Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium

International Conference on Welsh Studies July 22- 24, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:25:00 +0000

North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History
(NAASWCH)

National Celtic Heritage Center at Marymount University

International Conference on Welsh Studies

Call for Papers

July 22- 24, 2010

Marymount University

Arlington, Virginia/Washington D.C.

The NAASWCH Program Committee seeks diverse perspectives on Wales and Welsh culture -- as well as proposals focused on the Welsh in North America -- from many disciplines including: history, literature, languages, art, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, philosophy, music, and religion.

NAASWCH invites participation from faculty, postgraduate/graduate students and independent scholars from North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Those wishing to present a paper suitable for a 20 minute reading may submit an abstract (maximum one-page).

Proposals for thematic sessions, panel presentations, or other formats are also welcome.

Please include a brief (one-page) vita with your submission.

The abstract – proposal deadline is Dec. 21, 2009; but early proposals are encouraged.

Participants will be notified by mid-February.

E-mail submissions are welcome and will be acknowledged promptly.

If you have not received confirmation of your electronic submission within one week, please resend the document.

NAASWCH works to promote scholarship on all aspects of Welsh culture and history; to develop connections between teachers and scholars in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom who are committed to the study of Welsh culture, history, language, and literature; to provide an intellectual forum in which scholars and teachers of Welsh culture may share their research and teaching experience, and to provide support for the study of Welsh-North American history and culture.

See the NAASWCH website for additional information:

http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~ellisjs/naaswch.html

Please submit abstracts or session proposals by no later than Friday, Dec. 21, 2009 to:

Dr. John Ellis, History Department, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI 48502 USA;

ellisjs@umflint.edu

Those who are not submitting proposals but would like to receive conference information should contact: Dr. Melinda Gray, NAASWCH Secretary, 15 Woodbridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA; mgrayk@comcast.net.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Study Abroad in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. / Canada Website.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Courage 2 Create, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Grace-filled Empty Spaces, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Queer Wales, a collection of essays on sexuality, identity, and Wales

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:03:00 +0000

Queer Wales, a collection of essays on sexuality, identity, and Wales

In recent years, we have become more aware of the complexity of Welsh
identities (national, European, racial, colonial, economic, etc), and a
major feature of this complexity is the queering of Welsh history and
culture.

Queer Wales is currently being studied, written, performed,
legislated, mapped, bought and sold, yet, as far as sexuality is
concerned, to what extent is Wales still “The Land of my Fathers” and
the “Land of the White Gloves”?

At what point may we begin to articulate
a coherent queer history and community in Wales?

As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains in /Epistemology of the Closet/,

gay people, who seldom grow up in gay families;

who are exposed to their culture’s, if not their parents’, high ambient homophobia long before
either they or those who care for them know that they are among those
who most urgently need to define themselves against it;

…have with difficulty and always belatedly to patch together from fragments a
community, a useable heritage, a politics of survival or resistance. (81)

GLBT people in twentieth-first century Wales are engaged in building
just such a “useable heritage” and “politics of survival and
resistance,” but this heritage, while it may be belated, need not be
patchwork and fragmentary.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays seeks to locate a gay tradition, culture and community within a history
and nation that have been largely hostile to its expression.

This call for papers solicits essays written from a variety of
disciplinary approaches on all aspects of gay life and culture, past and
present. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Policing Welsh queerness
* Education and sexual identity in Wales
* Creative industries and urban Welsh queerness
* Rural queer Wales
* Welsh regionalism and sexuality
* Tourism and sexuality in Wales
* Queerness in the Welsh classroom
* Queer Wales in television and/or film
* Queer Welsh communities
* Gay activism in Wales
* Intersections of class and gender in queer Wales
* Writing the Welsh queer, past and present
* Performing Welsh sexual identity: queer Welsh drama
* Queering the Welsh past
* Sex and sexuality in the Welsh legal system, past and present

Please submit abstracts of 500 words along with brief CVs to Huw Osborne
(osborne@rmc.ca ) by January 15 2010.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Study Abroad in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. / Canada Website.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Courage 2 Create, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Grace-filled Empty Spaces, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Sherman Cymru Receives £3.9 million Arts Council of Wales Grant for Redevelopment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:49:00 +0000

[Pictured above: Architect's impression, (c) Capita Architecture (image subject to change)]

Sherman Cymru is pleased to announce that it has received a Capital Lottery grant of £3.9 million from Arts Council of Wales in order to undergo a much needed redevelopment which will see the theatre building completely transformed.

Arts Council of Wales has awarded the grant to Sherman Cymru amounting to 74% of the total cost of the redevelopment which will see the public areas modernised, enhancing the audience's experience as well as refurbishing the backstage areas and improving conditions for staff and participants.

Director of Sherman Cymru Chris Ricketts comments:

"This is really great news and we're delighted with Arts Council of Wales's support.

The building work we will be able to do will vastly improve facilities, enhance our profile within the city and really enable us to be more ambitious with the productions we create and the performances we programme."

The redeveloped and refurbished building will have new seating in both theatres, new toilet facilities and the redevelopment of the foyer areas including improved access.

Backstage areas will be redeveloped to improve rehearsal and office space enabling enhancement to the quality of the work.

The building is being designed by Jonathan Adams at Capita Architecture, who also designed the Wales Millennium Centre. Sherman Cymru Chairman Emyr Jenkins said:

"Our redevelopment plans are aimed to give the Capital City of Wales's only producing theatre the venue it, and its audience, deserves - something of which we can all be proud."

The only producing theatre in South Wales, Sherman Cymru produces several new productions a year, most notably the award-winning Deep Cut in 2008 which was a sell-out hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2008, before transferring to London's prestigious Tricycle Theatre earlier this year.

Sherman Cymru also annually produces popular Christmas productions.

Sherman Cymru's Learning and Engagement team have worked with almost 7000 young people in the past year alone through the Youth Theatre and Acting Out Cardiff, which allows 14-16 year olds to study for a BTEC in Performing Arts at the theatre, and various other projects with young people, asylum seekers and refugees.

Arts Council of Wales Chief Executive, Nick Capaldi comments:

"Sherman's contribution to the cultural life of Wales is longstanding and well established. We're delighted to be making this significant investment of funding in the theatre's future.

Sherman Cymru is already one of the country's most important theatre producers. It's essential that it has the quality of facilities to match."

Sherman Cymru aims to raise the remaining £1.5 million needed for the scheme from a range of sources and has begun discussions with a variety of potential funders.

A public campaign for individual donations will be launched in September and fundraising activities include Sherman Cymru staff members running the Cardiff Half Marathon.

The current Sherman building will close its doors for the 18 month refurbishment in January 2010 following Sherman's 2009 Christmas production A Christmas Carol.

Sherman Cymru will move to temporary offices in Cardiff and will continue to produce and tour theatre around the UK as well as maintaining its Learning and Engagement work.

The Sherman Theatre building was opened in 1973 as part of University College Cardiff, built through a donation from the Harry and Abe Sherman.

It was bought by the Arts Council in Great Britain (ACGB) in the late 1980s and leased to Sherman Theatre Limited., with ownership transferred to the Arts Council of Wales in 1993 when ACBG disbanded.

In 2007 The Sherman Theatre Company and new writing company Sgript Cymru merged to create Sherman Cymru.

For more press and media information, please contact: jenny.boyatt@shermancymru.co.uk

Sherman Cymru yn Derbyn Grant o £3.9 miliwn gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru ar gyfer yr Ail-ddatblygu

Mae Sherman Cymru yn falch o gyhoeddi ein bod wedi derbyn grant o £3.9 miliwn gan y Loteri Genedlaethol, drwy Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru.

Bydd yr arian yn ein galluogi i gyflawni'r gwaith adnewyddu sy'n gwbl angenrheidiol er mwyn sicrhau fod adeilad y theatr yn cael ei drawsnewid yn llwyr.

Mae cyfanswm y grant a ddyfarnwyd i Sherman Cymru gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru yn cynrychioli 74% o gyfanswm cost yr ail-ddatblygu.

Bydd hyn yn cynnwys moderneiddio'r ardaloedd cyhoeddus, fydd felly'n gwella profiad y gynulleidfa, yn ogystal ag adnewyddu'r ardaloedd cefn llwyfan ac yn gwella'r amodau ar gyfer staff a chyfranogwyr.

Meddai Chris Ricketts, Cyfarwyddwr Sherman Cymru:

"Dyma newyddion ardderchog, 'rydym wrth ein bodd gyda chefnogaeth Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru.

Bydd y gwaith adeiladu fydd yn bosib i ni ei gyflawni yn gwella'r cyfleusterau'n ddirfawr, yn codi ein proffil yn y ddinas, ac yn ein galluogi i fod yn fwy uchelgeisiol gyda'r cynyrchiadau 'rydym yn eu creu a'r perfformiadau 'rydym yn eu rhaglennu."

Bydd gan yr adeilad ar ei newydd wedd seddi newydd yn y ddwy theatr, cyfleusterau cyhoeddus newydd, a bydd y cyntedd hefyd yn cael ei ddatblygu - bydd hyn yn cynnwys gwella'r mynediad i'r theatr.

Bydd yr ardaloedd cefn llwyfan yn cael eu hail-ddatblygu er mwyn gwella'r ystafelloedd ymarfer a'r swyddfeydd, gan alluogi i safon y gwaith a gynhyrchir yno godi.

Cynllunnir yr adeilad gan Jonathan Adams o Capita Architecture, fu hefyd yn gyfrifol am gynllunio Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru. Dywedodd Cadeirydd Sherman Cymru, Emyr Jenkins:

"Bwriad ein cynlluniau ar gyfer yr ail-ddatblygu yw creu adnoddau teilwng ar gyfer yr unig theatr gynhyrchu ym mhrifddinas Cymru, ynghyd â'i chynulleidfa - adeilad y gallwn oll ymfalchïo ynddo"

Sherman Cymru yw unig theatr gynhyrchu De Cymru, ac mae'n cyflwyno nifer o gynyrchiadau newydd bob blwyddyn.

Y mwyaf nodedig oedd Deep Cut yn 2008 a enillodd sawl gwobr, yn ogystal â bod yn llwyddiant ysgubol yng Ngŵyl Ymylol Caeredin yn 2008 pan werthwyd pob tocyn, cyn symud i theatr nodedig y Tricycle yn Llundain yn gynharach eleni.

Mae Sherman Cymru hefyd yn cyflwyno cynyrchiadau Nadolig poblogaidd yn flynyddol.

Mae tîm Dysg ac Ymgysylltu Sherman Cymru wedi gweithio gyda bron i 7000 o bobl ifanc yn ystod y flwyddyn ddiwethaf yn unig, drwy'r Theatr Ieuenctid ac Acting Out Caerdydd, sy'n galluogi i fyfyrwyr 14-16 mlwydd oed astudio ar gyfer tystysgrif BTEC yn y Celfyddydau Perfformio yn y theatr ei hun, a nifer o brosiectau eraill gyda phobl ifanc, ymofynwyr noddfa a ffoaduriaid.

Meddai Nick Capaldi, Prif Weithredwr Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru:

"Mae cyfraniad y Sherman i fywyd diwylliannol Cymru'n un hir ac wedi'i hen sefydlu.

'Rydym wrth ein bodd gwneud y buddsoddiad ariannol arwyddocaol hwn yn nyfodol y theatr.

Mae Sherman Cymru eisoes yn un o gynhyrchwyr theatr pwysicaf y wlad. Mae'n hanfodol fod yno'r cyfleusterau i gyd-fynd â hyn."

Nod Sherman Cymru yw codi'r £1.5 miliwn ychwanegol sydd ei angen ar gyfer y cynllun o nifer o ffynonellau amrywiol, ac mae trafodaethau eisoes ar y gweill gyda nifer o arianwyr posib.

Bydd ymgyrch gyhoeddus ar gyfer rhoddion unigol yn cael ei lansio ym mis Medi, ac mae gweithgareddau codi arian yn cynnwys aelodau o staff y Sherman yn rhedeg Hanner Marathon Caerdydd.

Bydd y drysau'n cau ar adeilad presennol y Sherman ym mis Ionawr 2010 ar gyfer y cyfnod adnewyddu, yn dilyn cynhyrchiad Nadolig y Sherman yn 2009, sef A Christmas Carol.

Bydd Sherman Cymru yn symud i swyddfeydd dros dro yng Nghaerdydd ac yn parhau i gynhyrchu a theithio gwaith theatrig ledled y DU, a hefyd yn parhau â'r gwaith Dysg ac Ymgysylltu.

Agorwyd adeilad Theatr y Sherman ym 1973 fel rhan o Goleg Prifysgol Caerdydd, ac fe'i adeiladwyd yn dilyn rhodd gan Harry ac Abe Sherman.

Fe'i prynwyd gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Prydain (CCP) yn niwedd y 1980au a'i gymryd ar les gan Theatr y Sherman Cyf.

Trosglwyddwyd perchnogaeth yr adeilad i Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru ym 1993 pan chwalwyd CCP.

Yn 2007 ymunodd Cwmni Theatr y Sherman a Sgript Cymru, y cwmni ysgrifennu newydd, i greu Sherman Cymru.

Am wybodaeth i'r wasg a'r cyfryngau, cysylltwch gyda: jenny.boyatt@shermancymru.co.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Study Abroad in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. / Canada Website.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Courage 2 Create, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Grace-filled Empty Spaces, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Cardiff ATRiuM: CCI and Intellect Launch International Journal 'Journal of Arts and Communities'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Journal of Arts and Communities

Principal Editor
Hamish Fyfe
University of Glamorgan
hfyfe@glam.ac.uk

Associate Editors
Huw Champion
The Mailout Trust
huw.champion@phonecoop.coop

Stephanie Knight
stephaniejaneknight@googlemail.com

Reviews Editor
Jennie Hayes
University College Falmouth, Dartington Campus
j.hayes@dartington.ac.uk

Journal of Arts and Communities will be released in 2009.

[Pictured above: Head of Department for Drama & Music Mr Michael Carklin]

Your browser must accept cookies to view the free issue.

The Journal of Arts and Communities seeks to provide a critical examination of the practices known as community or participatory arts, encompassing work which incorporates active creative collaboration between artists and people in a range of communities of place and interest.

The Journal of Arts and Communities

[Pictured above: Prof. Richard Hand]

Our colleague Prof. Richard Hand writes:

Dear All,

Colleagues will be delighted to learn that the inaugural issue of the Journal of Arts & Communities has appeared.

Prof Hamish Fyfe is Principal Editor of this international, peer-reviewed journal which is published by Intellect and housed within CCI.

[Pictured above: Prof Stephen Lacey]

Dr Márta Minier assisted in leading the Journal's first issue to fruition and the editorial board includes CCI colleagues Michael Carklin, Dr Rea Dennis and Prof Stephen Lacey.

[Pictured above: Dr Rea Dennis]

Warm congratulations to all involved.

Richard

Prof Richard J. Hand FRSA,
Professor of Theatre and Media Drama,
Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries,
University of Glamorgan,
The Atrium,
86-88 Adam Street,
Cardiff CF24 2FN Wales, UK.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Study Abroad in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. / Canada Website.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Adoration of Beauty and the Grotesque, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called William Blake Spirituality: Toward a Theory of Horoscopes, Tarot and Tomorrow's Tea Leaves, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Courage 2 Create, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Grace-filled Empty Spaces, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Peter Gill's Cardiff Play 'Small Change' Opens with First Welsh Production in over 30 years, Now on at Sherman, Cardiff until 11 April

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:12:00 +0000

[Pictured above: Playwright and Director Peter Gill.]

Dyddiad Rhyddhau: 24 March 2009

A new production of a play based in Cardiff, starring Welsh actresses Lisa Palfrey and Helen Griffin, will be on at Sherman, Cardiff until 11 April.

Small Change - Blog 1

Small Change by Peter Gill is a story of growing up in the East Side of Cardiff in the 1950s, and is widely regarded as his finest play. Gerard and Vincent spend their days swimming down the docks, missing school and stealing duck eggs.

But real live begins to smother their childhood and their mothers feel the strain of neglectful husbands. Small Change is a bittersweet story about the lives of two Cardiff families, and about the sometimes tragic effects that result from things going unsaid. Director Amy Hodge comments:

"Small Change is essentially a story of life in post war Cardiff; how fun it could be for kids, how tough it could be for mothers and how fundamentally we are all shaped and often trapped by the events of our past. It's very clearly based in the Tremorfa area of Cardiff, where Peter Gill himself grew up, and is filled with rich imagery of Cardiff as it used to be.

It's a beautifully written play showing Peter, one of Wales leading playwrights, at his best. I'm excited to be part of the team that stages it in Cardiff for the first time since the 1970s."

Amy, alongside designer Patrick Burnier, has researched the Tremorfa area of Cardiff and will be transforming Sherman's studio theatre into the post-war docks area of Cardiff.

Small Change stars Ifan Meredith, whose father Ioan Meredith also starred in Small Change in the only other known Welsh production of the play at The Sherman Theatre in the 1970s, and Kenny Doughty, who has worked extensively in film and TV, as Vincent and Gerard respectively.

Well known Welsh actresses Lisa Palfrey and Bafta Cymru award-winning actress Helen Griffin, play the boys' mothers.

Peter Gill was born in Cardiff in 1939 and his other plays include The Sleepers Den, Kick for Touch and Cardiff East. Also a well established director, Peter directed the first production of Small Change at the Royal Court in 1976.

Click here to read more about Playwright Peter Gill.

In 2008, the Donmar Warehouse produced a successful production of Small Change starring Sue Johnston and Lindsey Coulson.

Small Change is on at Sherman from 20 March - 11 April (Previews 20 - 24 March) Tickets are £12, £10, £8 (£10, £8, £6 for Preview performances) New VAT rate will be applied when booking. Tickets can be booked from Sherman's Box Office on 029 2064 6900 or online at www.shermancymru.co.uk (No booking fee)

www.shermancymru.co.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Study Abroad in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. / Canada Website.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Adoration of Beauty and the Grotesque, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called William Blake Spirituality: Toward a Theory of Horoscopes, Tarot and Tomorrow's Tea Leaves, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Courage 2 Create, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Grace-filled Empty Spaces, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

'Writers in their Landscape' -Academi's Literary Bus Tours hit the road / Awduron a'u Cynefin: Dewch ar wibdaith lenyddol trwy Gymru

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:10:00 +0000

'Writers in their Landscape' -Academi's Literary Bus Tours hit the road

[This article will be of special interest to Welsh Americans and to other tourists traveling in Wales this Spring.]

Dyddiad Rhyddhau: 23 March 2009

Have you ever wanted to spend a day out in the country in the company of a National Poet and an Archdruid? Or fancied visiting the Brecon Beacons in the footsteps of one of Wales' leading literary critics? This is your chance.

Academi is pleased to present a new series of Literary Bus Tours in Wales, focusing on six different writers in their landscape - Waldo Williams, Gillian Clarke, Dic Jones, Roland Mathias, Lewis Jones and Dafydd ap Gwilym. On each trip, we will visit important sites and locations from the writer's life and work, hear readings and recitals and learn from experts about the life and history of the writer.

R.S.Thomas - Welsh Landscape

This series of tours is supported by an Arts Council of Wales Beacon Company Award 2008 - 2010, which Academi was awarded last year. Alongside these tours, which form part of a programme of literary tourism, the Award will enable Academi to enhance the Young People's Writing Squads and successful National Poet initiative.

Whether you fancy spending a day with National Poet Gillian Clarke and Archdruid Dic Jones in Ceredigion, a visit to the Clydach Vale in the footsteps of left-wing writer and political activist Lewis Jones, a trip to Brecon to discover the area that shaped and influenced poet, editor and critic, Roland Mathias, a day in Pembrokeshire where one of Wales leading Welsh-language poets Waldo Williams lived or a journey back in time to discover old and new secrets about legendary medieval writer Dafydd ap Gwilym, this series of literary bus tours offers something for everyone.

Peter Finch Live at the Merlin

Academi's Chief Executive Peter Finch said: "Touring the places associated with writers, where they walked, where they lived, where they created, can be enormously fulfilling. To visit the place that sparked their great works is a privilege. Academi tours are all accompanied by erudite and accessible leaders. Expect to be entertained, enlivened, informed and enthralled."

[Pictured above: In the Spring wild Bluebells grow everywhere in the high places along country roads in Wales. Photography by Dr. Mark Leslie Woods.]

All tours include lunch and coffee breaks at carefully selected venues and tickets are £37.00 per person per tour. Academi hopes that you will not only learn more about the writers in their landscape, but also have fun on these five day trips:

Waldo Williams in Pembrokeshire, Saturday 9 May 2009

Tour leader: Dr Damian Walford Davies

Departure/Arrival point: Carmarthen

Welsh language tour: No English translation provided

Welsh Folk Dancing at The National Eisteddfod, Swansea 2006

Roland Mathias at Talybont-on-Usk, Saturday 13 June 2009

Tour leader: Dr John Pikoulis

Departure/Arrival point: Cardiff

English language tour

Gillian Clarke and Dic Jones in Ceredigion, Saturday 11 July 2009

Tour leaders: Gillian Clarke and Dic Jones

Departure/Arrival point: Aberystwyth

Bilingual tour: English translation provided

Lewis Jones in Clydach Vale, Saturday 19 September 2009

Tour leader: Dr John Pikoulis

Departure/Arrival point: Cardiff

English language tour

Dafydd ap Gwilym in Ceredigion, Saturday 24 October 2009

Tour leader: Dr Huw Meirion Edwards

Departure/Arrival point: Aberystwyth

Welsh language tour: No English translation provided

For full details and a booking form, please visit www.academi.org or contact Academi on 029 2047 2266, post@academi.org

Ends

Notes to Editors

For full programme details please visit: www.academi.org

Arts Council of Wales Beacon Company Award

Academi is a recipient of an Arts Council of Wales Beacon Company Award 2008-2010. This award supports a programme of literary tourism, including this series of bus tours.

In November 2007, the Welsh Assembly Government allocated £4.5m to be used by the Arts Council of Wales to reward companies or individuals who showed innovation and excellence in the arts. It was a privilege for the Academi to receive one of these Beacon Company Awards in October 2008, which secured funding to develop a programme of literary tourism, the Young People's Writing Squads and enhance the successful National Poet initiative.

About Academi

- The Academi works in partnership with Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre in Llanystumdwy. The Academi works with the support of the Arts Council of Wales and Welsh Assembly Government.

- The Academi is responsible for organising the Wales Book of the Year award, literary events (conferences, dinners, poetry tours, lectures), writers' bursaries, Writing Squads and various support schemes.

- Academi is pleased to be the recipient of an Arts Council of Wales Beacon Company Award 2008 - 2010.

For further information contact Academi:

029 2047 2266 / post@academi.org

www.academi.org

Media Contact

Joanna Davies
Senior Press & Media Officer
Tel: 07817 291512 / 02920 376593
Email: Joanna[dot]Davies[at]celfcymru[dot]org[dot]uk

Climbing Cader Idris (for a Mountaineer) - Gillian Clarke

Awduron a'u Cynefin: Dewch ar wibdaith lenyddol trwy Gymru

Dyddiad Rhyddhau: 23 Mawrth 2009

Hoffech chi dreulio diwrnod yng nghefn gwlad yng nghwmni Bardd Cenedlaethol ac Archdderwydd? Neu ddilyn ôl troed un o feirniaid llenyddol mwyaf Cymru ar hyd Bannau Brycheiniog? Dyma'ch cyfle.

Mae'n bleser gan yr Academi gyflwyno cyfres o Wibdeithau Llenyddol yn seiliedig ar chwe awdur gwahanol yn eu cynefin - Waldo Williams, Gillian Clarke, Dic Jones, Roland Mathias, Lewis Jones a Dafydd ap Gwilym. Bydd y gwibdeithiau'n cynnwys ymweliadau â lleoliadau pwysig ym mywyd a gwaith yr awduron, darlleniadau a chyfle i ddysgu mwy am yr awduron gan arbenigwyr.

[Pictured above: Bright, yellow Gorse grows wild in the high places along country roads in Wales. Photography by Dr. Mark Leslie Woods.]

Boed yn ddiwrnod yng Ngheredigion gyda'r Bardd Cenedlaethol Gillian Clarke a'r Archdderwydd Dic Jones, ymweliad â Chwm Clydach a dilyn ôl troed yr awdur adain-chwith Lewis Jones, ymweld ag ardal Waldo Williams, un o feirdd mwyaf blaenllaw y Gymraeg neu fentro nôl i'r Canol Oesoedd i glywed cyfrinachau hen a newydd am y bardd enwog Dafydd ap Gwilym, mae'r Academi'n gobeithio fod y gyfres hon o wibdeithiau yn cynnig rhywbeth at ddant pawb.

Medley of Welsh Folk Tunes - Improvised

Derbyniodd yr Academi Wobr Cwmni Disglair gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru 2008-2010 a defnyddir y wobr i gefnogi'r gwibdeithiau hyn, fel rhan o'n cynllun twristiaeth lenyddol. Defnyddir y nawdd hefyd i hybu cynllun y Bardd Cenedlaethol a Sgwadiau `Sgwennu'r Ifainc.

Dywed Peter Finch, Prif Weithredwr yr Academi: "Mae ymweld â llefydd sy'n gysylltiedig ag awduron - y llefydd ble buont yn cerdded, yn byw, yn creu - yn gallu bod yn hynod foddhaus. Mae'n fraint ymweld â'r llefydd a daniodd eu gweithiau mawr. Arweinir gwibdeithiau'r Academi gan dywyswyr gwybodus. Paratowch am deithiau bywiog, cynhwysfawr a difyr. "

Mae pob gwibdaith yn cynnwys cinio a seibiannau coffi mewn lleoliadau arbennig a chost tocyn ar gyfer un wibdaith fydd £37. Mae'r Academi'n gobeithio y byddwch yn dysgu mwy am yr awduron ac yn cael diwrnod i'r brenin:

Waldo Williams yn Sir Benfro, Sadwrn 9 Mai 2009

Arweinydd y daith: Dr Damian Walford Davies
Man Cychwyn/Gorffen: Caerfyrddin

Gwibdaith trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg: Ni ddarperir cyfieithiad Saesneg

Roland Mathias yn Nhal-y-bont ar Wysg, Sadwrn 13 Mehefin 2009

Arweinydd y daith: Dr John Pikoulis
Man Cychwyn/Gorffen: Caerdydd

Gwibdaith trwy gyfrwng y Saesneg

Gillian Clarke a Dic Jones yng Ngheredigion, Sadwrn 11 Gorffennaf 2009

Arweinydd y daith: Gillian Clarke a Dic Jones

Man Cychwyn/Gorffen: Aberystwyth

Gwibdaith ddwyieithog: Darperir cyfieithiad Saesneg

Lewis Jones yng Nghwm Clydach, Sadwrn 19 Medi 2009
Arweinydd y daith: Dr John Pikoulis

Man Cychwyn/Gorffen: Caerdydd

Gwibdaith trwy gyfrwng y Saesneg

Dafydd ap Gwilym yng Ngheredigion, Sadwrn 24 Hydref 2009
Arweinydd y daith: Dr Huw Meirion Edwards

Man Cychwyn/Gorffen: Aberystwyth

Gwibdaith trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg: Ni ddarperir cyfieithiad Saesneg

Am ragor o wybodaeth a ffurflen archebu, ewch i www.academi.org neu cysylltwch â ni ar 029 2047 2266 / post@academi.org

Diwedd

Nodiadau i'r Golygydd

Am raglen lawn ewch ar: www.academi.org

Wales: The National Eisteddfod (1) The Gorsedd Prayer

Dyfarniad Cwmni Disglair Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru

Derbyniodd yr Academi Wobr Cwmni Disglair gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru 2008-2010 a defnyddir y wobr i gefnogi'r gwibdeithiau hyn, fel rhan o'n cynllun twristiaeth lenyddol.

Cyhoeddodd Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru ym mis Tachwedd 2007 y byddai cronfa o £4.5m yn cael ei chreu i'w ddefnyddio gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru i wobrwyo cwmnïau neu unigolion a ddangosai flaengarwch a rhagoriaeth ym myd y celfyddydau. Braint felly i'r Academi oedd derbyn Dyfarniad Cwmni Disglair fis Hydref 2008, a sicrhaodd nawdd i ddatblygu'r cynllun Twristiaeth Lenyddol, Sgwadiau `Sgwennu'r Ifainc a chynllun llwyddianus y Bardd Cenedlaethol.

Yr Academi

Derbyniodd yr Academi Wobr Cwmni Disglair gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru 2008-2010.

Am ragor o wybodaeth, cysylltwch â'r Academi:

029 2047 2266 / post@academi.org

www.academi.org

Mae'r Academi yn gweithio mewn partneriaeth â Thŷ Newydd

Cyswllt a'r Cyfryngau

Joanna Davies
Uwch Swyddog y Wasg a'r Cyfryngau
Ffôn: 07817 291512 / 02920 376593
Ebost: Joanna[dot]Davies[at]celfcymru[dot]org[dot]uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Study Abroad in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. / Canada Website.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Adoration of Beauty and the Grotesque, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called William Blake Spirituality: Toward a Theory of Horoscopes, Tarot and Tomorrow's Tea Leaves, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Courage 2 Create, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Grace-filled Empty Spaces, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Tŷ Crawshay, Pontypridd: Ian Grainger Exhibit Runs 23 March to 24 April 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:18:00 +0000

[Pictured above: The Grade 2 listed Tŷ Crawshay building on the University of Glamorgan’s Treforest campus.]

My dear and esteemed colleague Dr. Ceri Thomas writes to us:

3/3/09

Colleagues,

The next art exhibition in Ty Crawshay, Pontypridd, runs from 23 March to 24 April 2009. It is:-

Ian Grainger (1942-2007): selected works

Looking forward to seeing you at the private view on Thursday 26 March (6 - 8 pm). Details are attached.

Ceri

Dr Ceri Thomas
Curator - University of Glamorgan Art Collections
Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries
University of Glamorgan
The Lodge (A1/13)
Pontypridd CF37 1DL

Here is the info taken from the event poster:

Ian Grainger (1942-2007):
selected works
an exhibition of works on paper
Monday 23 March to Friday 24 April 2009
A35 gallery

Tŷ Crawshay, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL
Open Monday - Friday 9 am - 5 pm

Closed Friday 10, Monday 13 and Tuesday 14 April 2009

For more information please contact the curator Dr Ceri Thomas,
tel 01443 482077 e-mail cthomas1[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network Symposium April 17-18

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:37:00 +0000

Posted below for your information are some highlights of the programme for the 3rd Symposium of the AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network, to be held at Aberystwyth University on 17-18 April 2009.

The theme of the meeting is ‘Cultural Institutions and Creativity in Ireland and Wales’.

Please contact the organizers Paul O’Leary, Claire Connolly and Katie Gramich at irelandwales[at]aber[dot]ac[dot]uk

3rd Symposium of the AHRC Ireland-Wales Network:

Cultural Institutions and Creativity in Ireland and Wales
17-18 April 2009, Aberystwyth University

Room A12, Hugh Owen Building, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth University

Friday 17 April

9 am Coffee and registration

10 am
Shaun Richards (University of ), ‘Did that play of mine ...? Conflict, Conformity and Commerce in the National Theatre of Ireland.’

Anwen Jones (Aberystwyth University ), ‘Dramas of Devolution - A History of the Idea of National Theatre in Wales and Ireland.’

11 am Coffee

11.30 pm
Niamh Hourigan (Cork University), ‘Media Power and People Power: A Comparison of Campaigns for Welsh and Irish Language Television Services’

Steve Blandford (Glamorgan University), ‘Questions of Identity and the Creative Industries in Contemporary Wales’

12.30 am
Title: ‘Theatre, Media and the Creative Industries in Ireland and Wales’

Interviews / Readings with Ceri Sherlock (BBC Wales)
Lloyd Trott (RADA)

1.30 — 2.30 pm Lunch

2.30-3.30
Michael Houlihan (National Museum of Wales), ‘Can authoritative, cultural institutions be creative? Accountability and creativity in National Museums.’

Andrew Green (National Library of Wales), ‘Making the far near: the National Library of Wales and digitisation’

3.30 pm Tea

4 – 5 pm
Fintan Cullen (Nottingham University), ‘The National and the International: Donating Modern Art in Dublin and Cardiff in the Early Twentieth Century’

John Wilson (University of ), ‘Industrialism and Culture: The Civic and National Context of Art in South Wales, c.1800-1914’

5pm Drinks LOCATION TBC

6.00 pm

Prof. John Horgan (Irish Press Ombudsman) and Geraint Talfan Davies (Chairman of the Institute of Welsh Affairs and of the Welsh National Opera) [Public Lecture]
‘Y Drwm’, National Library of Wales

7.30 pm Dinner

Saturday 18 April

10 am
Brian O Conchubair (Notre Dame University), ‘The Welsh Influence on the Irish Language Revival’

M Wynn Thomas (Swansea University), ‘Creating a National Consciousness: Cymru Fydd, Young Ireland and the Pan-Celtic movement.’

11.00 am Coffee

11.30 am
Rob Savage (Boston College), ‘Finding a Voice? The Irish language and Telefís Éireann 1960-1972’

Jamie Medhurst (Aberystwyth University), ‘ITV in Wales: Broadcasting's Poor Relation?’

12.30-1.30 pm Lunch

4.30 p.m. Symposium Close

AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Cardiff ATRiuM: This Week's Best Event: International TV, Film & Performance, Radio & New Media Adaptation Conference 26-28 June 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:21:00 +0000

[Pictured above: The ATRiuM in coloured floodlights, as searchlights, limousines and and the celebrity redcarpet create a celebrity splash in sexy Cardiff city centre. Photography by Mark Leslie Woods © 2007]

Places are still available for anyone wishing to register.

For costs and registration please contact: Dr Márta Minier, Assistant Editor

Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance

University of Glamorgan Atrium

86-88 Adam Street Cardiff CF24 2FN UK

Tel.: (0044) 1443 668548

Cultures of Translation:
Adaptation in Film and Performance

An interdisciplinary and international conference

University of Glamorgan, Cardiff
26-28 June 2008

‘Cultures of Translation: Adaptation in Film and Performance’

(26-28 June, ATRiuM)

Adaptation – the reworking of a verbal text or another artefact for a new audience in a different genre or media – is as old a practice as cultural production itself, yet its systematic study – adaptation studies – is only a recently emerging discipline.

The Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries with its strengths in drama, music, media and communication and having strong links with the creative writing unit of the university is the editorial home of Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance and is now hosting a major international and interdisciplinary conference that will shape the formation of this neglected field of research.

The event is open to scholars from as diverse, yet closely interconnected areas as the study of film, theatre, opera, music, dance, television, radio, games and graphic narratives.

Whereas some of the most recent research in the field focused on the connections between adaptation and appropriation, this conference also addresses analogies and differences between adaptation and translation processes.

The conference embraces a plethora of perspectives characteristic of the encompassed disciplines and facilitates a negotiation between these stances, whether they emphasise the creative or the interpretive aspect of translation and adaptation.

Both the concepts and independent cases of adaptation and translation will receive attention.

The event will provide room for the investigation of transformative strategies both against the respective cultural and historical settings and generic or media-based criteria.

Keynote speakers:

Jack Bradley (Literary Consultant; former Literary Manager, National Theatre, London)

Dr Deborah Cartmell (De Montfort University)

Professor Michael Cronin (Dublin City University)

Professor Steffen Hantke (Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea)

Professor Graham Ley (University of Exeter)

Dr John Milton, (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil)

Professor Jonathan Powell (Royal Holloway; former Head of Drama, BBC)

Professor Eckart Voigts-Virchow (University of Siegen, Germany)

The conference is organised by Professor Richard Hand (University of Glamorgan), Dr Katja Krebs (University of Bristol) and Dr Márta Minier (University of Glamorgan).

In addition to the main academic programme, there will also be a series of artistic events including:

Thursday 26th-Saturday 28th June, available throughout the conference, B (earth) : a painting – voice – light installation.

Thursday 26th June, 10.40am-6pm, Hotel – Two Rooms : a participatory performance.

Thursday 26th June, 6pm onwards – Cabaret performance by dirty fit grannies

Adaptation – the reworking of a verbal text or another artefact for a new audience in a different genre or media – is as old a practice as cultural production itself, yet its systematic study – adaptation studies – is only a recently emerging discipline.

The Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries with its strengths in drama, music, media and communication and having strong links with the creative writing unit of the university is the editorial home of Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance and is now hosting a major international and interdisciplinary conference that will shape the formation of this neglected field of research.

The event is open to scholars from as diverse, yet closely interconnected areas as the study of film, theatre, opera, music, dance, television, radio, games and graphic narratives.

Whereas some of the most recent research in the field focused on the connections between adaptation and appropriation, this conference also addresses analogies and differences between adaptation and translation processes.

The conference embraces a plethora of perspectives characteristic of the encompassed disciplines and facilitates a negotiation between these stances, whether they emphasise the creative or the interpretive aspect of translation and adaptation.

Both the concepts and independent cases of adaptation and translation will receive attention.

The event will provide room for the investigation of transformative strategies both against the respective cultural and historical settings and generic or media-based criteria.

The conference therefore offers a range of platforms to participants, including plenaries, papers, workshops, masterclasses, exhibitions, screenings and performances so as to initiate dialogue between theoretical and more practice-based approaches to adaptation and translation.

Provisional keynote speakers include:

Dr Deborah Cartmell (De Montfort University)

Professor Steffen Hantke (Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea)

Professor Graham Ley (University of Exeter)

Dr John Milton, (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil)

Dr Anthony Minghella (British Film Institute, London, UK)

Professor Eckart Voigts-Virchow (University of Siegen, Germany)

[Pictured Above: A provisional list of the conference's keynote speaker's includes notable 'Adaptation' scholars including Dr Deborah Cartmell, Reader in English and Head of the Graduate Centre in the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, Leicester.]

The conference is organised by Professor Richard Hand (University of Glamorgan), Dr Katja Krebs (University of Bristol) and Dr Márta Minier (University of Glamorgan).

Please send enquiries, abstracts for papers (max. 250 words) and proposals for masterclasses/workshops, book stalls, screenings, performances or any other platforms of presentation to afp2008@hotmail.co.uk by Friday 29 February 2008.

To inspect the inaugural issue of Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance please visit http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=17536421
or to order a hard copy please contact Luke Roberts: Luke@intellectbooks.com.

Submitted by:

Dr Márta Minier
Assistant Editor / Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance
Atrium / University of Glamorgan
Adam Street Cardiff CF24 2XF UK
Tel: 01443 668548

And here's a related extract of another past post:

Dear Colleagues:

The first issue of this new Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance has just been published by Intellect.

It is edited by Richard Hand and Katja Krebs with the help of Martha Minier and marks a step forward for Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries (CCI/ATRiuM) in having an internationally refereed journal coming out of the faculty.

This is a fantastic achievement and is recognition of CCI/ATRiuM's growing stature in this field of research.

Congratulations to all concerned!

The first issue is available as a free download:

Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance Volume 1 Issue 1

ISSN: 17536421

Editors:
Richard J. Hand
University of Glamorgan
rhand[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Katja Krebs
University of Glamorgan
kkrebs[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Adaptation, or the conversion of oral, historical or fictional narratives into stage drama has been common practice for centuries.

In our own time the processes of cross-generic transformation continue to be extremely important in theatre as well as in the film and other media industries.

Adaptation and the related areas of translation and intertextuality continue to have a central place in our culture with a profound resonance across our civilisation.

Aims and Scope:

Adaptation in the form of the conversion of oral, historical or fictional narratives into stage drama has been common practice for centuries.

In our own time the processes of cross-generic transformation continue to be extremely important in theatre as well as in the film and other media industries.

Adaptation and the related areas of translation and intertextuality continue to have a central place in our culture with a profound resonance across our civilisation.

As an academic discipline, Adaptation Studies has begun to establish itself in the last few decades as an important area of scholarship and research which continues to make significant contributions to our analysis and understanding of a complex and increasingly diverse world culture.

Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance is a new, peer- reviewed journal designed to engage with specific issues relating to performance on stage, film, television, radio and other media.

Embracing comfortably these disciplines under the umbrella of adaptation theories and practices, it attempts to challenge widespread views of national cultural histories and global constructions of performance culture by analysing methods, histories and occurrences of adaptation across a range of media.

We would like to invite contributions that offer historical, theoretical or practice- based considerations and discussions of adaptation in performance in the context of one of the following topics:

Translation as adaptation / Theatre /
Film / Television / Radio / Gaming /
Graphic narratives
Submission Details

To submit to future editions, please, send your completed papers (4,000 – 6,000 words) accompanied by a short CV to the editors Richard Hand and Katja Krebs.

If you would like to discuss any specific proposals before submitting a completed paper, please contact the editors.

Short ‘Notes and Comments’ contributions (up to 1000 words) that facilitate debate and exchange will also be considered.

Articles in the current issues include:

Art of the Past: Adapting Henry James’s The Golden Bowl
Authors: Sarah Artt

Adaptation as Education: A Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Authors: Freda Chapple

In Praise of Treason: Translating Calabar
Authors: Pedro de Senna

Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Dominant Culture
Authors: Jim O’Loughlin

Translating the City: A Community Theatre Version of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Authors: Duˇska Radosavljevic

It has been estimated that an overwhelming percentage of Welsh films and television dramas are intentionally based upon other literary sources.

This overwhelming dependence upon literary adaptation is primarily from important Welsh literary or cultural sources.

This suggests an attempt to ‘recall and recollect’ and to re-‘write the nation’, after a period of suppressed or neglected representations of Welsh-ness.

While Dave Berry’s book and other studies have attributed this Welsh dependence upon literary adaptation as ‘laziness’ (Berry 1994: 234), we see it as being related to issues of post-colonial ‘re-telling’ of a national story, or more related to the economics of production.

For example, Stephen Bayly directed Joni Jones (1982) as a well-received television series for S4C, an adaptation based upon the well-known children’s stories by R. Garallt Jones entitled Gwared y Gwirion or ‘Redemption of the Innocents’.

It is often the case in Wales, that directors will create a series which is actually suited to be converted into a feature film at a later date, should the funding and political will be present to effect the re-formatting.

Additionally, one of Wales's most famous sons is Andrew Davies, who is known around the world as the 'Prince of Adaptation'.

Andrew Wynford Davies (born September 20, 1936 in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, Wales) is a British screenwriter.

He is the creator of the children's Marmalade Atkins television series and A Very Peculiar Practice, and is also well known for his adaptations of classic works of literature, including the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle and the 1998 adaptation of Vanity Fair.

Literary and stage adaptations have added clout with film production investors, who assume that a successful novel or stage play will naturally make a successful film.

Some screenwriters have been known to 'invent' a novel AFTER writing a film script, for purposes of marketing the film, and for raising venture capital.

In small nations, broadcasting drama department Commissioning Editors often opt for an adaptation. This satisfies several remits: nationalistic and cultural agendas are fulfilled, while it's assumed that an established audience exists for the new film or TV series.

My favorite book on film and literature in general is Tom Corrigan's 'Film & Literature' (1999, Prentic Hall Inc / Simon & Schuster).

Here's a pleasant Youtube tribute to Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice:

'Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature' (Paperback) by John Desmond (Author), Peter Hawkes (Author) is concise and readable new text for courses in Film Adaptation or Film and Literature introduces students to the art of adapting works of literature for film.

'Adaptation' describes the interwoven histories of literature and film, presents key analytical approaches to adaptation, and provides an in-depth overview of adaptations of novels, short stories, plays, nonfiction, and animation.

The book concludes with an analysis of why adaptations sometimes fail.

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

AIM -- ATRiuM Intelligent Media, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. on Face Book

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Cardiff ATRiuM: Famous Performance Artist Mike Pearson in the Zen Room, Friday 20th June 2008 at 6.30pm

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:12:00 +0000

The George Ewart Evans Centre and

Cardiff Storytelling Circle

jointly host

NARRATIVE and LANDSCAPE

Friday 20th June 2008 at 6.30pm

A presentation on aspects of

“Carrlands”

The latest research project/artwork by

Prof. Mike Pearson.

Venue:

Zen Room, The ATriuM,

Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries,

Adam St.

Cardiff

Reflections on and illustrations of the creation of three web-based audio works, combining the spoken word, music and effects. These original sound compositions by Pearson, composers John Hardy and Hugh Fowler are inspired by, evoke & guide

walks within the agricultural landscapes of the valley of the River Ancholme in north Lincolnshire, the environment in which Pearson grew up.

Mike Pearson has been, and remains, one of the most significant and influential performance practitioners in Wales over the past thirty years.

As a founding member of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, Brith Gof and Pearson/Brookes, a performer, performance-maker, theorist and academic he has worked worldwide. He has a long history of making solo narrative performances.

Currently Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Aberystwyth, in 2002 he was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA.

His publications include In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape (2006).

For more information please contact: Ailsa Richardson

Research Assistant
Canolfan Adrodd Storïau George Ewart Evans

George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling
tel +44 (0)1443 668631
e mail storytelling@glam.ac.uk
www.glam.ac.uk/storytelling

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, ATRiuM, University of Glamorgan, Adam Street, Cardiff, CF24 2XF

Ysgol Diwydiannau Creadigol a Diwylliannol Caerdydd, ATRiuM, Prifysgol Morgannwg, Stryd Adam, Caerdydd, CF24 2XF

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Meandering Through the Welsh Traditions of Eisteddfodau in a Transnational Tableau

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:23:00 +0000

[Pictured above: Charlotte 'Lottie Lute' Williams (R) with husband Chauncey Lute (Center) and daughter Grace Lute Poorman (L), members of the Welsh Congregational Church of Youngstown, Ohio.]

As I prepare my summer field research plans, I’m reflecting upon the trajectory of my personal experience: For example, I dedicated my doctoral dissertation entitled,

AN EVALUATION OF THE NATIONAL CINEMA OF WALES
AND WHETHER THIS CINEMA CONSTRUCTS OR
REPRESENTS A NATIONAL IDENTITY

to my maternal great-grandmother, Mrs. Charlotte ‘Lottie Lute’ Williams, whose fiercely nationalistic love of Wales and Welsh culture, music, religions and language was planted in my heart as a child in Ohio, when she incessantly proclaimed to me that,

‘If you keep practicing your lines, Markie, one day you’ll win the Eisteddfod!’

By this my Grandma Lottie undoubtedly was referring to the local Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and National Gymanfa Ganu events, co-sponsored by the affiliated Welsh Congregational Chapels in America, which have since morphed into the modern

North American Festival of Wales

held annually in different locations across the continent from Canada to Florida to Chicago, from California to Cincinnati to Vermont.

Along the way and almost 45 years later I find myself participating in a festively-costumed Italian Medieval Pageant and Jousting Match held each year in my partner’s Southern Italian comune in the Molisano città called Guglionesi, in an event called

Il Palio di San Nicola di Guglionesi

Palio di San Nicola

[Pictured above: Dr. Mark Leslie Woods being interviewed on Italian TV after performing as an actor in the Medieval Re-enactment of the Palio di San Nicola, Guglionesi, Molise, Italy in 2007, Still photo is video capture courtesy of TeleMolise]

When I think about the cultural and social meaning and performative significance of these contrasting events, the similarities are enormous.

I established a thorough historical overview of the Eisteddfod tradition by committing to memory the book section by Prys Morgan From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period (Morgan 1983).

After this I contextualized the meaning of the Eisteddfod within the context of cultural studies, media studies and cultural policy studies by referencing the delightful article by Charlotte Aull Davies entitled ‘A oes heddwch?’ Contesting meaning and identities in the Welsh National Eisteddfod (Davies 1998).

Welsh National Eisteddfod

[Pictured above: Glamorgan, Mountain Ash, Princess Elizabeth - the present Queen - being made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod in 1946]

Davies’s article is interesting because she considers the effect of televising and broadcasting the National Eisteddfod of Wales, and how this might be informing and effecting both the participants and the audience reception (while also broadening and altering the demographic reach of the event).

Davies caught my attention again when she referenced Handelman who compared the Eisteddfod to the Palio of Siena in Tuscany

"In a similar analysis of the Palio Festival of central Italy, Handelman (1990) describes such structure as a ‘model that transforms the comune by taking it apart and putting it back together — thereby yearly regenerating the comune as a holistic urban entity’" (Handelman 1990; Davies 1998: 157).

Davies continues her comparison of Palio and Eisteddfod

This view of spectacle, as a structure, as a vehicle or model, which provides occasion and symbolism for performances that do not create a single collective identity but instead promote ‘communitas’ through the act of performing different identities within its context, accords well with the nature of the Welsh National Eisteddfod (Davies 1998: 157-158).

Davies is referring to the concept of ‘communitas’ as introduced by cultural anthropologist Victor Witter Turner in the watershed volume The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Turner 1969).

Here’s the Wiki definition:

"Communitas is a Latin noun referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword in cultural anthropology and the social sciences.

"Communitas is an acute point of community. It takes community to the next level and allows the whole of the community to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage.

"This brings everyone onto an equal level, even if you are higher in position, you have been lower and you know what that is."

As usually happens, my family and casual interests seem to lead me into new research trajectories, and so I started to fashion a one-year research plan for myself. This plan is not set in stone, but it gives folks an idea of where I’m going.

It’s also not the only postdoctoral research interest that I’m currently pursuing, but it fits nicely into my job search / summer travel plans and related academic conferences and film industry festivals and markets schedule for the next six months.

I am also interested in the identity politics of ‘recycled’ cultural and religious or ceremonial artifacts, especially the usage of heroic figures and their related myths, legends and folklore, i.e., saints, warriors, celebrities, rulers, poets, heretics, rebels, movie and TV stars, and other iconic figures.

This has led me to observe the Cult of Padre Pio and the Cult of San Nicola and to understand how they operate as regional emblems of cultural, linguistic and political opposition, distinction and resistance.

Padre Pio Official Website

Basilica di San Nicola di Bari

[Pictured above: The church of Saint Nicholas of Bari in Guglionesi, crypt before the 8th century, church circa 11th century]

If you have the patience to browse through the plan you’ll see that I am becoming more interested in how communities re-collect themselves and how this might be changing in an age of technology and globalization.

Hence you might pigeonhole my post doc trends into ‘mnemonic practices of social communities in trans-national contexts, especially those informed or assisted by cultural artifact which migrates and is transformed between mediums, i.e., ‘the intermedial’.

Two comparable but distinctly different European regional ethnicities will form the primary focus of this study:

1) The Welsh people, with their ancient Brythonic-derived and Latin/Anglo-influenced language

— its wealth of literary tradition and surviving texts, their 2,500 year old bardic/literary traditions, their enigmatic and obstinately independent tiny ‘Atlantic coastal mountains and promontories’ homeland as some have termed it, albeit historically-debatably ‘the first colony of Imperial England’,

their Celtic church heritage with its enduring aberrations from Roman ‘orthodoxy’, their quasi-pagan, Nonconformist Chapel-driven Eisteddfodau culture and brand of nationalism, and

their cultural heirs in the quirky colonies of ‘Gymanfa Ganu’ (hymn festival) Ohio/Pennsylvania, Mormon ‘Tabernacle Choir’ Utah, and Patagonian ‘Romantic Poet-Gaucho Cowboys’ of Argentina, all currently ‘connected’ online via the miracle of broadband and a Windows/Linus/Mac GUI-interface.

2) The Sanniti people of Southern Italy, or la gente del Sannio with their mutually-intelligible dialects of non-standard Italian derived from the ancient language of Oscan

— its wealth of literary tradition and surviving texts, their 2,500 year history including as ‘the first colony of Imperial Rome’, their enormous and complicated religious and cultural heritage,

under Latinate Rome and the Greco-Byzantine Empire, under threat of Saracen invasions, under the Holy Roman Empire, under the Vatican, under the Normans, under the Kingdom of Naples and il Regno delle Due Sicilie, under the Bourbons, Angevines, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini and others,

with its complex mix of the three ‘Graces’ of paganism, the authoritarianism of orthodox Roman Catholicism, and the persistence of recurring ‘Cult of the Saints’ revivals and Marianism, with their territorial homeland whose borders (after the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) were virtually unchanged for 700 years, their support for the culturally-opposing Hellenic influence of the Cult of San Nicola di Bari (Santa Claus/Father Christmas/Ole Saint Nick), for the Carmelites, and

most recently for ‘the second-most popular pilgrimage site’ and ‘Cult of the Saint’ in modern Christendom, the tomb of San Pio — the Capuchin monk Padre Pio, whose ‘female grotesque’ corpse was recently exhumed for veneration, whose ministry was oppressed by the Pope since 1922, later tolerated, and currently venerated, whose voice, miracles and stigmata were arguably the first of any saint (acknowledging Mother Teresa as a close second) to be broadcast ‘live’ through television and now via the Internet to millions of followers.

The Sannio have large diaspora colonies most notably the economically and politically influential ‘Molisani’ with their pageants, parades and festivals in Montreal, and across the Americas from San Paolo, Brazil to Vancouver, British Columbia, all currently ‘connected’ online via the miracle of broadband and a Windows/Linus/Mac GUI-interface.

Background

Among digital avenues of contemporary and future media there lie significant yet barely explored and intersecting ‘alleyways’ of interdisciplinary possibilities, across the mutually-informing and cross-fertilizing fields of cultural identity issues and into the dynamic frameworks of transnational ‘memory community’ formations.

The enormous, exponential preponderance of recorded, transmitted, broadcasted, exhibited, archived and now, ‘published to the Internet’ audiovisual and digitalized texts, images, memes, symbols and other represented commemorations of shared identity create organic or orchestrated and recalled ‘symphonies’ of sometimes explicit but often coded intermedial cultural ‘realities’ for members of contemporary communities.

The mass media of film and video, the Internet, and other digital technologies have conventions and devices which are particular to their real and virtual fields of production and consumption, and particular to their mixed ages, classes and levels of audience sophistication and reception.

These conventions and devices, including for example, time-compression, abbreviation (logos, signs, trademarks, slogans), exaggeration (full-text downloads, high resolution scans, hyper-textual embedded reference links) and interactivity (implications of ‘Web 2.0’) impact upon the content, transmission and reception of the older established texts.

In this way it might be said that the ‘prospective memory’ meme intended by earlier generations is perhaps sampled, synchronized or bricolaged to the point where the origin and meaning become coded and obscured.

Therefore the representation of these communities’ identities in this increasingly unpredictable and untameable environment of inter-textual and inter-discursive adaptations, of reinventions and of recycled artefacts of cultural ‘capital’ can seem a confusing cacophony to both internal and external audiences, and yet some communities seem undaunted by the challenge of negotiating a mediated identity — indeed, they seem to thrive.

One reason these groups prosper in spite of historical and political obstacles could be that often their coded intermedial cultural ‘realities’ are derivative of complex and lengthy bodies of intuitively-organized ‘treasures’ of their shared past.

Beyond the perceived clamour of modern technological transmissions there exist traditional or newly invented platforms of interactive transnational communities of collective memory, whose modern mnemonic practices appear novel, but upon closer scrutiny reveals established organizing concepts of aesthetic, social and economic practice.

These organizing concepts and principles are not new, but build upon those of older rhetorical and social organization frameworks, displaying familiar multimodal dialogues between diverse literary, aesthetic, media, textual and historical analytical traditions.

These renewed and emerging platforms (for traditional and reconstructed collective memory groups) might be understood within their integrated networks as real and/or virtual, but also as importantly ‘mediated’ lieux de mémoire.

The presence and received co-presence of these real and imagined rituals, events, ‘landmarks’ and other places of mnemonic practice constitute strategically framed organizations of intentional ‘prospective memory’ sites.

Accordingly, like other studied social and biological systems, these so-called ‘digital age’ communities possess communicative infrastructures supported by both generic and distinctive narratives and meta-narratives.

These narratives and meta-narratives construct and reinforce shared group values and qualities, perceived external threats (while defining boundaries with various ‘others’), useful pasts, preferred national and group ‘delusions’ and other defining conventions that in turn further stabilize the convened ‘meaning-making’ of these groups.

The goal of this project is to map and analyze over the course of one year, a critical ‘landscape’ of the nature, history and possible futures of transnational ‘collective memory communities’ formation, with a particular emphasis upon the importance of the intermedial.

This will include a comparative analysis of two specific case studies of ‘cyber-ethnies’ with other critical examinations of similar groups. Decoding the mediated texts of these transnational communities can be efficaciously approached by engaging in a historically informed, comparative analysis of rhetorical content and carried meaning of the two groups.

These groups were selected because they have derived their modern identities from frequently ‘recycled’ and mediated Medieval texts, while transcending modern political challenges to their collective identity and existence with the assistance of new interartial / metapoetical and interactive actions and technologies.

Aim and Scope

Throughout human history the participants in the ‘storytelling’ process engage in articulated social activities that create the narratives and meta-narratives which construct a real ‘sense of belonging’, whether the community is local, national or transnational/international.

Indeed, the constellated and interdependent centralized discourses at a transnational level can often be reliant upon and traced to increments of social organizations analogous with neighbourhoods, villages, ghettos or ethnological enclaves.

But what matters (in our discovery and understanding of the operating principles of collective memory frameworks) is not only the reflected articulation of community ‘storytelling’ but also that the constantly changing media also informs, alters and adds to the meaning.

In fact this sense of ‘value-added’ meaning is essential to ‘tweaking’ the group’s identity and self-esteem beyond a mere collective upwards, to a level of enhanced and enduring ‘communitas’.

The first group which has achieved a degree of electronically-supported ‘communitas’ that I will consider will be the 7.5 million speakers of the Neapolitan Language Group dialects in ‘Italia meridonale’ with their historic Italic ‘Oscan/Latin heritage and cultural relationship to the ancient peoples of Sannio:

Even as the much-publicized Forza Italia and the Northern League have discarded federalismo-based identities and sought secessionist solutions in response to globalization, a quieter Southern Italian ‘memory community’ centred around the life, language and geographical-specificity of the Capuchin Friars and the Cult of Padre Pio has fuelled a transnational religious and cultural movement and worldwide community of faith.

What is not widely understood is the extent to which this religious movement is driven by regional ‘nationalistic’ motivations of ‘la gente del Sannio’, in reaction to centuries of colonial ‘othering’ by outsiders and by papal or national oppressors of the regional, ‘non-standard Italian’ dialects/language group, i.e., ‘a language without prestige’.

I propose to briefly survey the body of audiovisual materials, recorded and documented histories, fictions and represented religious articles-of-devotion, investigating their iconography and symbolism along with integrated patterns of religious and rural heritage tourism, pilgrimage and online rituals.

This survey will assist the analysis of whether these mediated audiovisual and digital materials and events constitute a theological or political ‘Third cinema’ or ‘cinema of opposition’ (almost invariably based upon recent popular ‘legends’ or adapted biographies).

I intend to offer examples and a rationale as to how and why the religious movement spearheaded by the adulation of San Pio serves to first construct a regional identity and then to create (and finance) a transnational identity (along with a multi-million Euro religious tourism and Pugliese real estate boom).

It is important to note that this television-video-internet-and-souvenir-driven movement imagines an envisioned ‘there-ness’ with a moral centre in the coastal mountain desert of San Giovanni Rotondo near Foggia, not in Rome and whose annually re-enacted Nativity crèches ‘presepe vivente’ recall more a mystical birthplace in Benevento ‘the city of witches’ and less so in Bethlehem.

It is, after all, the Good Witch Befanna (a convenient linguistic play on Epiphany) who brings gifts to the children of Sannio, not the Magi, on the feast of the Three Kings.

Secondly I will compare ‘la gente del Sannio’ and their community’s correspondence to the transnational Cult of Padre Pio with the eisteddfodau of Wales, and the ways in which a mediated National Eisteddfod of Wales and other filmed, documented, or televised eisteddfodau are contributing to a changing national identity for Wales.

The Welsh Eisteddfod is a ritualized annual performance event which dates from at least the twelfth century, and which was reinvented by Neo-Druidic / Animist Unitarians, Quakers and Protestant Nonconformist Chapel / Anglican clerics in the eighteenth century to save the Welsh language from obliteration by English.

Hundreds of local eisteddfodau are held throughout the year in Wales in ancient parish ‘cantref’ (meaning ‘town of 100 people’ — a geographical formulation approximating Dunbar’s number, or the reckoned ‘tipping point’ of Neo-tribalists, and comparing to the collective ‘il mio paese’ with their Italian parishes within the cittadina or il villaggio).

The Welsh eisteddfodau crown a poet, musician and an actor as the newly exalted ‘heroes’ of each competition, contrasting with the ‘Cult of the Saints’ which, as in the case of San Pio, celebrates one extraordinary individual, rather than an ever rotating company of ordinary but very talented ‘gwerin’ or folk.

This might be historically residual of a distinctively Celtic ideal of de-emphasizing the protagonist in narratives, while emphasizing the successes and values of the group, as seen in the Arthurian cycles within The Four Branches of the Mabonogi. Comparisons of the re-crowning of a new heroic personality have analogues,

e.g., in the current Cult of San Pio’s eclipse in popularity of all other patron saints throughout Italy, as Padre Pio has taken an ever more prominent role in events formally dedicated to, for example, San Nicola di Bari, previously perceived to be the indigenous marker of the regional versus the communal patrono.

There are also ancient and modern associations between the nationalistic, quasi-pagan/implicitly Protestant Christian Welsh eisteddfodau and public sports which was discouraged and forbidden but eventually re-emerged as an officially-endorsed national ritual in the form of rugby and to a lesser extent, football:

A simultaneous displacement in the late 1600s of Catholicism, dance, the parish-sponsored sport of cnapan (comparable to Irish ‘caid’ football) and the popularity of the Welsh bardic vocation with the introduction of Protestant Nonconformist, three hundred year long ‘Welsh Chapel’ period.

These days ‘Good Welshmen’ attendees to the Six Nations ‘RugbyNation’ are permitted to drink Red Dragon ‘Brains’ brand beer and to frequent matches on Sundays, formally a forbidden activity on the Welsh chapel ‘Sabbath’, but only as long as the daffodil-wearing Welsh sing evangelical Wesleyan and Calvinistic hymns to cheer their team on.

Comparisons can be made to the local Italian communes’ re-enactment of ‘Palio’, secular events with pagan overtones, carefully positioned between church feasts as the Molisano cittadina of Guglionesi holds the Palio di San Nicola between the procession of Madonna del Carmine and the procession of San Nicola di Bari.

It is significant to note that with the palio and the two Marianite processions — all three involve parades that stop in front of the new statue of San Pio, strategically positioned in the centre of the castellara, the traditional seat of power (after the nearby cathedral of Larino) in this ancient urban crossroads of the Biferno Valley’s Oscan Frentani tribes.

Research Issues and Key Points to Explore

Perspectives attained from available research inform us of how older communities ‘reinvent’ themselves through the representation or performance of symbolic moments, rituals and ceremonies recalling histories or invented histories.

So-called ‘Small Nations’, ‘Regional and Minority Language Groups (RMLs)’, ‘Religious ethnies’ and religious or sectarian minorities, ‘Alternative ‘Nations’ and ‘Virtual Worlds’ seem to underscore the continuing importance of Coser’s Social Conflict Theory, disposing them to form transnational compositions for reasons of convenience and survival.

Frequently these established and re-constituting communities exist in some post-colonial condition or as scattered Diasporas seeking to re-connect with the imagined ‘homeland’.

A substantial body of scholarship exists examining both the Sannio people’s culture/the Cult of Padre Pio and the Welsh eisteddfodau, as expressed in literature, visual art, music, film and video.

This study is introduces a new exploration of how these traditional communities are employing media, and how their interaction with this media is shaping or changing their communities. Issues salient to our study of mediated Welsh and Sannio texts include:

1) Key Point: Both the Welsh (understood to be Welsh-descended, Cymraeg-speakers, non-Cymraeg speakers, Wenglish/non-Wenglish-speakers) and the Sannio people (understood to be bilingual speakers of the Neapolitan Language Group/standard Italian) have had historical periods of ascendancy when their cultures and economies were celebrated and blossomed under a self-confident political and national identity.

2) Key Point: Both of these communities have had self-conscious periods of non-state status coupled with a persistent linguistic/national ‘pride’ which often coincided with when they were net-exporters of legend, myth, cultural memes, religious or political movements and conceptual ‘products’ to Europe and to the world. It is the texts and iconography originating in these periods and then migrating into digital formats (mediated) that I will study.

3) Key Point: Both of these groups have endured centuries of chronic oppression or cultural marginalization or suppression, even at times to the point of annihilation of their national identities, or to the miserable status of an undesirable ‘language without prestige.’

4) Key Point: What is most important for this year-long study is the ways and means by which the historical texts, iconography and symbolism of these communities have transitioned and transformed during the migration from oral traditions and written or performed texts to transmitted audiovisual formats and that are now ‘morphing’ into the socially-networked platforms of the ‘Digital Age’.

5) Key Point: Equally important is the impact of these new media on the reception of these texts, icons and images, and these ways in which the medium informs the message.

6) Key Point: Because the cultural ‘memes’ of these two communities have been ‘wrapped up’ closely with religious practices, there has been a tendency for the cultural memory to be lost when the community shifts toward a different religious or social ‘mythology’. Consequently a divergence from the prevailing underlying religious norms could be equated to ‘leaving’ the group of embracing a fatal ‘schism’ within the community.

This is noted when Welsh Mormons followed Joseph Smith, and while the Welsh tolerated and included Unitarians and Quakers, the Reorganized Church of the Latter Day Saints bested the elasticity of their group identities.

7) Key Point: Modern scholars within and without these communities have sometimes overlooked or have been blinded by their own anti-clerical biases or ‘cultural myopia’. Consequently the theological shifts driven by a ‘grassroots’ adherence to the Cult of Padre Pio are dismissed by some within Roman Catholicism and over looked by European or Italian as the impetus behind a ‘shadow’ devolution or de facto federalism.

Similarly, the historical ‘authenticity’ of prestige heritage sites at the National Museum of Wales are said to be representative of the Llanbrynmair tradition, which privileged one minority denominational worldview while marginalizing the majority preferences in architecture, costume and custom.

Additionally, modern Welsh social concepts that originated in religious dogma like the pillars of ‘parchus’ or respectability are mostly unexamined or rejected for their intensely religious origins by a secular post-industrial civil society.

Theoretical ‘Ethos’ and Approaches

What does a nation remember about itself? Prevailing notions of individual, regional and national identity are formed from the artefacts of a collective cultural memory.

But in modern societies that are reliant upon and informed by variously integrated, complex, transnational audiovisual industries, who creates the collection and who has access to the mnemonic archives?

And since societies are increasingly globally connected, i.e., crossing economic, linguistic and cultural borders, who serves as the ‘gatekeeper’ and who translates and interprets the collection both at home and abroad?

In 1992 Jan Assmann introduced to archaeological discourses two key concepts: ‘cultural memory’ (Erinnerungskultur) and ‘references to times past’ (Vergangenheitsbezug). Assmann was concerned with the intended ‘narrative’ surrounding historic events captured and depicted within ancient stone monuments, religious buildings and ornaments and sculpture (Assmann 1992: 17-19).

Assmann and others since built arguments that asserted parallels between the construction of individual memory and collective or social memory. Assmann even applied cross-disciplinary elements of ‘reception theory’ to history, i.e., ‘mnemohistory’ (Assmann 1997: 14-15; Assmann and Livingstone 2005).

In order to analyze ‘the use of media and the formation of (trans) national memory communities’ we need to understand how past recollections are situated with meaning in contemporary societies.

The rudiments of ‘narrative’ transmitted through enduring images in stone will allow us to see similarities with Assmann’s early assertions. We also need to consider the unique differences between contemporary society and prior, less technical societies in constructing their collective memories.

A key point of difference is how the introduction of new ‘traditions’ of representation intended to ‘process’ perceived social ‘change’ and how this effects and affects the reception of cultural memory

These traditions dramatize and formalize through ceremonial repetition the necessarily vague and abstract values and identities of new sorts of imagined communities.

They thus give the appearance of tangible form to the idea of a collective memory, and thereby reassuringly locate novelty in a social continuity that transcends the limitations of personal experience (Chaney 2001: 209)

For example, the ‘icons’, saints and heretics of today aren’t often carved in marble, but rather are more likely to be sports heroes, film stars and members of the ‘cult of celebrity’.

Individuals receive more news about who they are and where they’ve been through the nightly television news broadcasts (formerly controlled by national governments and increasingly controlled by international corporations) than through any crumbling façade’s bas-relief.

There is even a superficial borrowing of ancient names by gurus of so-called ‘new media’ whose cyber-loci jargon includes ‘milestones’, ‘events’, ‘sites’, and ‘landmarks’.

Consequently the mass media serves as a reflective ‘mirror’ in which the nation looks to find itself and to understand change. The mass media develops content locally but the accessibility, interpretation and distribution of this content is increasingly controlled by transnational entities.

Chaney’s description of new ‘traditions’ of representation comes from an essay about the British ‘mediated’ monarchy, utilizing an examination of the Queen and her family. Chaney tells us how the ‘tradition’ constructed for local purposes of collective memory anticipates, is informed by and constructs the transnational mnemonic

The British royal family are unusual celebrities in that their fame is displayed in the performance of public duties, ritual occasions, that occasionally become international ‘media events’ . . . In both aspects it seems that they have been genuinely popular with the mass media audiences of global, not just British, media (Chaney 2001: 208).

Chaney notes the fluidity of this mnemonic construction, built upon the perceived durability of a centuries-old ruling family.

The flexibility of a concept, i.e., the ‘Queen’ to adapt to new ‘narratives’ (which are the pillars of media-created ‘traditions’) reveals important aspects about how a transnational mnemonic is formed and transmitted

It seems that the changes generating new institutions, such as mass education or the politics of mass democracy, could be effectively legitimized through being given a factitious historical cast; that is, through inventing traditions to give order, cohesion, and legitimacy to new social practices (Chaney 2001: 209).

Chaney leads us to see the ‘Queen’ once a self-conscious contributor to events meant to construct a national memory, now as an institution, icon and cultural ‘actor’ whose is increasingly losing control of how her ‘majesty’ is transmitted and received

I will go on to suggest that in the news rhetoric of an era of mass culture it has become increasingly difficult for all public figures to control their presentation, and particularly to find ways of controlling the image of actors of the royal family to show them to be always acting as moral exemplars (Chaney 2001: 211).

Consequently we unflattering or ironic portrayals of the ‘Queen’ in the international youth culture hit film Human Traffic (1999) where the plot turns on a revised, drunken pub sing-a-long of ‘God Save the Queen’ (with coded Welsh Nationalism undertones).

In the 1980s the name ‘Queen’ became a musical and androgynous emblem of an emerging ‘Queer Nation’ as the late Freddie Mercury admitted choosing the name ‘Queen’ for his rock band because it was at once ‘regal’ and ‘internationally-appealing’, as the band’s logo shamelessly copied the British Royal Family Coat of Arms.

Finally we see Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren self-consciously creating a legendary filmic character synthesized from the mythos of a living, iconic individual (an individual who has self-reflectively who spent her life observing the act of her own life being ‘invented’ by the mass media) in The Queen (2006).

Methodology

Recent research by the Annenberg School of Communication created useful models for addressing and balancing the critical tension in differing schools of social studies and communication /mass media studies, particularly fixated upon controversies related to the Macro/Micro-research modalities and critical pathways.

Annenberg School of Communication

The "Metamorphosis: Transforming the Ties that Bind" Project is an in-depth examination of the transformations of urban community, under the forces of globalization, new communication technologies, and population diversity. We seek to understand this transformation from a new "communication infrastructure perspective" that orients our multi-method research program (Annenberg School of Communications).

For the purposes of my yearlong study I intend to incorporate and adapt from ‘Geo-ethnic’ to ‘Cyber-ethnic’ within the models already developed by scholars at the Annenberg School of Communications in Los Angeles, California. The following illustration graphically encapsulates their theoretical approach:

[Image above is Copyright 2008 Metamorphosis, Annenberg School for Communication, USC, used for educational illustration purposes only.]

I intend to create a synthesis of methodologies based upon the theoretical model of the Metamorphosis study, that is to say guided by ‘communication infrastructure theory’, but informed by the social studies, film studies, history, theology and philological studies, with a film foundation in ‘cultural memory’ studies.

Primary sources would include those led by Professor Sandra Ball-Rokeach (Jung, Ball-Rokeach et al. 2007; Lin, Song et al. 2007) and others including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins (Jenkins 2006).

Cultural memory sources and discussions of ‘Intermediality’ are diverse and interdisciplinary (Cole and Gay 1972; Hall 1991; Halbwachs 1992; Kenny 1999; Ryan 2001; Assmann 2007).

Studies of ritual and media include Bound and Unbound Entities: Reflections on the ethnographic perspectives of anthropology vis-à-vis media and culture studies by Eric Hirsch (Hirsch 1998) and others (Morgan 1983; Davies 1998).

In my prior research I posited how gendered and post-colonial/literary studies theoretical concept of the so-called ‘female grotesque’ was useful in decoding the mutilated hero/heroine and ‘dying god’ metaphorically, symbolically and otherwise (Russo 1994).

I believe this approach is still useful in this study as I examine aspects of the Cult of the Saints (Brown 1981) and the audience reception / industrial consumption of texts related to heroic Eisteddfod poets or San Pio and others.

Bibliography

Assmann, A. (2007). "Response to Peter Novick." GHI Bulletin 40(Spring).

Assmann, J. (1992). Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich, Beck.

Assmann, J. (1997). Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press.

Assmann, J. and R. Livingstone (2005). Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (Cultural Memory in the Present). Stanford, California, Stanford University Press.

Brown, P. R. L. (1981). The Cult of the Saints. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press.

Chaney, D. (2001). The Mediated Monarchy. British Cultural Studies. D. Morley and K. Robins. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Cole, M. and J. Gay (1972). "Culture and Memory." American Anthropologist 74(5).

Davies, C. A. (1998). 'A oes heddwch?' Contesting meaning and identities in the Welsh National Eisteddfod. Ritual, Performance, Media. F. Hughes-Freeland. London, Routledge: 141-159.

Halbwachs, M. (1992). On Collective Memory. Chicago and London, Unviersity of Chicago Press.

Hall, S. (1991). The Local and the Global: Globlaization and Ethnicity. Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. A. D. King. Binghamton, New York, SUNY at Binghamton/MacMillan: 19-40.

Handelman, D. (1990). Models and Mirrors: Toward an Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hirch, E. (1998). Bound and Unbound Entities: Reflections on the ethnographic perspectives of anthropology viv-à-vis media and culture studies. Ritual, Performance, Media. F. Hughes-Freeland. London, Routledge.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York, New York University Press.

Jung, J.-Y., S. J. Ball-Rokeach, et al. (2007). ICTs and Communities in the 21st Century: Challenges and Perspectives. Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies. C. Ciborra, R. Mansell, D. Quah and R. Silverstone. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Kenny, M. G. (1999). "A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History." Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(3): 420-437.

Lin, W.-Y., H. Song, et al. (2007). Local Media, global content? Exploring the Ties that bind in new immigrant communities. Philadelphia, Temple University Press.

Morgan, P. (1983). From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period. The Invention of Tradition. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 43-100.

Morgan, P. (1983). From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period. The Invention of Tradition. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Russo, M. (1994). The Female Grotesque: risk, excess, and modernity. London, Routledge.

Ryan, M.-L. (2001). Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Electronic Media. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

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AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network First Symposium May 16-17 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:52:00 +0000

[Pictured above: Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis]

This week's not-to-be missed Cardiff event!

Don't miss the inaugural symposium of the AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network, entitled Ireland and Wales: Comparisons and Contexts.

The symposium will take place on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th May in Room .31, Humanities Building, Cardiff University.

As well as academic papers, responses and panels, the event features a public lecture by Gwyneth Lewis on the topic of 'Criss-crossings: Literary adventures on Irish and Welsh shores’. (Friday evening, the 16th, at 6pm in the Optometry lecture theatre, Maindy Road).

Both symposium and lecture are free and open to all. Lunches, teas and coffees will be provided.

Registration is essential: irelandwales[at]cardiff[dot]ac[dot]uk

AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network

Dr Claire Connolly, Dr Katie Gramich (Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy) and Dr Paul O'Leary (Department of History and Welsh History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth) have been awarded funding by the Arts and Humanities Council of Great Britain to establish a two year international and interdisciplinary Ireland- Wales Research Network.

The Network was launched by Colm McGrady, Consul General of Ireland in Wales on November 22nd, 2007, at a reception held in the Consulate General of Ireland in Wales. For press coverage of the launch, see Cardiff University News, BBC News and the Western Mail.

[Pictured above: Dr Claire Connolly BA, MA (NUI), PhD (Wales)]

The first symposium, on the theme of Comparisons and Contexts, will be held on Friday and Saturday May 16th and 17th, 2008.

[Pictured above: Dr Katie Gramich BA (Wales) MA (London) PhD (Alberta)]

Ireland and Wales: Comparisons and Contexts

Friday 16 May

10.30 a.m. Coffee and registration

11.30 a.m. Rhys Jones (Aberystwyth) – ‘Where are Wales and Ireland?’
John Ellis (Michigan) – ‘Twentieth-century Welsh and Irish Political Identities’

12.45 p.m. Lunch

2.00 p.m. Conchúr Ó Giollagáin (Galway) - ‘Language Profiles of the Contemporary Gaeltacht: Addressing Issues of Sociolinguistic Fragility’
Colin Williams (Cardiff): Response.

3.00 p.m. Tea

4.00pm Richard Ireland (Aberystwyth) – ‘The Discourse of Ireland in Welsh Debates About Crime.’
Katie Gramich (Cardiff) – ‘Inventing and Garrotting 'The Man who does not Exist': Peasantry and Modernity in Welsh and Irish writing’

6.00 p.m. Public lecture: Gwyneth Lewis - ‘Criss-crossings: Literary adventures on Irish and Welsh shores.’

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LECTURE WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE OPTOMETRY LECTURE THEATRE

Cardiff University Map

7.30 p.m. Dinner

Saturday 17 May

9.30 a.m. Andrew Holmes (Queens University Belfast). - ‘The transatlantic identity of Irish Presbyterians, c.1800 to 1914’
David Ceri Jones (Aberystwyth): Response

11.00 a.m. Coffee

11.30 a.m. Pol Ó Muirí (Irish Times) – ‘"I did my best": Seosamh Mac
Grianna, Wales and Ireland’
James Loughlin (Ulster) - ‘Royal agency and national integration: Ireland and Wales in the context of Monarchy, 1860s-1914’

12.45 p.m. Lunch

2.00 p.m. Interview/ Round Table Discussion with four Irish/Welsh writers: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Robin Llywelyn, Catherine Fisher and Patrick McGuinness

3.00 p.m. Tea

3.30 p.m. Round Table Discussion led by Paul O’Leary (Aberystwyth) –
‘Cultures, Disciplines and the Modalities of Comparison’

4.30 p.m. End of conference

Welsh with English to follow:

Cymru ac Iwerddon: Cymhariaeth a Chyd-destun

Ystafell 0.31, Adeilad y Dyniaethau, Prifysgol Caerdydd

Cardiff University Map

Dydd Gwener 16 Mai

10.30 a.m. Coffi a chofrestru

11.30 a.m. Rhys Jones (Aberystwyth) – ‘Ble mae Cymru ac Iwerddon?’
John Ellis (Michigan) – ‘Hunaniaeth wleidyddol yng Nghymru ac Iwerddon yn yr ugeinfed ganrif’

12.45 p.m. Cinio

2.00 p.m. Conchúr Ó Giollagáin (Galway) - ‘Proffilau iaith y Gaeltacht gyfoes: ymdopi â breuder ieithyddol yn y gymuned’
Colin Williams (Caerdydd): Ymateb.

3.00 p.m. Tea

4.00pm Richard Ireland (Aberystwyth) – ‘Disgẃrs Iwerddon mewn dadleuon Cymreig am drosedd.’
Katie Gramich (Caerdydd) – ‘Dyfeisio a dinistrio ‘Y dyn nad yw yn bod': Y werin a Modernedd yn llên Cymru ac Iwerddon’

6.00 p.m. Darlith gyhoeddus (yn Saesneg): Gwyneth Lewis - ‘Igam-ogamu: anturiaethau llenyddol ar draethellau Gwyddelig a Chymreig.’
NODER OS GWELWCH YN DDA: BYDD Y DDARLITH HON YN CAEL EI TRADDODI YN YSTAFELL DARLITH OPTOMETREG

Cardiff University Map

7.30 p.m. Swper
Dydd Sadwrn 17 Mai

9.30 a.m. Andrew Holmes (Prifysgol Queens, Belffast). - ‘Hunaniaeth drawsiwerydd Henaduriaid Gwyddelig, c. 1800 tan 1914’
David Ceri Jones (Aberystwyth): Ymateb

11.00 a.m. Coffi

11.30 a.m. Pol Ó Muirí (Irish Times) – ‘"Gwnes i fy ngorau": Seosamh Mac
Grianna, Cymru ac Iwerddon’
James Loughlin (Ulster) - ‘Goruchwyliaeth frenhinol ac integreiddiad cenedlaethol: Iwerddon a Chymru yng nghyd-destun brenhiniaeth, 1860au-1914’

12.45 p.m. Cinio

2.00 p.m. Cyfweliad/Cylch trafod gyda phedwar awdur Gwyddelig/Cymreig: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Robin Llywelyn, Catherine Fisher and Patrick McGuinness

3.00 p.m. Te

3.30 p.m. Trafodaeth gyffredinol i’w harwain gan Paul O’Leary (Aberystwyth) –
‘Diwylliannau, Disgyblaethau a Dulliau Cymharu’

4.30 p.m. Diwedd y gynhadledd

Cardiff University Map

The second symposium, on the theme of Romantic Nations, will be held on on Friday and Saturday October 24th and 25th, 2008 (More details available soon).

AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network

Wales - Ireland Seminar Series 2007 - 8
Cyfres seminar Cymru - Iwerddon 2007 - 8

Seminars take place on Mondays at 5.15pm in room 2.47, Humanities Building, Cardiff University.

Spring

11 February, 2008
Dr John Goodby, (University of Wales, Swansea)
"' So why in this moment of well-being should we want to see England again”: Irish-Welsh thoughts on re-thinking the twentieth century poetic canon'

March 10, 2008
Dr Darryl Jones (Trinity College Dublin)
'The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (and other horrid stories)'

April 21, 2008
Dr Claire Connolly (Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy)
Celtic Criticism

Yng Nghymraeg hefyd:

11 Chwefror, 2008
Dr John Goodby, (Prifysgol Abertawe)
‘Doedd hi ddim fel 1916 ym 1916 ychwaith’: Iwerddon ym marddoniaeth Gymreig, Cymru ym marddoniaeth Wyddelig

10 Mawrth, 2008
Dr Darryl Jones (Coleg y Drindod, Dulyn)
‘Yr Iguana â thafod o dân (a storïau iasoer eraill)’

21 Ebrill, 2008
Dr Claire Connolly (Ysgol Saesneg, Cyfathrebu ac Athroniaeth, Caerdydd)
Beirniadaeth Geltaidd

Related news:

Dr. Mark Leslie Woods's recommended Irish and Celtic Studies reading for March 2008:

Film, Media and Popular Culture in Ireland
Cityscapes, Landscapes, Soundscapes
by Martin McLoone

This collection of essays from Martin McLoone takes a new look at
contemporary culture in Ireland through the filter of three main
developments – the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy in the South, the peace
process in the North and the general rise in Ireland of ‘diasporan
awareness’.

The book considers the impact of these three factors on
the film, television, and music produced in Ireland, mostly since the
1990s, and speculates on how this popular culture reflects both what
has been gained in the new Ireland but also what has been lost.

Specific concerns of the book are the secularisation of Ireland and
popular culture’s assault on the Church generally (and the priest in
particular); the changing cityscapes and landscapes of the new Ireland;

the ‘death’ of politics; sexual freedom and personal liberation; the problem of representing unionist culture in the North; Van Morrison’s Belfast and the rise of ‘possessive individualism’ in Ireland.

The book celebrates the new Ireland but also raises issues about the loss of aspects of Irish identity that were valuable and suggests the need for a new ‘collective imaginary’ that might reinvigorate Irish identity in the new millennium.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Tragic Lost of Beloved Welsh Women's History Scholar Dr. Ursula Masson: Glamorgan Colleagues in Mourning

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Dear Colleagues,

I know that some colleagues will have already been told the tragic news which we got yesterday, that our dear colleague Ursula Masson (History) had passed away.

[Pictured above -- In memoriam: Our Beloved Dr. Ursula Masson -- a dear friend, a wise teacher, and a kind spirit to us all. How much we will miss you.]

Ursula was a tremendous colleague and friend to many, particularly in History and Humanities & Languages and more widely, I know, across the Faculty and University.

Our sadness is immense as we remember how much we cherished Ursula and her contribution and love for her subject and for education.

Many thanks,
Rod

Professor Rod Dubrow-Marshall PhD,

Dean of Humanities & Social Sciences,

University of Glamorgan,

Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, CF37 1DL

[Pictured above: From the Womens Archive Wales site -- AMC / WAW AGM 2006 l-r: Avril Rolph (Sec), Ursula Masson (Chair), Deirdre Beddoe (President) (standing), Gail Allen (Treasurer)]

From the UWE/HLSS Research Bulletin June 2007:

Women and Liberal Politics in Wales 1888 -1914

Ursula Masson‘s thesis, ‘For Women, for Wales and for Liberalism’: Women and Liberal politics 1888-1914’ was completed in 2006.

In her study Ursula argued that there was a distinctive Welsh women’s liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century.

It was distinguished from Welsh Liberalism more generally through its commitment to feminism and to the vote, while also differing from its English counterpart through its relationship with the national movement - Cymru Fydd.

Ursula’s thesis explores the complex relationship between party politics, nationalism and feminism at a national level and also provides two in depth local case studies of the Women’s Liberal Associations of Cardiff and Aberdare.

Dr. Ursula Masson studied for her PhD on a part-time basis.

She has been a member of the History staff at the University of Glamorgan since 1994, and had a long and varied employment history before that, in journalism, the civil service, adult education, trade union education editor, to name the most respectable.

She did her first degree in English and Philosophy at Cardiff, and a Masters degree at Keele in the mid-1970s.

She is chair of the Women’s Archive of Wales, which works to ensure the retrieval and survival of records relating to the history of women in Wales, which has recently received a large Heritage Lottery Fund Grant to expand its work.

In recognition of her writing, and her work in promoting women’s history and education in Wales, Ursula was selected as a ‘woman of achievement for 2006’ by the Nominating Council of the Women of the Year Lunch.

Ursula says ‘my link with UWE has been extremely rewarding, not just through the great friendships formed in the History department, but in connecting to research communities and bringing south Wales into the regional Women’s History Network, of which I am currently chair’.

She has published a number of articles arising from research for her doctoral thesis and is now co-editing a volume of Welsh women’s political writings into the early 20th century, to be published later this year.

She and her co-editor, Professor Jane Aaron, have recently established the Centre for Gender Studies in Wales at Glamorgan. Ursula is also co-editor of Llafur, the annual journal of the Welsh People’s History Society.

Ursula Masson

{Pictured above: Ursula Masson (standing) speaking at a book launch at the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff. (Baroness Glenys Kinnock in the background).]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

New English Language National Theatre for Wales Appoints Playwright and Scholar Professor Steve Blandford to Board

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Pictured above: Associate Dean of Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan Professor Steve Blandford.]

The Almond and the Seahorse - Clwyd Theatr Cymru

Prestigious Appointment for Professor Blandford
March 26, 2008

Professor Steve Blandford of the Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries has been appointed as a board member of the new English Language National Theatre for Wales.

Phil George, Chair of the organisation commented on the high calibre of applicants for the exciting and challenging positions as board members of the new Theatre company,

"I was delighted by the number and the strength of applications for board membership."

"It shows the tide of goodwill in support of the National Theatre. The new board is full of experience, energy and diverse skills".

[Pictured above: Phil George has been unveiled as the chair of new National English Language Theatre.]

Rhondda born, Phil George is the co-founder and Co-Creative Director of BAFTA award winning Television Production Company, Green Bay Media Ltd in Cardiff. Phil was educated at Porth County Grammar School before going on to read English at Oxford University. Formerly Head of Arts, Music and Features for BBC Wales, Phil co-founded Green Bay Media Limited in 2001, where he will continue with his role as Creative Director.

The new Chair for National Theatre Wales announced today

Green Bay Media Ltd.

Shrewsbury-born, Professor Steve Blandford is Associate Dean and Professor of Theatre, Film and Television based at the ATRiuM.

[Pictured above: The ATRiuM in coloured floodlights, as searchlights, limousines and and the celebrity redcarpet create a celebrity splash in sexy Cardiff city centre. The BBC Wales covered the event. Photography by Mark Leslie Woods © 2008]

He is also the Co-founder of The Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations and has over 20 years experience in working in Theatre.

Canolfan Astudio’r Cyfryngau a Diwylliant mewn Cenhedloedd Bychain / The Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations

The National English Language Theatre will introduce different styles and imaginative theatre choices as well as introducing more varied directorial voices and developing collaborative partnerships.

It will feature star talent and will also nurture new talent in Wales.

The new company, once created, will not be building-based. This will give it the freedom to commission and create productions.

The National English Language Theatre will work closely with the existing theatrical infrastructure to create high profile productions that will sometimes move outside the traditional theatre space.

Selected Publications of Professor Steve Blandford:

Film, Drama and The Break-Up of Britain, Bristol, Intellect, 2007.

‘Dramatic Fictions in a ‘Postcolonial’ Wales’ in Aaron J and Chris Williams (ed) Postcolonial Wales, Cardiff, UWP, 2005.

‘BBC drama at the margins: the contrasting fortunes of Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh television drama in the 1990’s in Bignell J. and Stephen Lacey (ed) Popular television drama: Critical perspectives, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005.

‘Wales at the Oscars – Heritage Film and recent Welsh Cinema’, Cfyrwng, Vol 2,
April 2005.

The Film Studies Dictionary (with Barry K. Grant and Jim Hillier), London, Edward Arnold, 2000.

Wales on Screen, Bridgend, Seren, 2000.

4 plays for theatre, Worcester, J.Garnett Miller, 1998.

Towards a National Theatre for Wales some questions and answers

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Cardiff ATRiuM: Professor Richard Bauman Lectures on The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound Recording 18 Mar

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:32:00 +0000

[Pictured above:Professor Richard Bauman]

Cardiff ATRiuM: Storytelling Symposium in the Welsh Capital 18-19 March 2008

George Ewart Evans Lecture and Reception
Tuesday 18th March 2008

Professor Richard Bauman will present his keynote lecture on Tuesday evening, this will be followed by a reception and dinner in the newly opened Atrium building of the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Glamorgan.

The dinner will be followed by story and music performance by Guto Dafis.

Professor Richard Bauman The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound Recording

Professor Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor and Chair in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, has published widely on the ethnographic study of language and performance.

He has served as president of the Semiotic Society of America, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and the Society of Fellows of the American Folklore Society.

Among many other professional activities, he has been chair of the Folklife Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Institution, editor of the Journal of American Folklore, and a member of more than 15 editorial boards.

He has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Folklore Fellow of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, and twice holder of National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships.

Professor Bauman’s keynote lecture will focus on narrative and development of sound recording.

The years between 1895 and 1920 represented a formative period in the commercial development of sound recording in the U.S. as nascent recording companies attempted to create a consumer market for phonograph records and the machines on which to play them.

As recording companies sought to discover what might attract consumers to purchase records, they drew heavily upon traditional performance forms, such as storytelling, oratory, and religious sermons, and upon popular entertainments, such as minstrel shows, early vaudeville, medicine shows, tent shows, and Chautauqua, all of which had proven themselves attractive to popular audiences.

The adaptation of these traditional and popular performance forms to phonograph records involves the process of remediation, specifically, the rendering of embodied, face-to-face performance forms through the mediation of another communicative technology, sound recording.

In this paper, I explore what happens when we render oral storytelling, formerly experienced live, in situations of copresence, when the immediacy of copresence is transformed into a mediated experience.

Chair: Professor Mike Wilson

[Pictured above: George Ewart Evans (1909–88) was a pioneering oral historian. He published a series of books examining the disappearing customs and way of life of rural Suffolk, the best know of these is Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay. He was also an accomplished story writer and wrote short-stories, novels and poems. George Ewart Evans was born and raised in the mining community of Abercynon, a stone’s throw from the University of Glamorgan where the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling is based.]

George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling Annual Lecture and Symposium 2008 - Storytelling and Authenticity

Event Date March 18, 2008 10 a.m. – March 19, 2008
Location – Atrium

The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling annual lecture and symposium takes place on Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th March. This year we are holding the event in our new ATRiuM building in the centre of Cardiff.

Final details are still to be confirmed but so far we are pleased to be able to announce the following sessions

George Ewart Evans Lecture and Reception Tuesday 18th March 2008

Professor Richard Bauman will present his keynote lecture on Tuesday evening, this will be followed by a reception and dinner in the newly opened Atrium building of the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Glamorgan.

The dinner will be followed by story and music performance by Guto Dafis.

Professor Richard Bauman The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound Recording
Professor Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor and Chair in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, has published widely on the ethnographic study of language and performance.

He has served as president of the Semiotic Society of America, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and the Society of Fellows of the American Folklore Society. Among many other professional activities, he has been chair of the Folklife Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Institution, editor of the Journal of American Folklore, and a member of more than 15 editorial boards.

He has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Folklore Fellow of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, and twice holder of National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships.

Professor Bauman’s keynote lecture will focus on narrative and development of sound recording. The years between 1895 and 1920 represented a formative period in the commercial development of sound recording in the U.S. as nascent recording companies attempted to create a consumer market for phonograph records and the machines on which to play them.

As recording companies sought to discover what might attract consumers to purchase records, they drew heavily upon traditional performance forms, such as storytelling, oratory, and religious sermons, and upon popular entertainments, such as minstrel shows, early vaudeville, medicine shows, tent shows, and Chautauqua, all of which had proven themselves attractive to popular audiences.

The adaptation of these traditional and popular performance forms to phonograph records involves the process of remediation, specifically, the rendering of embodied, face-to-face performance forms through the mediation of another communicative technology, sound recording.

In this paper, I explore what happens when we render oral storytelling, formerly experienced live, in situations of copresence, when the immediacy of copresence is transformed into a mediated experience.

Chair: Professor Mike Wilson

Symposium Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th March 2008

This two day symposium will examine issues raised in the keynote lecture and the implications for storytelling and authenticity. The symposium is structured around a series of keynote ‘provocations’, with maximum time allocated for debate and discussion on the issues raised.

Tuesday 18th March 2008

Tale-Enders: Gathering the Narrative Heritage of Welsh Cricket Launch

We are proud to be able to launch this project which brings together the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling and Glamorgan Cricket to explore the use of storytelling and technology to populate the new Museum of Welsh Cricket at Sophia Gardens as part of the current £9.6 million redevelopment in advance of hosting an Ashes Tests in 2009.

The launch will be followed by a free buffet lunch.

Susie Pratt and Lisa Heledd Digital Storytelling

Susie Pratt (Research Fellow, George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling) and Lisa Heledd (Capture Wales, BBC Wales and Postgraduate Researcher in Digital Storytelling, George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling) will run a digital storytelling workshop.

This session will explore the latest developments in digital storytelling and present some of the current research being carried out by members of the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling team.

Joseph Sobol The Razor’s Edge: The American Storytelling Movement in 2008

Joseph Sobol (Associate Professor, East Tennessee State University), author of The House Between Earth and Sky: Harvesting New American Folktales and The Storytellers' Journey: An American Revival, will present a lecture and workshop exploring issues raised in the American Storytelling movement and the resonances they might have for people working in Wales and the UK.

The American Storytelling movement has matured in certain unmistakable ways—and not in others.

This mixed development has placed major stresses on the organizational base and on those working in the field.

This talk will identify some of the stresses—organizational, artistic, and economic--and suggest some avenues of potential evolution and relief.

Wednesday 19th March 2008

Dick Leith “Authenticity” and “Ownership”: How to Shut People Up

Academic and storyteller Dick Leith will explore his own recollections of the 1950s and 60s folk revival in Britain and how issues raised during that period are resurfacing today.

He will examine notions of the authentic voice and questions regarding how this concept has been used both to silence and to empower. Chair: Susie Pratt (Research Fellow, George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling)

Professor Hande Birkalan Gedik Uses of Authenticity: Responsibility, Re-presentation and Re-contextualization of Folklore Performances

Professor Hande Birkalan Gedik (Associate Professor, Yeditepe University, Istanbul) will aim to bring light to the concepts of “authenticity” and “authority” in folklore performances in selective examples from Turkey.

She will be discussing these concepts primarily as a “native” woman and as a folklorist with an educational up-bringing in the American folkloristics. Chair: Joseph Sobol (Associate Professor, East Tennessee State University)

Neil Lanham 'Who is the truly educated man: The one who can grown onions or the man who can spell them?' - (George Ewart-Evans P.17 'The Horse in the Furrow 1960). A view from the onion grower's perspective

Neil Lanham was born in 1938 into a rudimentary small farm way of life. He observed early in his life that culture came from the spoken word of the indigenous vernacular people around him.

He has recorded both mentally and physically oral idioms ever since. This paper will investigate concepts of authenticity and indigenous voice. Chair: Hamish Fyfe (Co-Director, George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling and Professor of Arts in the Community)

Venue: Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, ATRiuM, University of Glamorgan, Adam Street, Cardiff Cost:

Lecture is FREE but booking is essential. Dinner and story and music performance: £30/€40 Symposium: £60 /€80 organisation, £40/€55 individual waged, £25/€35 individual unwaged

To book your place at this event call 01443 3668631 or email storytelling@glam.ac.uk

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Wales Futures Network / WCVA Conference - Futures and The 3rd Sector Cardiff 17 April 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:16:00 +0000

[Please scroll down for English version]

CYNHADLEDD DYFODOLION Y DRYDEDD SECTOR
Holiday Inn, Caerdydd
17 Ebrill 2008

Bydd cynhadledd Dyfodolion y Drydedd Sector yn ystyried sut y caiff y sector ei siapio a sut bethau fydd mudiadau gwirfoddol yn y tymor byr, canolig a hir.

Trefnir y Gynhadledd ar y cyd rhwng Cyngor Gweithredu Gwirfoddol Cymru a Rhwydwaith Dyfodolion Cymru.

Bydd Geoff Mulgan, Cadeirydd Ymchwiliad Ymddiriedolaeth Carnegie yn y DUar ddyfodol Cymdeithas Sifil, yn amlinellu prif ganfyddiadau ac argymhellion yr adroddiad.

Trefnir Gweithdai Goblygiadau’r Dyfodol dan ofal Rhwydwaith Dyfodolion Cymru fel rhan o’r gynhadledd er ystyried “4 Senarios ar gyfer Y Gymdeithas Sifil” Ymchwiliad Carnegie sef,

1.Rhyfeloedd Amrywiaeth
2. Cyfamod Byd-Eang
3. Bywyd Lleol
4. Lleisiau o Athen

Adroddir canlyniadau’r gweithdai yn ôl i sesiwn lawn i’w trafod.

Bydd sesiwn arall yn edrych ar dirwedd wleidyddol Cymru yn y dyfodol, a fydd yn ystyried sut mae helpu cymdeithas sifil i hyrwyddo dealltwriaeth gyhoeddus o’r materion sy’n ymwneud â Chonfensiwn Cymru Gyfan.

Cyflwynir y sesiwn gan Syr Emyr Jones Parry, Cadeirydd y Confensiwn sydd newydd ymddeol o fod yn Llysgennad Prydain yn y Cenhedloedd Unedig.

Am raglen a ffurflen gofrestru cliciwch ar www.futures.cf.ac.uk Gweinyddir cofrestru ar gyfer y gynhadledd gan y WCVA yn unig.

==================================================================

THE THIRD SECTOR FUTURES CONFERENCE
Holiday Inn, Cardiff
Thursday 17 April 2008

The Third Sector Futures Conference will consider how the sector is set to take shape and what voluntary organizations will look like in the short, medium and long term.

The conference is co-organised by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA) and the Wales Futures Network.

The conference will hear from Geoff Mulgan, Chair of the Carnegie UK Trust’s Inquiry into the future of Civil Society, who will outline the report’s key findings and recommendations.

Futures Implications Workshops will be held by the Wales Futures Network as part of the conference addressing the “4 Scenarios for Civil Society” of the Carnegie Enquiry i.e.

1. Diversity Wars
2. Global Compact
3. Local Life
4. Athenian Voices

Feedback from the workshops will be presented and discussed in plenary.

A further session will look at the future political landscape in Wales and consider how to engage civil society in promoting public understanding of the issues surrounding the All Wales Convention, which was established by the Labor - Plaid Cymru One Wales coalition.

The session will be introduced by Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Chair of the Convention and recently retired British Ambassador to the United Nations.

For a full programme and registration form please go to www.futures.cf.ac.uk Registration is being handled solely by the WCVA.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

"Queer Wales" Call for Papers at the International Conference on Welsh Studies at the University of Toronto, July 31-August 2, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:53:00 +0000

Subject: Papers are invited for a panel on "Queer Wales" for Toronto University

Papers are invited for a panel on "Queer Wales" at the International Conference on Welsh Studies at the University of Toronto, July 31-August 2, 2008.

Masculinity has long been integral to the national identity of “The Land of My Fathers.”

In particular, the recent industrial past has depended upon or upheld what gay author Rhys Davies described as an “oppressive masculinity.”

However, in recent years, we have become more aware of the complexity of Welsh identities (national, European, racial, colonial, economic, etc).

This panel of the International Conference on Welsh Studies examines the role of Queer identities in Welsh culture in the past present and future:

How have traditional definitions of “welshness” been revised and resisted; what is the current face of Queer Wales; what will the ongoing queering of Wales be like? This panel invites contributions from all areas of interest. Possible topics include:

The history of gay activism in Wales
Gay Wales and the law
Writing gay Wales
Queer working-class masculinities
Welsh queers on stage and screen

Please submit by email paper titles, 250-300 word abstracts (for 15-20 minute papers), and 150 word bio-sketches to Huw Osborne (osborne_at_rmc.ca) by APRIL 1, 2008.

Huw Osborne
Department of English
Royal Military College of Canada
PO Box 17000, Station Forces
Kingston, Ontario, CANADA
K7K 7B4
osborne_at_rmc.ca

North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History (NAASWCH)

International Conference on Welsh Studies

July 31-August 2, 2008 The Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

The NAASWCH Program Committee seeks diverse perspectives on Wales and Welsh culture

-- as well as proposals focused on the Welsh in North America

-- from many disciplines including: history, literature, languages, art, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, philosophy, music, and religion.

NAASWCH invites participation from faculty, postgraduate/graduate students and independent scholars from North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Click here to go directly to Queer Cymru on Facebook

NAASWCH works to promote scholarship on all aspects of Welsh culture and history;

to develop connections between teachers and scholars in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom who are committed to the study of Welsh culture, history, language, and literature;

to provide an intellectual forum in which scholars and teachers of Welsh culture may share their research and teaching experience, and to provide support for the study of Welsh-North American history and culture.

See the NAASWCH website for additional information:

NAASWCH

Those who are not submitting proposals but would like to receive conference information should contact: Dr. Melinda Gray, NAASWCH Secretary, 15 Woodbridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA; mgrayk@comcast.net.

The Iris Prize Festival 2 - 4 October 2008

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network First Symposium May 16-17 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:46:00 +0000

Cardiff University Map

The second symposium, on the theme of Romantic Nations, will be held on on Friday and Saturday October 24th and 25th, 2008 (More details available soon).

AHRC Ireland-Wales Research Network

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Audiences Get Free Admission at 'Stranger Than Fiction' Documentary Film Festival in Newport, Wales March 13-14 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:21:00 +0000

STRANGER THAN FICTION WALES

The Skillset Screen Academy Wales is co-ordinating a new FREE documentary festival in March (13th and 14th) at the Riverfront Arts Centre, Newport.

To book tickets call the Riverfront on (01633) 656757

Stranger than Fiction Wales Programme
Thursday - 13/3/2008
The Studio
Riverfront Arts Centre

18.30 - 20.00
Jennings Finest Hour
(A BFI Presentation)

20.00 - 22.00
Bardsey, Senghennydd, Tiger Bay and Pill
(A National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales Presentation)

Friday - 14/3/2008
The Studio
Riverfront Arts Centre

13.00 - 15.00
Black Film Festival Wales Docs
Q&A with guests to follow screening

15.00 - 16.00
Screening of award-winning graduate and student productions

16.00 - 17.30
FourDocs Screening and discussion

18.00 - 19.15
Jennings and Rotha
(A BFI Presentation)

19.30 - 21.00
Anstey, Clarke and Grierson on film
(A BFI Presentation)

21.00 - 22.30
Closing Reception sponsored by the Film Agency for Wales
RSVP here to request a ticket for the reception which is open to anyone who has attended a screening over the two days.

Staff at Stranger than Fiction Wales:

Festival Manager: Hannah Raybould
Festival Coordinator: Matthew Evans
Festival Programmers: Humphry Trevelyan & Matthew Evans
Guest Liaison: Matthew Evans
Design: Sian Crandon, University of Wales, Newport
Marketing/PR: Hannah Raybould & Rebecca Froggatt
Translations: Owen Martell
Volunteers: SSAW students and students of BA Documentary at IFSW

Hill of Dreams -- Best Documentary at the International Film School Awards 2005

Thanks to:

Dan Thomas at the Film Agency for Wales; Clare Harwood at the BFI; Undeg Griffiths and Iestyn Hughes at the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales; Yvonne Connickie at the Black Welsh Film Festival; Rebecca Franckel at FourDocs; Lisa Nesbitt at BAFTA Cymru; Chris Morris at the International Film School Wales.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Celtic Youth Film 'Hip Hedonism' and Justin Kerrigan According to Martin McLoone and Steve Blandford

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:36:00 +0000

Justin Kerrigan is shooting a new Welsh film in South Wales, and he's best known worldwide for his 'global youth party culture' film Human Traffic, set in Cardiff, Wales.

[Pictured above: Emmy nominee Robert Carlyle stars in Justin Kerrigan's newest film currently being shoot in South Wales.]

Emmy nominee Robert Carlyle, who found fame in 'The Full Monty' and 'Trainspotting' and whose credits have since included 'Carla's Song', 'The World is Not Enough' and '28 weeks later' is currently filming Cardiff born, Justin Kerrigan's new feature film 'I Know you Know' in Bridgend, and Port Talbot.

Kerrigan is often lumped together with similar directors who seem to be exploiting this transnational popular culture craze, making films that are loaded with codes and signifiers that 'only the kids' can understand.

Kerrigan is best known for his 1999 hit 'Human Traffic' for which, amidst several other awards, he won a BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Director and was nominated for a Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer at the BAFTA 2000 awards in London.

Human Traffic Trailer -- Miramax Films

How does Kerrigan fit into the pantheon of Welsh filmmakers who have overcome the odds to make a film and get it out of Wales?

How does Kerrigan fit into the array of recent 'Celtic Periphery' filmmakers, i.e., coming out of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales?

The Twang - Two Lovers -- Also directed by Justin Kerrigan

I've written about this elsewhere, and I include this excerpt of my new book on the National Cinema of Wales (not yet published) called, 'A Welsh New Wave?'

A Welsh ‘new wave’?

Blandford notes that the quartet he is describing created rumours of the beginnings of a new Welsh film ‘wave’ of production and freer expression, while they managed to offend the government, the tourist boards, the local communities where the films were shot, the Welsh religious establishment, and just about everyone else inclined to be offended.

Blandford alludes to a general weariness in Welsh society, surrounding the cultural controversy, and longs for a respite from the ‘dead-end arguments’

"During the next decade it will be interesting to see whether a film culture develops with the confidence to make films without even the ironic reference to traditional Welsh iconography that this latest wave has made" (Blandford 2000: 20)

Blandford seems to perceive that this ‘wave’ is related to a larger cultural malaise within a post-modern British and trans-national milieu, as he compares the quartet of Welsh films to similar films set in Scotland, Trainspotting (1996) and Wickerman (1973).

Martin McLoone identifies the same type of films becoming popular in the emerging economic and cultural ‘Celtic Tiger’ ascendancy of Ireland, and coins the name ‘hip hedonism’ to describe and explain the film waves’ meaning and impetus

"This might well explain the preponderance, in recent years, of another kind of urban-based film — what might be called a cinema of ‘hip hedonism’. This is a cinema that celebrates, even glorifies, an urban lifestyle dressed in the signifiers of contemporary global youth culture and populated by the beautiful people of Celtic Tiger Ireland" (McLoone 2006: 97)

Ruth Barton frames the films of post World War II Ireland in a chapter entitled ‘Negotiating Modernism’ (Barton 2004: 65), and one has to wonder if in some way, McLoone and Blandford are not describing Irish and Welsh cinemas, respectively, which are representing a new generation’s negotiation with the problems of trans-national post-modernism, including the paradox of rapidly rising incomes of younger professionals in Cardiff and Dublin paralleling the fatalism and political detachment implicit in the music and lifestyles of the nightclub, pub and ‘Rave Culture’, and its various cultural cousins.

Either way, the films of Scotland, Ireland and Wales in this period seem to be tapping the same vein of ‘I can’t be bothered’ attitudes endemic to the Celtic up-and-coming

"They are Irish, certainly, but they epitomize a kind of trans-global ‘cool’. Drugs and crime still form part of the background, but they are presented as lifestyle choices or get-rich schemes removed from any social consequences."

"Most importantly, these films are lighter in tone than the more political films, as well as being driven by a deliberately irreverent humour" (McLoone 2006: 97).

In the quartet of Welsh films that Blandford describes, which we will assert form the backbone of a Welsh version of McLoone’s designated Irish cinema of ‘hip hedonism,’ we need to ask what values are being challenged, and what social and cultural tensions are being transgressed or offended, and what possible meaning this might have.

Barton, R. (2004). Irish National Cinema. London, Routledge.

Berry, D. (1994). Wales and Cinema, The First Hundred Years. Cardiff, University of Wales Press.

Blandford, S., Ed. (2000). Wales on Screen. Bridgend, Wales, Seren, Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Blandford, S. (2003). “Old Wales is Dead”, Film, Theatre and TV Drama in Contemporary Wales.” New Welsh Review, Theatre in Wales Supplement Autumn.

Blandford, S. (2003a). “Film, Theatre, and TV Drama in Contemporary Wales.” Culture+the State James Gifford & Gabrielle Zezulka-Mailloux, Editors (Culture+State Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada).

Blandford, S. (2005). Film, Drama and the Break-Up of Britain. Inaugural Professorial Lecture, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, University of Glamorgan.

Blandford, S. (2005a). “Wales at the Oscars: ‘heritage’ cinema and Welshness in the 1990s.” Cyfrwng: Wales Media Journal 2.

Blandford, S. (2005b). Dramatic Fictions in a Postcolonial Wales. Postcolonial Wales. J. Aaron and C. Williams. Cardiff, University of Wales Press.

Blandford, S. (2007). Film, Drama and the Break Up of Britain. Bristol, England, Intellect Books.

Blandford, S., B. K. Grant, et al. (2001). The Film Studies Dictionary. London and New York, Arnold Publishers and Oxford University Press.

Hannan, P. (1999). The Welsh Illusion. Bridgend, Wales, Seren, Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Hannan, P. (2002). 2001, A Year in Wales. Bridgend, Wales, Seren, Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

McLoone, M. (2001). ‘Internal Decolonisation? British Cinema in the Celtic Fringe.’ The British Cinema Book. R. Murphy.

McLoone, M. (2006). National Cinema in Ireland. Theorising National Cinema. V. Vitali and P. Willemen. London, British Film Institute: 88-99.

The Phrase Hip Hedonism was coined by Martin McLoone. Read more about his newest work here:

Film, Media and Popular Culture in Ireland
Cityscapes, Landscapes, Soundscapes
by Martin McLoone

This collection of essays from Martin McLoone takes a new look at
contemporary culture in Ireland through the filter of three main
developments – the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy in the South, the peace
process in the North and the general rise in Ireland of ‘diasporan
awareness’.

The book considers the impact of these three factors on
the film, television, and music produced in Ireland, mostly since the
1990s, and speculates on how this popular culture reflects both what
has been gained in the new Ireland but also what has been lost.

Specific concerns of the book are the secularisation of Ireland and
popular culture’s assault on the Church generally (and the priest in
particular); the changing cityscapes and landscapes of the new Ireland;

the ‘death’ of politics; sexual freedom and personal liberation; the problem of representing unionist culture in the North; Van Morrison’s Belfast and the rise of ‘possessive individualism’ in Ireland.

The book celebrates the new Ireland but also raises issues about the loss of aspects of Irish identity that were valuable and suggests the need for a new ‘collective imaginary’ that might reinvigorate Irish identity in the new millennium.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Arts Council Wales Chair Dai Smith to Speak at University of Glamorgan in Treforest on 20 Feb 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:29:00 +0000

[Pictured above: Professor Dai Smith.]

Reminder:

Centre for Modern and Contemporary Wales seminar series

Wednesday 20 February

Speaker : Professor Dai Smith, Chair of the Arts Council for Wales
Topic: ‘Developing the Arts in Wales’
Venue: H230
Date: Wednesday 20 February
Time: 2.00 - 3.30

H230 is located on the Treforest campus of the University of Glamorgan in Pontypridd, Rhondda-Cynon-Taf, South Wales.

Forthcoming, for your diaries:

Speaker: Dr Martin Johnes (Swansea)
Topic: ‘Where have all the Britons gone? History, Wales and Britishness’
Date: Wednesday 16 April
Time: 2.00
Venue : tba

Information sent to us by:

Professor/Yr Athro Gareth Williams
Centre for Modern and Contemporary Wales
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd
CF37 1DL

tel. 01443 483205

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

AIM -- ATRiuM Intelligent Media, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. on Face Book

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Academi Encyclopaedia of Wales Might Evidence an Ever More Self-Confident Welsh Nation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:28:00 +0000

According to the University of Wales web site:

After a decade of hard work, The Academi Encyclopaedia of Wales has been launched and the first Minister and the Minister for Heritage have congratulated everyone connected with this historic project.

The Academi Encyclopaedia of Wales is a joint project between the University of Wales Press and Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society for Authors, and has significant financial support from the National Lottery via the Arts Council of Wales.

Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press

First Minister Rhodri Morgan, said:

“I’d like to acknowledge the efforts of everyone who has worked on this project, especially the Editors.

It was a labour of love to evaluate every element of Wales in one book.

The Encyclopaedia of Wales (entitled Gwyddoniadur Cymru yr Academi Gymreig) will be a excellent source for everyone who has an interest in Wales and the Welsh.”

Rhodri Glyn Thomas, the Minister for Heritage said:

“John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch have completed a stupendous Herculean task by creating this volume.

It is a partnership, not just between the University of Wales Press and Academi, but between several organisations and individuals.

I fully support the Encyclopaedia ‘s description of itself as The first and last great book of Wales. No home should be without one.“

The publication is a joint project between the University of Wales Press and the Academi and is supported by a significant lottery grant from The Arts Council of Wales.

Separate English and Welsh versions of the Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales will be available at £65 each.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

What do these guys have in common: Broadway's Stephen Sondheim, Hollywood's Tim Burton and the University of Glamorgan? A new DVD!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:02:00 +0000

OFFICIAL Sweeney Todd Trailer!

Welsh Capital's Cardiff ATRiuM Professors to feature on Sweeney Todd DVD
January 23, 2008

Professors Richard Hand and Mike Wilson from the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries will be appearing on the DVD version of Tim Burton’s critically acclaimed new film Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

The two professors, whose new book London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror, has received considerable attention for its inclusion of a previously unpublished Noel Coward play, were interviewed for a documentary on ‘horror theatre’, which will appear as an ‘extra’ on the DVD when it is released later this year.

Grand-Guignol: French Theatre of Horror and London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror by Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson are both published by University of Exeter Press.

[Pictured above: Professor Mike Wilson, CCI Head of Research; Prof Richard Hand Professor of Theatre and Media Drama, CCI, backstage in Glasgow with Dr Paul Carr Principal Lecturer in Popular Music, CCI.]

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

AIM -- ATRiuM Intelligent Media, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. on Face Book

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Minority Language Media, Cultural Diversity and Development in Europe: Barcelona ECREA's 2nd European Communication Conference 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:18:00 +0000

[Pictured above: View of Barcelona; The conference will take place at the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona (CCIB) on the 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th of November 2008.]

ECREA's 2nd EUROPEAN COMMUNICATION CONFERENCE
CALL FOR RESEARCH PANELS, PAPERS AND POSTERS

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15th February 2008

This call for papers, panels and posters opens 1st December 2007 and the deadline for submission of Proposals is Friday 15th February 2008

The broad theme of this major international congress, Communication policies and culture in Europe, refers to the confluence that can be established between the media and the different interpretations of culture in Europe nowadays.

This confluence refers to the globalization effects on a diversity of spaces (multinational, national, local) with all its political implications.

It moreover refers to the different mediations and interactions that configure the current European society with respect to migrations, new forms of political participation, the dialectics of identity and diversity, new cultural consumptions, etc.

The broad title aims to emphasize the importance of politics and culture, but also refers to new ways of regulation and de-regulation, the technology and the management of convergence within the cultural industries the new public service remit, and the variety of communication policies that aim to guarantee cultural diversity and development in Europe.

[Pictured above: PhD. François Heinderyckx, President of Ecrea]

This invitation for proposals is both for individual papers and posters and for pre-organised panels, from established academics, young scholars, practitioners and postgraduate research students.

Individual paper proposals, individual poster proposals and panel proposals can be submitted here.

All proposals will have to be submitted to one of ECREA's 15 thematic sections, and will be reviewed by one of the 15 section selection committees (the section focus can be found below) Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in mid-April 2008, and the registration will open after December 1, 2007.

Paper-presenters and panellists will be asked to confirm their intention to attend by registering before 24 October 2008, in order to be able to finalise the conference programme.

The 2nd European Communication Conference aims to bring together specialists studying the role of communications and media in society, with a special emphasis on European challenges.

The conference will deal with a broad range of topics, from philosophy, history, the economics of communication and innovations in reception studies to research into the relationship between media and society, such as its impact on democracy, migrations, sustainable development, identities and cultural diversity.

The main focus of the conference, Communication Policies and Culture in Europe, is one of great importance. By focusing on this theme, the conference aims to contribute to questions surrounding the development of communication policies (regulation, impulse, etc) for European culture in the face of the new globalisation challenges.

In addition, the local committee will seek to address a range of topics of general interest in Europe by inviting contributions of Spanish academics. This will include matters of education and communication, local media and communication, and academic collaboration between Europe and Latin America.

Catalan (English to follow): La conferència Europea de comunicació agruparà prop d'un miler d'especialistes que analitzaran el paper dels mitjans de comunicació al món actual, amb especial referència als reptes europeus.

La conferència s'ocuparà dels temes mes pròpiament teòrics, com ara la filosofia de la comunicació, la història, la economia de la comunicació o les innovacions en la recerca sobre la recepció, però també tractarà dels temes cabdals que afecten a la relació entre mitjans de comunicació i societat, com ara la seva incidència en la democràcia, en les migracions, en el desenvolupament sostenible, en les identitats i en la diversitat cultural, etc.

Considerant els temes que interessen de manera més especial a Catalunya i a Espanya en el marc europeu, la conferencia ha triat un tema central de gran importància: les polítiques de comunicació i la cultura a Europa. Amb la tria d'aquest tema central la conferència es proposa aportar coneixements sobre la importància de les polítiques de comunicació (regulació, impuls, etc.) per a la cultura europea, davant dels nous reptes que representa la globalització.

Complementàriament el comitè local, promourà el tractament específic de diversos temes d'interès general per a Europa i que es plantejaran com aportació dels investigadors catalans i espanyols al Congrés, amb sessions especials dedicades, entre altres temes a la formació de comunicadors, les relacions entre educació i comunicació, la comunicació local i la cooperació científica entre Europa i Amèrica llatina.

PAPER PROPOSALS

Candidates are asked to include an abstract of minimum 400 and maximum 500 words, which should contain a clear outline of his/her arguments, theoretical framework, methodology and results.

Candidates can submit their abstract in English, in Spanish AND English, or in Catalan AND English. Only one proposal as first author will be accepted, although more proposals can be submitted as co-author (second, …), as chair, or as respondent of a panel - but a participant will be allowed only one paper presentation.

For this reason, paper proposals should be submitted by the person who is planning to present the paper at the conference. Co-authors will be mentioned in the conference programme.

POSTER PROPOSALS
Candidates are asked to include an abstract of minimum 400 and maximum 500 words, which should contain a clear outline of his/her arguments, theoretical framework, methodology and results.

Candidates can submit their abstract in English, in Spanish AND English, or in Catalan AND English. Only one proposal as first author is allowed, although others could be submitted as co-author.

PANEL PROPOSALS
We expect panel proposals to comprise six participants: either six presenters or five presenters and a respondent/discussant for a 105-minutes session.

In addition, one Chair can be nominated. This Chair should not be presenting one of the papers, although s/he may be a co-author.

Panels proposals should include:
- A panel abstract of minimum 400 and maximum 500 words
- Abstracts (400-500 words) and personal information of each of the presenters
- The proposal can be submitted in English, in Spanish AND English, or in Catalan AND English

TIMELINE

The key dates for the conference are as follows:
1st December 2007: Open call for paper, poster and panel proposals
15th February 2008: Deadline for the on-line submission of paper, poster and panel proposals
Mid april: Notification of acceptance
24th October 2008: Deadline for the submission of full papers
24th October 2008: Deadline for registration of presenters
25-28 November 2008: The ECC08 conference

ECREA's Thematic Sections

Audience and Reception Studies
The Audience and Reception Studies section is about how people interpret and use media, and with what consequences on the micro - and macro-level.

The section welcomes various approaches (theoretical/critical works, empirical studies, methodological discussions) and methods (quantitative or qualitative research, or both) and encourages works that cross disciplines (social sciences, humanities and arts, life sciences) and traditional boundaries (between "old media" and "new media"; between mass communication and group communication; between content/production and audience/reception/effects).

Communication and Democracy

The ECREA Communication and Democracy section invites you to send in abstracts for papers as well as panel proposals focussing on the relationship between media, communication and democracy.

Democracy is being defined here in a broad sense and is not merely limited to the procedural elements in political systems.

Likewise, media and communication relates to both more traditional media as well as the internet and newer media opportunities.

The section-theme for 2008 Barcelona conference is "Media and Communication for a Democratic and Culturally Diverse Europe".

Abstracts and panel proposals should ideally address one of these rather general sub-themes: challenges to public sphere theory; social mobilizations, activism and protest cultures; the future of community media (in a digital age); citizen and public journalism in defence of democracy; EU media&communication policy: does public participation matter?; the political significance of media literacies; and web 2.0: changing politics through digital networks?

Communication Law and Policy

The recently launched Communication Law and Policy Section provides a forum for the debate and analysis of past and current national and EU legal, regulatory and policy directions in the field of European media and communication.

The field is interpreted broadly to include political, social, cultural, anthropological and economic questions. The section invites contributions (proposals for papers, posters or panels) in any area of European media and communication law, regulation and policy.

Diaspora, Migration and the Media

Transnational and diasporic communications have brought a number of theoretical and methodological challenges for European communication research, such as those relating to the significance of the national public spheres, national broadcasting, multicultural media and the cultural and communication practices of people living in culturally diverse societies.

The section invites and encourages theoretical and empirical explorations of European communications and diversity from across Europe and beyond. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches and innovative studies in all areas of media and communication research (media production; media texts; consumption of media and communications technologies; national and transnational policy; media ethics and the representation of difference)

Digital Culture and Communication

The digital culture and communication section aims at exchanging and developing research at the European level in the developing field of digital media and informational culture as this is broadly defined.

We welcome work that crosses disciplines and that operates at the boundaries of what might generally be allowed to constitute media/communication systems. The section actively seeks both empirical and theoretical/critical work.

It therefore welcomes work that questions the general specificity of 'the digital' and/or uses 'the digital' to rethink existing media and communication theories and approaches (as well as research methods).

Film Studies

Ranging from early cinema experiences in European metropolis, to the contemporary blockbuster multiplexes, film has always been at the forefront of European popular culture.

The film studies section invites for contributions that deal with film in a broad variety of aspects: film as content, as cultural artefact, as commercial product, as lived experience, as cultural and economic institution, as symbolic field of cultural production, as media technology, etc.

We strive towards methodological openness and multilevel approaches on the study of historical and contemporary cinema: film text, context, production, representation and reception. Cultural studies perspectives, historical approaches, political economy, textual analysis, audience research all find its place within the section.

Gender and communication

The Section Gender and Communication invites contributions which stress issues within the field of communication with a specific interest in gender, conceptualised in a broad sense. The section specifically seeks inclusivity in relation to gender studies issues on the part of media research.

Amongst gender-related issues are ethnicity, identity politics, queer studies, media industries, feminist media studies, popular culture studies, post-structural theory, as well as a host of philosophical questions. Aiming to bridge the gap between communication and gender studies, this section welcomes interdisciplinary approaches that combine a focus on gender with media research, namely media production, content analysis of media texts and media use and/or reception.

International and Intercultural Communication

The field of International and Intercultural Communication has changed considerably over the last years. Globalisation and its consequences have forced the field to broaden its scope considerably.

Furthermore the field is challenged from the outside by other disciplines engaging in the debate on the role of communication in globalisation processes.

In this section we welcome contributions that take a broad view on cross-border communication in all its forms. We define cross-border communication in terms of communication crossing national or/and cultural borders. We will both focus on mediated and personal forms of communication.

Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction

The Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction section welcomes contributions that focus on the study of human interaction and human communicative behaviour.

The core is constituted of contacts and bonds between people, whether in private or public contexts, whether face-to-face or through various communication technologies. The research fields and theory development areas of interpersonal communication and social interaction are wide-ranging.

They include interpersonal relationships, relationship formation, development and termination, group and team communication, conversational organisation, verbal and nonverbal communication, public speaking, radio and television performance, rhetoric, argumentation, persuasion and mutual influence, communicative competence and interpersonal skills, ethnography of speaking, and other related approaches to human social interaction.

All kinds of contexts are welcome (e.g., family, work, instructional, political, health), as are all methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, mixed).

Journalism Studies

The ECREA Journalism Studies Section is concerned with cultural, political, economic, social and professional aspects of journalism and news work.

The Section accordingly invites for consideration papers of high quality across the range of journalism studies, focussing on occupational, participatory, regulatory, ethical, social, technological, political, commercial, cultural, educational, historical and other dimensions, with particular reference to the European and/or global context.

Organisational and Strategic Communication

The ECREA section for Organizational and Strategic Communication promotes an active and critical dialogue among scholars in view of consolidating an interdisciplinary field of debate, applications and complex projects.

Its aim is to approach and to debate on the fundamentals of corporate communication and to encourage the development of research topics and input concepts by different scholars in various European countries or elsewhere.

The overall objective of the Section is therefore to enhance the European research within the field of organizational and strategic communications as well as to refine the conceptual and methodological background of the correlated practice.

The participation rules of the Section allow contributions from researchers, professors, master and doctoral students, as well from corporate representatives whose aim is to develop the internal research portfolios of their own organizations.

The Section also allows contributions of independent specialists and consultants in marketing, public communication or related fields, as the very field of organizational communication is difficult to observe unless part of the organizational systems.

Philosophy of Communication

The Philosophy of Communication Section in particular sets out to consolidate a European forum for the philosophy of communication.

Guided by the ideal of a free, rational, diverse, engaged and socially just Europe, the Section is explicitly oriented to reflect the cultural variety and the variety of traditions in the history of thought, scholarship and science.

The philosophy of communication encompasses a variety of concerns including reflective, theoretical, analytical, normative and historical questions relating to communication as a phenomenon, a dialectical process, a social reality, a form of expression, a theoretical construct or last but not at least a paradox.

What distinguishes Philosophy of Communication from other approaches is the foundational dimension embodied by the Section. The Philosophy of Communication section welcomes contributions that deal with questions regarding theory formation and methodology in communication scholarship, and with fundamental questions regarding the place of communication in human existence.

Political Communication

The Political Communication Section of ECREA invites contributions dealing with: critical approaches on press and media coverage of public affairs in a democratically adequate way both empirically and / or theoretically grounded; new media emerging as political communication vectors, i.e. community and citizens media or as challenging forces of the political status quo;

issues on political communication as a contestable social capital and as symbolic means in the service of diverse community and social forces;

agenda-settting issues between the political and the media system, but also, inter- and intra-media agenda-setting and control practices;

and analyses on specific topical aspects of the 'European Political Communication Deficit' or, conversely, on best practices of coverage of Europolitics across the Union, either as case or as comparative studies.

Radio Research

The Radio Studies Section invites abstracts to be presented from across as wide a range of interests as possible.

We do not wish to limit the focus and scope of members' research in the medium and the panels will be organized thematically once the abstracts have been received. However, based on the discussion at the recent meeting of the section in Lincoln in July 2007, panels in at least the following areas are anticipated: Audience studies; community radio; content (programming and genre); digitization; new or revised research methodologies.

Science and Environment Communication

The 21st century faces unprecedented challenges in the environment and science fields. The Science and Environment Communication section seeks to foster a strong and dynamic research network and welcomes work that crosses a range of disciplinary and methodological boundaries.

Examples of topic areas include - but are far from restricted to: media representations of science and the environment; political and commercial discourse on the environment; communication, democracy and scientific governance; public engagement with science and the environment; the dialogic, interactive communication of research-based knowledge.

The 2nd European Communication Conference is focusing on Communication Policies and Culture in Europe.
In this website you'll find more details about the event.

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

AIM -- ATRiuM Intelligent Media, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. on Face Book

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Seren Launches Important New Book by David Alston about Welsh Artist Brendan Stuart Burns Cardiff ATRiuM 30 January 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:44:00 +0000

[Pictured above: Edging West, Oil on canvas 2001 by Brendan Stuart Burns] To learn how you can buy copies of the paintings of Brendan Stuart Burns please visit:

http://www.brendanstuartburns.co.uk/home.htm

‘Brendan Stuart Burns is one of Wales’ most renowned and prolific painters.

Winner of the National Eisteddfod Gold Medal in Fine Art on two separate occasions, and Welsh Artist of the Year in 2000 and 2003, Burns concentrates his subject matter on the Pembrokeshire coastline, and its seductive tidal landscape.’

'His small paintings are epic entities in themselves.'

'Burns' enterprise and commitment to a landscape stimulus is not without echoes in Ian McKeever, Michael Porter and John Virtue'.

David Alston, Former Keeper of Art, National Museum & Galleries of Wales,
now Arts Director for the Arts Council of Wales.

Estynnir Gwahoddiad cynnes gan Seren
a Prifysgol Morgannwg i lansiad llyfr

Seren and University of Glamorgan
warmly invite you to the launch of

Into Painting: Brendan Stuart Burns
by/gan David Alston

6.30pm Dydd Mercher 30 Ionwar
ATRiuM, Ysgol Diwydiannau Chreadigol a
Diwylliannol Caerdydd, Stryd Adam, Caerdydd
Os nad ydych chi’n gallu bod yn y lansiad, ond os hoffech i ni gadw copi
wedi’i arwyddo i chi, e-bostiwch seren@seren-books.com
neu ewch i www.seren-books.com i brynu copi o’r llyfr
RSVP: Seren, 57 Stryd Nolton
Penybont-ar-Ogwr, CF31 3AE
seren@seren-books.com
01656 663018

6.30pm Wednesday 30 January
ATRiuM, Cardiff School of Creative
& Cultural Industries,Adam Street, Cardiff
If you are unable to attend the launch but would like to reserve a
signed copy, please email seren@seren-books.com or visit
www.seren-books.com to buy a copy of the book
RSVP: Seren, 57 Nolton Street
Bridgend, CF31 3AE
seren@seren-books.com
01656 663018

For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

AIM -- ATRiuM Intelligent Media, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. on Face Book

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.