Journeys Across Media (JAM)

Journeys Across Media (or JAM) is an annual interdisciplinary conference, run for and by postgraduates working in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television, University of Reading. It has been running since 2003, and carries on the interdisciplinary focus of the department, by looking at issues concerning film, theatre, television and new media. The running of JAM offers postgraduates in the department a chance to gain invaluable experience of planning and running a conference, and all delegates the opportunity to gain experience of presenting their work, at different stages of development, in the active, friendly and supportive research environment of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. Past events have considered a range of topics, including medium specificity and cross-media relationships, adaptation, perception and engagement, and nu-romanticism. For more information on past JAM events please visit our archive.

NOW BOOKING: JAM 2013 book online

Details of the day's events available here: JAM Schedule 2013

Journeys Across Media

The Body and The Digital

Friday 19^th April 2013, University of Reading

2013 will mark the 11^th anniversary of the annual Journeys Across Media (JAM) conference for postgraduate researchers, organised by postgraduates working in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. JAM 2013 seeks to foster emerging scholarship that investigates interactions and relationships between the body and the digital.

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty once stated: "The body is our general medium for having a world." Today, critical approaches and performance/art/media practices concerned with phenomenology, embodiment and the haptic continue to evolve as they encounter, engage with, respond to, incorporate and influence digital cultures.

JAM 2013 would like to open a dialogue about relationships between the body and the digital, particularly as expressed within contemporary scholarship and practices. Our initial questions include: how does the body encounter digital media and how do digital media frames position the body - both in mainstream iterations, social media contexts and in performance contexts? How has digital technology affected the ways in which we understand body movement traditions and conventions, across regional and national borders?

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

• Interactivity between digital languages and the body
• Sonic representations of the body in digital performance
• The digitized body in performance
• The role of the body in digital games and virtual performance
• Post-colonial bodies in the contemporary moment
• Preparing the body for performance
• Notions of embodiment (e.g. violent, disabled, explicit)
• Traditions of corporeally-focused film, theatre and television
• Embodied spectatorship
• Phenomenology of the lived, performed and screened body
• The haunted body
• Politics of the body
• Unconventional and other bodies

JAM 2013 invites submissions from PhD and MA/MPhil scholars conducting research in these areas and seeks to provide a broad, cross-medial discussion forum. Previous delegates have welcomed the opportunity to gain experience of presenting and developing their work, and to establish contacts with fellow postgraduate researchers and academic staff. Presenters who are not able to deliver their papers live are offered the option of presenting digitally, either via Skype or digitally recorded presentation. Non-presenting delegates are also strongly encouraged to attend.

JAM has an on-going collaboration with the Journal of Media Practice. Participants of both JAM 2011 and JAM 2012 have had their papers published by the journal. Please see Journal of Media Practice 13:3, the most recent publication incorporating postgraduate papers originally delivered at JAM. Many of these focus on digitally related performance and media practices, in the context of the 2013 conference theme, Time Tells. They have been written by scholars working (often through practice) in film, theatre, television, dance and performance.

• http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=132/
• http://jmpscreenworks.com/

New deadline for submission of abstracts (presentations AND practice-led work): 8th February 2013.

If you would like to deliver a fifteen-minute paper, please send a 250-word abstract and a 50-word biographical note to jam2013@pgr.reading.ac.uk

A forum for practitioners to critically frame and discuss their practice will be made available during the conference. If you intend to present practice-led research, please send a 250-word outline describing your proposed presentation, within its critical/theoretical framework, including information about duration and technical/space requirements. Please also include a 50-word biographical note. Relevant images and links to your work would also be helpful. Please e-mail the conference organisers at jam2013@pgr.reading.ac.uk.

We would appreciate the distribution of this call for papers and wider promotion of this conference through your networks.

The Department of Film, Theatre & Television at Reading and the Standing Conference of University Drama Departments (SCUDD) support Journeys Across Media.

Research Groups

The department is home to three Research Groups, each of which is managed entirely by postgraduates: Practice as Research, Theory Group, Film Analysis. Meetings for each group take place twice a term. They are attended by postgraduates and academic staff from within and outside the department. Discussion is linked to a performance and/or critical/theoretical text, which is chosen by group members prior to the discussion. These meetings provide an informal setting in which issues connected directly with departmental research can be openly expressed, discussed and debated.