Discourses of Fictional (Digital) TV Series
Forthcoming Conference,
3-6 November 2020
Conference Convenors: Carmen
Gregori-Signes, Claudia Alonso-Recarte, Miguel Fuster-Márquez, Sergio Maruenda-Bataller
Secretaries: Paula Rodríguez-Abruñeiras &
Joaquín Primo-Pacheco
We are delighted to announce that the Departament de Filologia Anglesa i
Alemanya at the Universitat de València and the Institut Interuniversitari de Llengües Modernes Aplicades de la Comunitat Valenciana (IULMA) will be hosting,
on the 3th-6th November 2020 in Valencia, Spain, the International Conference
on Discourses of Fictional (Digital) TV Series. The conference will address
series originally produced in English.
Popular culture has undoubtedly been influenced by TV series, shows and
sitcoms ever since television became a commodity in the middle-class household.
Such series epitomise the rich, diversified heritage of twentieth and
twenty-first-century consumer culture, reflecting in one way or another the
social and political scenario of their time. The ideas and concepts beneath
successful series are the product of the times; and it is also the politics,
financial demands and established ethos of such times that determine and often
limit the direction of the show and the type of discourse it assimilates.
Although hit series have always drawn enthused groups of followers,
fandom itself seems to have become an empowered phenomenon in the last decades
and particularly in the last few years. Indeed, with the advent of personalised
service that streaming media, downloading, and video-on-demand offer, our
emotional and social connections to series have shifted. The fact that
companies such as Netflix or Amazon have, following the footsteps of
long-established public or cable channels such as HBO, ventured into producing
their own original series or miniseries goes to show the extent to which
(digital) TV series (DTVS) have gained momentum and are currently one of the
most profitable initiatives in the entertainment industry. Substantial
investments into quality script writing, casting, special effects, directing,
editing, and marketing, among other procedures, have ultimately delivered to
the public all sorts of audio-visual fictional narratives that address the
concerns and interests of a highly diversified viewership that is constantly
under the scrutiny of production companies. This cultural phenomenon has caught
the attention of scholars who, from a range of disciplines, have approached the
multi-signifying discursive significance that fictional DTVS, as stories and
products, have in current society.
In line with such scholarship, this conference aims to create a space in
which to analyse, discuss and debate the discursive and narrative aspects of
fictional DTVS. We seek to explore how competing discourses enable or confront
identity politics, how narrative structures implode viewer expectations, how
genre conventions are reinvented through discourse and audio-visual rhetoric, and
to ultimately delve into what such strategies say about English-speaking
cultures and communities.
Conference topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Multimodal discourses in DTVS.
- The function of dialogue and other forms of narrative in DTVS.
- Characterisation. Innovations and stereotyping through characters’ unique discourse.
- Identity politics based on race, ethnicity, religion, age, class, or species in DTVS.
- Gender and sexuality in DTVS. The use of DTVS as an innovative space for raising awareness about social inequality
- Sexual and gender-based politics. Denunciation of patriarchal discourses, feminist utopias and dystopias.
- Posthuman, transhuman, biotechnological and ecocritical discourses in DTVS: the overcoming of humanism and the blurring of the boundaries between the human, the technological and the animal.
- From Ageing to Disability Studies in DTVS: portrayals of old age, illness, disease, and the handicapped subject.
- Screen adaptations. Conventional vs. experimental structures and narrative plots in DTVS.
- Fandom-related discourses and industries.
P.S. We invite you to contribute to the list of Online Bibliographic
References on (Digital) TV Series (see also Bednarek, M., & Zago, R. 2019)
Due to the current circumstances and the uncertainty surrounding the
Coronavirus outbreak (Covid-19), the Organising Committee has taken the
following decisions:
- CFP Extended deadline: 15th of July
- Registration deadline extension:
- Early bird (before the 25th of october): 90€
- Late registration: 100€
We will keep you posted if the circumstances forced us to make any
changes regarding the celebration of the conference.
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