*CFP* "DIGITAL MEDIA, PUBLIC POLICY AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REVISED AVMSD", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF DIGITAL MEDIA AND POLICY

The Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is the centrepiece of media policy in the European Union. It sets the foundations of regulating broadcast media without frontiers. Over multiple revisions in the last two decades it was gradually extended, first to on-demand audiovisual services and most recently to video sharing platforms dealing in user-generated content. This policy journey was a remarkable one, characterized by the careful balancing of economic and cultural policy objectives and various policy innovations. It has resulted in an enlightenment amongst member states with media markets suffering from oppressive and politically driven regulatory regimes, but it has also taken a heavy toll on smaller markets distressed by major transnational audiovisual content providers.

The revised AVMSD adopted in late 2018 promised to create a more level playing field for European media outlets competing with US-based tech giants and fighting for shrinking sources of income and increasingly fragmented audiences. The deadline for national transposition is 19 September 2020. Whether and how all member states meet this deadline given the COVID-19 related consequences on legislative processes raises several issues. Legal and policy scholars are dealing with challenging questions about the wide-reaching impact of entering a new phase of regulation and the next level of media governance, while old problems were still dragging along without due response.

*CFP* “WAR, ESPIONAGE, AND MASCULINITY IN BRITISH FICTION”, BOOK CHAPTERS

Vernon Press invites chapter proposals on War, Espionage, and Masculinity in British Fiction.

Conflicts over control of the British Empire, two World Wars, and the Cold War meant that for most of the Twentieth Century, British men were either at war, trying to prevent war, or recovering from the aftermath of war.  This book will explore how fictional characters shape and reflect perceptions of what it means to be a man who either experiences the conflict, or who has to shape a masculine identity without the experience of war or espionage while aware of the examples set by real or fictional heroes.  Papers on single authors or works, multiple authors, or works and their film adaptations are welcome.

This call is to add to material from the 2019 Northeast Modern Language Association Conference panel “War, Espionage, and Masculinity in Twentieth Century British Fiction.”  Chapter proposals on the following authors and works have already been accepted: Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands, Joseph Conrad’s, The Secret Agent, Dorothy Sayer’s Peter Wimsey novels, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Ian Fleming’s “The Living Daylights”, le Carré’s The Night Manager, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday, The Innocent, and Sweet Tooth.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY", SYMPOSIUM

Media and Democracy Symposium

Pissouri Village, Cyprus

8-9 December 2019

The Symposium aims is to promote the debate on the effective participation of the citizen in the democratic system of government, which involves the citizens informing about social, political, economic, religion, cultural and environmental events. Nowadays we observe in the private and public life both the dominance of traditional and new media, which in some cases construct contradictory information, especially regarding the political life of the country. 

This Symposium aims is to analyze the Media and Democracy from different points of view, which could be summarized in the following topics:

*CFP* “DISCOURSES OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: FROM WINDRUSH TO BREXIT”, DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY, LEICESTER

Discourses of immigration and citizenship: from Windrush to Brexit

Thursday 27th June 2019

De Montfort University, Leicester

The media coverage of the Brexit Referendum in 2016 focused disproportionately upon the notion that Britain close its borders and reduce immigration if the country left European Union.  Media discourse on the issues of immigration, race and ethnicity are best described as negative, whilst Government policies on immigration, appear to promote a hostile environment in order to deter potential immigrants. This discourse is not new, sixty years ago when the Windrush generation arrived in Britain they faced discrimination, prejudice and last year, a number of them who had arrived legally, most likely as children, were  been removed from the UK because they were unable to prove they had a right to remain.

So what if anything has changed in the intervening years since Empire Windrush docked in 1948 bringing to the UK hundreds of Caribbean migrants? What parallels are there between the media discourse of Windrush and newer migrants from Eastern Europe or further afield?  Does post-Brexit Britain mean incidents like Windrush will be legitimised as the UK takes control of who is welcome in the country?

*CFP* "BRITISH WOMEN DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS 1930-1955", ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM

Proposals are invited for a one-day symposium to be held at the London School of Economics on 5th April 2019.

As the work of filmmakers including Jill Craigie, Kay Mander and Marion Grierson testify, women have played a significant part in the early decades of British documentary and informational film-making. Women were a vital part of the war effort and this was apparent in the films made by the Ministry of Information as well as newsreels, documentaries and dramas. Women also worked behind the camera as directors, editors and scriptwriters on instructional and propaganda films.Yet much early British documentary history on Grierson and the Documentary Movement tends to elide the ways in which non-canonical works engage differently with questions of the nation, gender, class and identity and the ways in which form and content are linked to context of production.

This one-day symposium seeks to deepen understanding of women’s creative presence in British documentary film-making. Papers may explore individual films and filmmakers, as well as the industrial, social and historical contexts in which they worked. While WWII has been foregrounded in accounts of women’s participation in British film production, the day will consider a longer historical period including the innovations in documentary of the 1930s and the changing industry of the post-war period.

*CFP* "EUROPEAN CINEMA IN THE 21ST CENTURY: DISCOURSES, DIRECTIONS AND GENRES", EDITED COLLECTION

Modules of European cinema have become increasingly popular in university curricula, both in European countries and overseas. However, knowledge on the topic is often fragmented across a variety of studies, or centred around specific national cinemas, which can act as a hindrance in discerning key trends and assimilating the complexities of European cinema. This book articulates a way of rethinking the study of contemporary European cinema by placing at the centre of its efforts the students and their needs.

This monograph aims to provide important insights on the key features of European cinema in the 21st Century highlighting its major aesthetic schools, traditions, national identities and transnational concerns. These features are complemented by an accessible and student-friendly structure in which each chapter discusses significant topics, explains their context and provides definitions of key terms. Each chapter also encourages critical thinking by providing a set of reflective questions, and a case-study that summarises and applies the theoretical content.

*CFP* "SHORT CIRCUIT: BREVITY AND THE SHORT FORM IN SERIAL TELEVISION", COLLECTED VOLUME

As critics, creators and academics alike herald the new “Golden Age” of television, the accent has increasingly been placed on the excess inherent in the form, the temptation to “binge-watch” a single fiction over several hours, or the proliferation of narratives and storylines in American television’s “endless present” (which, unlike its British equivalent, is not traditionally designed to end at any specific point). 

Melissa Ames (Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-First-Century Programming, 2012) reminds us however that time is at the very center of the television narrative, and that television differs from its cinematic equivalent notably by its incremental approach to storytelling –alternately playing with and combining duration and brevity. Thus, in this publication, we would like to come back to what originally distinguishes TV series from films, i.e. their specific connection to shortness. We will be examining television as a short form, insisting on the structure implicit in the television episode, be it the traditional forms (30 or 60 minutes), or the increasing popularity of webseries that feature microepisodes (of 2-10 minutes), like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Frankenstein, MD, Carmilla, or Kings of Con and Con Man. We will attempt to examine this balance between short episodes and long duration, as well as the association of episode length with genre – traditionally, hour-long series have been dramatic, and half-hour series comic. (All the webseries with microepisodes mentioned here are comedies.)