Audio-Visual Methodologies for Transnational Television Studies: What can the Video

Essay Do For You?

Pre-Conference Workshop Seminar

Aarhus University, Department of Media Studies and Journalism

Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N.

Developments in digital technology and software afford compelling new possibilities for conducting

audio-visual analysis and conveying audio-visual arguments about audio-visual objects of study,

including television. Professor Catherine Grant and Dr Janet McCabe (both from Birkbeck, University

of London) will lead a one-day workshop at Aarhus University’s Department of Media Studies and

Journalism on these emerging videographic methodologies, specifically in the context of research and

pedagogy on transnational television. During the workshop participants will learn how to conceive

media criticism in the form of digital sound and moving images with a view to beginning to produce

their own work in this idiom.

In the workshop, we will engage with some of key questions facing media scholarship in the digital

age: how might audio-visual methods transform the analytical and rhetorical strategies used by media

scholars, especially in the field of transnational television studies? How could the form help us

develop new ways of thinking about, and practising research in transnational television? How might

such creative digital scholarship both challenge and fit into the norms of contemporary academia,

including television studies? In this workshop setting, we start with the challenges of researching the

transnational in television, before considering the theoretical foundation for such forms of digital

scholarship and will demonstrate some of the advantages of producing such experimental work. The

goal will be to explore a range of approaches by using moving images and sounds as a critical and

expressive method and to expand the analytical and expressive possibilities available to innovative

television and media scholars.

Participants are not expected to have experience producing videos – the workshop is aimed at

exploring the new format, the possibility of its use in research and stimulating new ideas. The event is

aimed at PhD students, early career researchers, and established academics who are interested in

learning more about this new scholarly form by taking a hands-on approach (using their own

computer equipment). Participants will be directed to resources ahead of time to prepare for the

workshop.

Workshop Schedule:

9.00-9.30: Introduction to the Workshop and Challenges for Studying the Transnational in

Television Studies. JM

9.30-11.00: Introducing Video Essays in Media Studies Research and Pedagogy: Lecture and

Screening. CG

11.00-11.30: Coffee Break

11.30-12.15: Presenting a Video Essay on Studying Transnational Television. CG & JM

12.15-13.15: Participants’ Project Ideas Pitch and Discussion accompanied by lunch. CG & JM

13.30-15.00: Hands on Workshop Session. CG & JM

The speakers:

Catherine Grant is Professor of Digital Media and Screen Studies at Birkbeck, University of London,

where she teaches and researches on-line audiovisual cultures, audiovisual essay practices and digital

forms of analysis and criticism. Originally a scholar of Latin American culture, she has researched

transnational and global cinema studies since the early 1990s and produced the volume Screening

World Cinema (co-ed. with Annette Kuhn, Routledge, 2006). A prolific experimental video-essayist,

she curates the Film Studies for Free blog and the Audiovisualcy group and is a founding co-editor of

the award-winning publication [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies.

Janet McCabe is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Birkbeck, University of London, where she

teaches and researches television, film/television programming and archiving. Along with Prof. Grant,

she is part of the Essay Film Festival programming team, with particular responsibility for the TV essay

strand. She is Editor-in Chief of Critical Studies in Television and has written widely on feminism and

contemporary television culture. She has co-edited several collections, including Quality TV:

Contemporary American TV and Beyond (2007) and Reading Sex and the City (2004), and more

recently, TV’s Betty Goes Global: From Telenovela to International Brand (2013; co-edited with Kim

Akass).

The event is organized as a collaboration between Catherine Grant and Janet McCabe from

Birkbeck, University of London and Pia Majbritt Jensen and Mathias Bonde Korsgaard from

Aarhus University.

To register, please send an e-mail to assistant professor Mathias Bonde Korsgaard

(normbk@cc.au.dk) no later than April 16th.