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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

Television Cities

University College Dublin, Clinton Institute of American Studies/School of English, Drama and Film
October 16-18, 2009

Plenary Speakers

• Anna McCarthy, New York University
• Allison McCracken, DePaul University

Television is a privileged medium of urban (post)modernity: it works to render ‘the city’ legible, providing sensory and cognitive maps of social spaces and relations; it both mirrors and shapes perceptions of the time and space, the rhythms and settings, of urban existence; and it mediates fears and desires about the city as a space of human encounter. The genres and narratives of the televised city are intricately tied up with the reproduction of contemporary social identities. They are also interlinked with other visual and material economies of urban life, such as shopping and tourism.

This conference will examine the multiple ways in which cities are embedded in processes of televisual representation, production and consumption.

Papers might address one or more of the following topics:

• the visual and aural grammars of televisual cities 
• how particular genres represent the city
• how social identities are mediated by televisual representation
• the role of television in the promotion of particular cities
• the affect of the urban ‘real’ (in reality tv, news, documentary)
• the construction of imagined urban communities
• the role of television in the informational city as a component of economic development
• the relationship of television to urban dialectics of decline and regeneration
• televisual representation of issues of urban (in)security and governance
• tv as a technology of urban surveillance (CCTV)
• how cities are represented in national and international news reporting

Please submit a 300 word abstract and short biographical abstract by June 15, 2009 to both Professor Liam Kennedy (liam.kennedy@ucd.ie) and Professor Diane Negra (diane.negra@ucd.ie)

Professor Diane Negra
School of English, Drama and Film
University College Dublin
Belfield Dublin 4 Ireland
Office: 353-01-7168493
Mobile: 353-0-872866183

• Conference Programme
• Registration Information
• Accommodation & Food
• Programme
• How to Find Us
• Contact Details
• Links

Conference Programme

Friday, October 16

• 5:00-5:30 Registration, Clinton Auditorium Lobby
  
• 5:30-7:00, Plenary Address, Anna McCarthy, New York University “Television and the Architecture of Integration in Postwar New York”
  
• 7:00-8:00, Drinks Reception

Saturday, October 17

9:30-11:00, Session I

Imagining the TV “Location”

• Chair: Justin Carville, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology
  
• Joshua Neves, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Mise-en-Screen: Outside Television in Olympic-Era Beijing”
  
• Kevin Sanson, University of Texas at Austin, “Translating Tradition: BBC Scotland Meets the Creative Industries at Pacific Quay”
  
• Will Brooker, Kingston University, “Everywhere and Nowhere: Vancouver, Fan Pilgrimage and the Urban Imaginary”

The Cities of Cinema and Television

• Chair: Hamilton Carroll, University of Leeds
  
• Bianca Freire-Medeiros, Getulio Vargas Foundation, “Images of Poverty and Urban Violence in Brazilian Television and Film: Some Sociological Notes on the Rio de Janiero Case”
  
• Jennifer Gillan, Bentley University, “Representing NBC’s Television City: Media Conglomeration Meets Art Deco New York in 30 Rock”
  
• Mary Lawlor, Muhlenberg College, “Fulton Sheen and a Tale of Two Cities”
  Knell

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-1:00 Session II

The Gendered and Classed City

• Chair: Daryl Jones, Trinity College
  
• Jennifer McGrath, University College Dublin, Sex and the City: The Flaneuse in New York”
  
• Paula Gilligan, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, “’A Season in Hell:’ Morbidity, Symbolic Violence and the
• Politics of the Housing Estate in Channel 4’s Red Riding Trilogy”
  
• Linda Speidel, Roehampton University, “’The Real Star is Baltimore City:’ Urban Space in HBO’s The Wire”

1:00-2:00 Lunch Break

2:00-3:30 Session III

Narratives of Urban Evasion: Itinerant and Hometown Identities    

• Panel Chair: Diane Negra, University College Dublin
  
• Antonella Palmieri, University of East Anglia, “’I Wish I Could Have Been Born Italian:’ Romantic(ised) Landscapes of Italianness in Channel 4’s Jamie’s Great Italian Escape”
  
• Eugene O’Connor, University College Dublin, “’We’re the New Locals:’ Urban and Hometown Vampires in Contemporary US Media”
  
• Robert Dunks, University of California at Riverside, “The World Wrestling Entertainment Road Show: Urban Characters and American Popular Imagination”

The Urban Ethos of The Wire

• Chair: Liam Kennedy, University College Dublin
  
• Marisa Ronan, University College Dubin, “White Masculinity and the City: The Wire
  and Representations of White Working Class Masculinity”
  
• Hamilton Carroll, University of Leeds, “Policing the Borders of White Masculinity: Labor, Whiteness and the Neoliberal City in The Wire”
  
• Barry Shanahan, University College Dublin, “The Gods Will Not Save You: Hip-Hop, Realism and the Effect of the Urban on The Wire”

7:00 Conference Dinner

Sunday, October 18

9:30-11:00 Session IV

Television Utopias/Dystopias

• Chair: Maeve Connolly, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology
  
• Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, True Blood and Mad Men’s Passive Revolution: Utopian Reaction in the Age of Obam(a)mnesia”
  
• Kelly Jane Davidson, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Public and Private Community in the Contemporary British Rural Detective Genre”
  
• Gerardine Meaney, University College Dublin, “Spooks and London: Terror, Ethnicity and Liminality”

The Cities of Contemporary Crime and Medical Drama

• Chair: Ruth Barton, Trinity College
  
• Aintzane Mentxaka, University College Dublin, “Chicago as Metaphor in ER”
  
• Olga Blackledge, European Humanities University, “Constructing St. Petersburg in Crime TV Series”
  
• Sheamus Sweeney, Dublin City University, “From the Streets of Homicide to the World of The Wire: David Simon’s Baltimore”

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-1:00 Session V

Urban Authenticities

• Chair: Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick
  
• Jonathan Lupo, Colorado State University, “Real Places/Reel Lives: Locating ‘Dillon’ in Austin on Friday Night Lights”
  
• Jennifer Clark, Fordham University, “Post-Network Cities: Urban Landscapes and Quality Television”
  
• Rachel Walls, University of Nottingham, “Representing the Inner City in Canadian Crime Drama: CBC’s Da Vinci’s Inquest”

The Affective City: Emotions, Individuals and Communities of Urban Television

• Chair: Stephanie Rains, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
  
• Hollis Griffin, Northwestern University, “The Sentimental City: Manufactured Feelings and the Urban Imaginary of American Gay Media”
  
• Daniel Fitzpatrick, Dublin City University, “”The City as Organism in Deadwood and The Wire”
  
• Madeleine Lyes, University College Dublin, “Batman and Carrie Bradshaw Both Like Capes: The Mobilisation of Urban Fantasy in HBO’s Sex and the City and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Franchise”

1:00-1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-2:30 Closing Roundtable Discussion

Registration Information

• €60 Registration Fee
• €30 Student/Unwaged Registration Fee

Registration fee includes a conference pack and admission to all conference seminars, plenary sessions, teas/coffees and lunch on Saturday.

A conference meal will take place on the evening of Saturday 17th October. For those interested in participating, an additional payment of €29 is to be made in advance or at the start of the conference.

Please confirm registration by emailing Catherine.Carey@ucd.ie giving your name, email address, Institution, number of places required and whether or not you wish to attend the conference dinner.

You will then receive confirmation of your booking.

Payment can be made by cheque in advance or by cash at the start of the event.

** Please note: - Conference Delegates will be required to send ALL support media (TV Clips - regardless or region, power point material, still images etc) to Catherine.carey@ucd.ie by Friday 9th October

Accommodation & Food

Attendees are responsible for booking and paying their own accommodation.

• Accommodation near UCD

Food on Campus

Aside from lunch on Saturday, other meals are not provided as part of the registration fee. Details of additional places to eat on campus are listed below and can be located on the UCD Campus Map.
There are a number of restaurants and snack bars also available on campus.

Programme

The programme will be available shortly

How to get to University College Dublin and the UCD Clinton Institute

Registration and the conference will take place in the William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium at University College Dublin.
Delegates are responsible for booking their own travel and accommodation.

• How to get to UCD

Contact Details

Contact details are available on our contact page.

Links

For more information about Dublin