointly adjusting the transmission power levels and optimizing the RF channel assignment of APs in Wi-Fi. I’ll also talk about various stakeholders which are involved in deploying such a solution, the development process and the reason this kind of solutions are delayed and the scopes in the next generation of wireless networks.

 

For more information and to book your place at any of the seminars please contact Ian McDonald.

CFP: Centre for Chinese Visual Art (CCVA) 10th annual conference

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ccva hd

Thursday 12 and Friday 13 October 2017

School of Art, Birmingham City University

Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BX, England

Call for papers: Chinese art outside the art space

The Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) at Birmingham City University aims to foster new understandings and perspectives of Chinese contemporary arts, design and visual culture through interdisciplinary practices and theoretical studies. During its first decade, CCVA has established a unique position in the UK to pioneer the research in the field. We are now convening this two-day Annual Conference to invite researchers, curators, art historians, critics and artists at all stages of their careers worldwide to contribute to the topic, marking the 10th anniversary of the Centre.

Historically, in China, ‘art outside the art space’ can be understood as both a cultural and a political proposition. From a cultural point of view, the notion of public ‘exhibition’ is entirely Western, whilst in the Chinese tradition of literati art for example, artworks were made, shared, and appreciated within the form of scholarly ‘elegant gathering’ (yaji), which was essentially a kind of private (rather than public) event within secluded (rather than institutional) spaces. From a political perspective, the ‘outside-ness’ immediately relates to the ‘unofficial’ status of contemporary Chinese art from its early development. For example, the first Star Group exhibition in September 1979 – generally acknowledged as the very first show that marked the beginning of contemporary art in China – was staged in a small public park just next to the China National Art Museum, outside the legitimated and official art space. Today, the situation of Chinese art taking place outside the museum and gallery spaces continues, but with a completely different momentum and agenda.

Art has been produced site-specifically for the spaces other than art institutions in China, including those of working venues, shown in a range of alternative spaces beyond galleries or museums, and has ‘happened’ in the public sphere and become political or social ‘events’, or artistic ‘incidents’, as a special form of ‘exhibition’. Creative curatorial and artistic strategies have been developed to respond to the constraints of art institutions, censorships and at the same time, to push the boundaries of art. Focusing on art made, displayed, performed or executed outside the conventional venues of art museums and galleries, this conference not only offers a unique perspective to understand Chinese art in the contemporary context, but also, more importantly, it aims to critically reflect upon the understandings between art and art exhibition, between artistic productions and audience perceptions, and between art and our daily life.

We invite papers from innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives to develop new understandings of Chinese contemporary art. The following series of relationships in the context of Chinese art and culture is seen indicative, but not limited to the discussions:

  • China’s art museums, galleries and alternative spaces
  • Curatorial strategies and artistic responses beyond institutional spaces
  • Exhibitions, events and incidents
  • Art production, dissemination, participation and reception
  • Performance and performativity
  • Art and everyday life
  • Contemporary art and censorship

Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words, a 100-word biography, contact information and any institutional affiliations, by 31 March 2017 to ccva@bcu.ac.uk, with a subject titled ‘10th Annual Conference’. Any general queries should also be directed to ccva@bcu.ac.uk. Conference presentations should last no more than 20 minutes. Successful proposals for conference contributions will be notified in early April 2017. Invited full papers should be completed by 28 February 2018, to be featured in Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Intellect) as a special issue in autumn 2018.

Call for papers: Cine-excess 10th annual conference at Birmingham City University

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The 10th International Conference and Festival on Global Cult Film Traditions: Cine Excess X

Cult Genres, Traditions and Bodies: A Decade of Excess

The Big Screen (Birmingham City University)

10th-12th November 2016

Call for Papers

Over the last 10 years, the Cine-Excess International Film Conference and Festival has brought together leading scholars and critics with global cult filmmakers for an event comprising a themed academic conference with plenary talks, filmmaker interviews and UK theatrical premieres of up and coming film releases.

Previous guests of honour attending Cine-Excess have included Catherine Breillat (Romance, Sex is Comedy), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers), Roger Corman (The Masque of the Red Death, The Wild Angels), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, King of the Ants), Brian Yuzna (Society, The Dentist), Dario Argento (Deep Red, Suspiria) Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins), Franco Nero (Django, Keoma, Die Hard II), Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, The Devils), Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, House on the Edge of the Park) Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma, The Inglorious Bast***s), Sergio Martino (Torso, All the Colours of the Dark), Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) and Pat Mills (Action Magazine, 2000 AD).

Cine-Excess X is hosted by the Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University, and will feature a three day academic conference alongside film industry panels and a season of related UK premieres and retrospectives taking place at screening venues across the region.

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the conference Cult Genres, Traditions and Bodies: A Decade of Excess reconsiders some of the key debates around cult film genres, traditions and modes of representation that have influenced the development of the annual Cine-Excess event over the past decade. At the same time, the event looks forward to the future development of cult film studies by dissecting new perspectives that are now dominating this area of study.

In their early influential studies of ‘outlaw’ film formats such as the slasher cycle, melodrama narrative and ‘skin flick’, theorists such as Carol J. Clover and Linda Williams identified a cinematic and sensory response to excess, which linked unwieldy film genres to unruly representations of the human body and even more unconventional reactions from their subcultural audiences.  While such studies proved pivotal in identifying the potentially subversive features of key cult film cycles, more recent accounts have expanded this scope of analysis to consider a far wider range of global film formats, whilst also assessing the stylistic, performative and representational strategies that come to dominate such startling visions. The explosion of interest in graphic comics, transmedia and online platforms has further extended the theoretical interest in cult genres, traditions and bodies, by widening the scope of enquiry beyond the cinematic medium to other areas of activity which warrant further investigation.

In order to explore these themes further, Cine-Excess X will consider a wide variety of cult media creations including key case-studies of cult activity from film, television, literature, comics and digital media.  A number of international filmmakers associated with key cult genres will be in attendance at Cine-Excess X to discuss their work and interact with academic speakers.

Proposals are now invited for papers on a wide range of cult film genres, traditions and strategies of representation. However, we would particularly welcome contributions focusing on:

  • Cult visionaries: contemporary creativity at cinema’s extreme edge
  • Grossed-out and top grossing: cult comedies of excess
  • New case-studies of classic cult and ‘exploitation’ auteurs
  • High art and low taste: case-studies in extreme experimentation
  • From national borders to new territories: global traditions of the cult image
  • From AIP to The Asylum: case-studies of cult production studios
  • I know what you starred in last summer: the cult of bad acting
  • Realm of the senses: cult renditions of sensory affect
  • Revered and ruined: case-studies of the cult biography
  • Small screen scares: Netflix, Amazon and new platforms for terror 
  • From the burlesque to the brutal: cult interpretations of exotic performance
  • Consuming excess: new perspectives on cult audiences
  • The good, the bad and the forbidden: cult representations of taboo
  • Transmedia excess: cult narratives and contemporary platforms
  • Scored: soundtracks and compositions to the cult film canon 
  • Subcultures on two wheels: from Hells Angels flicks to the Sons of Anarchy series
  • From slasher and sexploitation to cult noir: transgressive femininities on screen
  • Crash and burn cults: Hollywood flops reborn
  • The men and women from Hong Kong: new studies of kung fu performativity
  • Superheroes, sidekicks and subversives: the graphic face of the cult comic book
  • Corporeal excess: new readings of the cult body

Please send a 300-word abstract and a short (one page) C.V. by Friday 9th September 2016 to:

Xavier Mendik, Birmingham City University xavier.mendik@bcu.ac.uk

Fran Pheasant-Kelly, University of Wolverhampton, F.E.Pheasant-kelly@wlv.ac.uk

Glenn Ward, University of Brighton, G.P.Ward@brighton.ac.uk

A final listing of accepted presentations will be released on Friday 16th September 2016.

 

A selection of conference papers from the event are scheduled to be published in the Cine-Excess peer reviewed e-Journal.  For further information and regular updates on the event (including information on guests, keynotes and screenings) please visit www.cine-excess.co.uk.

Well-being 2016 conference – 5-6 September

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5-6 September 2016, Birmingham City University

This year Well-being 2016 explores the multi-dimensions of well-being focusing on the achievements of well-being through collaboration – to co-create experiences which are positive and meaningful to the individual.

We aim to provide a platform for dialogue between academics and practitioners, knowledge exchange and methodological exploration through a combination of keynote speakers, breakout sessions and workshops.

Key Themes

  • Children’s well-being
  • Nature based solutions towards well-being
  • The context of the medical humanities
  • Recording, representing and evaluating the positive experience
  • Mentoring for well-being
  • Visioning and future thinking of well-being scenarios

Find out more on the website

 

Speech and Language Therapy research seminars

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The monthly research seminars in Speech and Language Therapy, in the School of Allied and Public Health Professions, take place every month. They are free and open to anyone with an interest in the field, such as (internal and external) academics, students, clinicians and other professionals.

These monthly seminars take place on Wednesday afternoons from 3-4 pm, and are followed by tea, coffee and biscuits. There is no need to book and seats cannot be reserved. All seminars take place at City South Campus at Westbourne Road (B15 3TN).

See the full programme on the website.

BCMCR Research Seminars – new events page

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Taking place every Wednesday, City Centre Campus

The Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research now holds its research seminars weekly. Each week there will be talks by either guest speakers, academics from the centre or our postgraduate researchers.

Upcoming events are listed on the BCMCR site. Keep checking back regularly for event updates.