Call for papers

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International Conference

Television: The Experimental Moment

      From invention to institution (1935-1955)

 sponsored by

Université de Paris 8
(Centre d’Etudes sur les Médias, les Technologies et l’Internationalisation / CEMTI)
and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel / INA

From invention to institution

     For half a century, television was relatively stable not only with respect to its technological basis and means of production and broadcasting, but also its modes of programming and reception. Its continuous development opened new perspectives to those who worked in entertainment and gave rise to vocations that reinforced its legitimacy.
     The goal of the conference is to clarify the logics that presided over the emergence of the medium and the process of adjusting the first programs—with, in consequence, the failure or marginalization, sometimes temporary, of alternative strategies of development.
     The conference will combine different approaches (historical, economic, aesthetic, cultural, legal…) in order to study, in different national contexts, the period of gestation and emergence of the medium (1930s – 1940s) and the first phase of its boom (late 1940s – first half of the 1950s).

   By experimental moment, we mean the period, variable according to country, from the conception and broadcasting of truly experimental programs (beginning in the mid-1930s) to the recognition of an institutional legitimacy that resulted in the first stabilization of the programming offer, the mode of programming, the public, the function of the critic (generally in the mid-1950s); national televisions that appeared later thus show singular traits.
    
     Priority will be given to consideration and articulation of  the following three aspects:

•   the context of emergence (constraints and obstacles, possibilities and opportunities, problems and solutions…);

•   the invention of programs (themes and forms, successes and failures, experimentation and its limits…);

•   production and reception (the first professions and  publics, the role of the critic…).

 

List of suggested themes:

     The emergence of the medium and the invention of programs can, for example, be considered from the following angles:

1. national models of development
2. common problems in different national contexts?
3. institutionalization of the medium and alternate models
4. private reception and public reception
5. the film industry faced with the emergence of television
6. radio’s legacy
7. professionals from radio and film, new vocations
8. theater’s contribution
9. the contribution of the press
10. notions of genre and the first programs
11. soliciting commercial advertising ?
12. reality and fiction in the first programs
13. the invention of a new dramatic form
14. writing for television
15. television’s identity as a medium and as an art
16. the cultural project and artistic ambition, transmission and creation
17. televisual inventiveness
18. forms of appropriation of television by artists
19. watching television, the televisual apparatus, the notion of television spectator
20. the education of television publics
21. the birth of television criticism
22. studies of television programs using archives (written or audiovisual)

 

Editorial Board:

Jérôme Bourdon (Université de Tel Aviv), Gilles Delavaud (Université de Paris 8), François Jost (Université de Paris 3), Denis Maréchal (INA), Jean-Michel Rodes (Inathèque de France), Pierre Sorlin (Université de Paris 3).

Date: May 27-29 2009

Place: Paris

Paper proposals in French or English (title + 20 lines/ 300 words + brief biographical note) should be sent to both the following addresses:

Gilles Delavaud: gilles.delavaud@univ-paris8.fr
Denis Maréchal: dmarechal@ina.fr

Deadline for submission of proposals: September 15, 2008.

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