Research Workshop: Mediated Orientalism

Members of the Globalization and East Asian Cultures Research Group within the centre are holding a Research Workshop on Mediated Orientalism on Wednesday October 31st.

The term ‘orientalism’ was coined by Edward Said in 1978 and has become one of the most popular and controversial terms in literary, media and cultural studies. In recent years, there has been a tendency to reject the term because ‘we’ and ‘our multicultural and post-ideological society’ have moved beyond the East/West, or Orient/Occident binaries, and ‘we’ celebrate cultural differences. But is that so? Is the term ‘orientalism’ out of date and out of history? What about its counterpart ‘occidentalism’? Does the East/West or Orient/Occident binary still structure people’s understandings of cultural differences in various ways? Does orientalism have any positive and performative effects, if at all? Can orientalism be used as a political strategy and tactics for postcolonial resistance? What are the embodied and affective experiences of the orientalist desires, fantasies and dreams? Does an obsession with the ‘oriental’ style suggest our desires and fantasies for the incommensurable Other, which sometimes take an affective and libidinal form and which cannot be reduced to power relations? Or does it simply suggest some sort of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual and class distinctions? Is the denial of orientalism, or rather the blind celebration of multiculturalism and cultural differences, indicative of the neoliberal consumer capitalism that we inhabit? How is orientalism manifested in today’s media and popular culture? How does the old concept of orientalism still haunt the seemingly ever-changing and forever-new field of Media and Cultural Studies? This research workshop brings together staff and students to critically reflect on the contemporary pertinence of the term orientalism and the embodied historical past in the mediated present.

Programme

 3:00-3:30 talk ‘Useless Orientalism’ (speaker: Professor Patrick Williams, Nottingham Trent University)

3:30-4:00 pm talk ‘Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema’ (guest speaker: Dr. Jane Park, the University of Sydney, Australia)  

4:00-4:10 pm coffee/tea break

4:10-5:00 pm roundtable discussion: After Orientalism? (chair: Gary Needham; participants: all the participants in the workshop)

All participants who are interested in this topic are invited to join in the roundtable discussion.

The event is free of charge will take place in ABK107 on the Clifton campus of Nottingham Trent University. If you have any questions or queries and if you are interested in attending, please contact Dr. Hongwei Bao.

Fashioning the East-Asian Screen: conference announcement

Centre member Gary Needham is co-organizing this event with colleagues in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University.

CALL FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPANTS FASHIONING THE EAST-ASIAN SCREEN, 3-4th May 2012, Nottingham Castle, UK.

It is no coincidence that almost simultaneously in the1890s the very first issue of Vogue appears and the birth of cinema takes place. The invention of modern life involves this parallel between fashion and screen histories. However, most of the emphasis in this relationship is celebrated and documented through American and European cinema. While the relationship between fashion and Western cinemas has already been explored in a number of important publications there has been scant attention to similar themes and issues when it comes to non-Western cinemas. This two-day event seeks to address this gap both in our knowledge about fashion and the screen and the role that fashion, clothing, style, costume, and design plays in East-Asian cinemas. We are also interested in how the screen has influenced fashion cultures in the region. Furthermore, we wish to consider the concept of the screen and East-Asia in their broadest sense to include all screens not just cinema but also television to new media and similarly we intend the concept of East-Asia to be fluid and transcultural rather than limited and fixed. Our primary aim with this event is to begin to map an East-Asian context in terms of the multiple and mutual contacts between fashion and the screen. 

We seek 20 minute papers or 40 minute workshop presentations and we would invite all proposals that consider the connection between fashion and the screen in the context of East-Asia. We would like to see a spread of historical periods represented as well as different disciplinary perspectives and positions. Some suggested topics might include fashion and costume as an element of mise en scene, film stars, costume design, studio films, fashion in film magazines and film in fashion magazines, period films and fashion/costume orientated genres, fashion Orientalism in Western-Cinemas, fashion and modernity, the influence of the screen on the broader East-Asian fashion culture.
Deadline for paper submission is Friday 30th of March 2012. Please send abstracts and proposals with a short bio to Gary Needham. 

Event Details
This event will take place on the 3rd and 4th of May 2012 and is a collaboration between Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery running in tandem with the exhibition of Chinese textiles Living in Silk. Attendance is free but places are very limited due to the unique Castle venue and priority will be given to participants who propose a paper or workshop. There are two confirmed keynote speakers Dr Pamela Church-Gibson (London College of Fashion) and Dr Tamar Jeffers-McDonald (University of Kent). The Thursday evening reception in Nottingham Trent University’s Bonington Gallery will include a performance based installation by MA Framework students and Lucia Tong choreography for Dance4 relating to the theme of the event.